The Detail Woman logomarkSarah Alys Lindholm

Professional translator, educator, and owner of The Detail Woman, LLC. I love opportunities to both teach and learn from others, whether at large conventions or in smaller informal settings. My not-so-secret passions are research, terminology management, and penguins. LinkedIn | Twitter

A Personal Appeal to My Fellow Americans

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It’s voting season right now in the United States–a fact you’ve probably been unable to escape if you live here. Next week we’ll have local, state, and federal midterm elections, and we’ll even have elections in the American Translators Association.

This blog isn’t about politics. I don’t actually want to talk about the people running in any of those elections right now, so don’t worry. But since some things are so universally important that they deserve a personal appeal, I want to get personal for a second here, and I want to do so publicly. Here’s the thing: every day now we hear the words “vote,” “voting,” “voters.” These are big words for me personally, because in 2006, I had the vote taken away from me.

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memoQ & OmegaT Shortcut Unification

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**Note 10/2/2023: There is a bug in OmegaT 6.0.0 that causes a loss of functionality if you edit the gotoNextUntranslatedMenuItem shortcut. The ability to go to the next untranslated segment will be lost until you reinstall, even if you revert to the default. Therefore, I recommend against modifying gotoNextUntranslatedMenuItem in 6.0.0.

Like a lot of translators, I use more than one CAT tool (TEnT tool) in my work, deciding which one to use based on the type of project I’m translating. In my case, it’s memoQ and OmegaT.

I don’t know about other translation tool combinations, but the one thing that drives me CRAZY switching between these two is that the important shortcuts are completely different. But after some digging around and experimentation, I have achieved shortcut paradise.

All I wanted was for the “go to next untranslated segment” and the “add term to glossary/term base” shortcuts to match so that I wouldn’t keep using the wrong one in the wrong program, but memoQ only allows certain shortcut customizations, so I couldn’t get its shortcuts to match OmegaT’s. Happily, if you’re willing to venture into the bowels of your file system, you can get your OmegaT shortcuts to match memoQ’s. Here’s how.

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Guest Post: What Exactly Is Literary Translation? by Lisa Carter

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At the ATA‘s 54th Annual Conference in San Antonio last fall, I had a chance to chat with Lisa Carter of Intralingo, one of my favorite blogs on literary translation. One thing led to another, and we got to thinking about how everyone probably defines “literary translation” differently. Lisa tackles the question of “What is literary translation?” in her online course First Steps in Literary Translation, and I tackle it whenever people wander into my office asking “What do you do in here, anyway?”

So hey–why not each have a go at it and let our readers share their thoughts, too? And lo, a guest post exchange was born. Please welcome acclaimed Spanish>English translator Lisa Carter as she gives us her take! (You can see mine on her blog at https://intralingo.com/posts/what-is-literary-translation.)

 

What exactly is literary translation?

By Lisa Carter

 

Have you ever asked yourself this question? I have. And I’ve asked it of others, too. Quite often. The answer to this one simple question is never as straightforward as it would seem it should be. You see, the answer changes, depending on who you talk to and when you talk to them.

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Word Usage Quiz for Writers #2

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It’s baaaaack… Following up on my first quiz on commonly confused words, here is a second set of ten word-pair errors I see during proofreading. As always, the theory is that even if you already know the difference between the words in each pair, practice making deliberate choices may help prevent mistakes in the future. … Read more

Word Usage Quiz for Writers

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When you choose the right word for the right situation, your writing looks polished and professional, but sometimes it’s almost like English is out to get you with all its little pitfalls. It’s easy to read advice about commonly confused words, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get them right later. Yesterday I started wondering whether … Read more

Recommendations: Anime on Sale

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Yoinking a great idea from the Fandom Post: Why not recommend some DVDs/Blu-rays that are on sale right now, so you can discover new things on the cheap?

Right Stuf, one of my favorite online retailers due to their friendly customer service, is having a 40% off sale until May 19th on DVDs and Blu-rays from FUNimation. (Full disclosure: that’s the company I work for. But there are great titles from other companies, too, so I’ll post those recs as I find out about sales. Also, please note: the content of this post represents my personal opinions, and in no way represents any statements or opinions of FUNimation’s.)

So, here are some 40%-off recommendations from various genres:

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New Simulcast: Ping Pong

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Well, I’m a little late posting it this time, but yep, I’m doing another simulcast this season: Ping Pong the Animation. It’s based on the 1990s manga Ping Pong, which was popular enough to get a live-action film you may have seen (I’ve read the manga in Japanese, but I’m waiting to watch the movie’s English-language … Read more