Here are a couple of blogs I’m keeping an eye on at the moment, of specific interest to translators:
Blogamundo: snippets of info on all aspects of language on the web, as well as translation, localisation, machine translation, accessibility, etc. Something here for everyone.
Get Direct Clients: no guarantees it will do exactly what it says on the tin, but this site still coontains a host of useful posts aimed at translators starting out in the freelance field.
Language Log: intelligent, well thought out discussions on a range of topical language matters. Frequent posts by a team of academics specialising in linguistics. A good starting point for anybody with a love of languages, translation, etc.
International Telecommuting Translator: posts on various aspects of setting up and running a translation business. A bit of a mixed bag in that it contains advice aimed at project managers and potential buyers of translation, as well as anyone considering a career in translation, either freelance or inhouse.
ICE: an international calendar of events for the translation industry. OK, not a blog exactly but you can subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up to date with what’s happening.
It’s amazing how much is out there – I use Technorati to keep an eye out for new ones.
About the author
Sarah Dillon is a qualified, accredited and experienced professional translator originally from Co. Clare in Ireland. She specialises in producing English-language texts that don't "sound" like translations, ensuring her clients' message has the desired impact in their overseas market. She is based in Brisbane, Australia and works with corporate clients, small businesses, agencies and nonprofit organisations all over the world. In her spare time, Sarah is also Marketing Director of eCPD Webinars.
Sarah Dillon has written 252 posts for There's Something About Translation.
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Hi, you should also check out the Worldwide Lexicon (www.worldwidelexicon.org). We just unveiled our RSS+wiki translation tool.
It watches a site’s RSS feed, and makes it easy for a site to recruit its own readers to translate it to whatever languages they speak. The translations are published via html and via RSS.
Hi Brian
This does look like a very interesting project.
As I understand it, WWL is an experimental, open source service which enables multilingual readers of blogs and other online material to have a bash at translating that material, for the benefit, presumably, of monolingual readers who might not otherwise have access to that material. As a wiki-based service, anyone can chose to translate any piece of material, as far as I can see, and can also edit anyone else’s work.
It’s great to see a translation-technology expert acknowledge the shortcomings of machine translation, and try to get humans in on the process instead. I also applaud your efforts to open the internet to a wider, non-English speaking audience. But even thought this is still in experimental phase, its shortcomings lie in the fact that the service assumes a pool of readers who are willing *and able* to translate the material in the first place (and for free!)
As a professional translator I guess I could be such a reader, but I’m not sure how I’d feel about my name being put to a translation which could be randomly edited by “mere” multilinguals
Just yesterday The Times ran an article on the issues this approach has caused for Wikipedia (see http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article1637535.ece) And as a blogger, I’m not sure how I feel about having versions of my posts floating around whose quality I’m unable to verify. (Arguably there’s nothing I can do to stop that happening even without WWL, of course).
But putting my professional reservations aside, I say vive collaborative open-source projects! This looks like a fascinating experiment and I’ll certainly follow it with interest. Best of luck!
Hello nakedtranslator
You have a good grasp of my blog.Thanks.
I will also keep an eye of your blog.