FAQ #4: What Should I Major In?

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“What should I major in?”

This is definitely the #1 most frequent question I get asked by young aspiring translators, so the only reason it wasn’t #1 in my FAQ series is that I’ve always resisted answering it. Why have I resisted answering it? The short answer is that I have no answer–I don’t know what you should major in!

The long answer is that there are all kinds of pros & cons to different majors, and lots of different ways of looking at this decision. After another recent flood of emails about it, I think it’s finally time for me to attempt the long answer. Aspiring translators, I hope this helps. Existing translators, please feel free to add your own thoughts (or refute mine)!

Here we go…

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memoQ Light Resources, and a Freebie

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Apologies for the delay in the next installment of the emergency series–I have not forgotten about it, I promise! It just turns out tech-related emergency planning takes a lot of research. But, speaking of technology and emergencies, here’s a Tech Emergency Quickie for memoQ users!

Do you have all your term bases and all the little hacks to your TEnT tools/CAT tools backed up? (And your invoices? See Backing Up Your Records in TO3000 Version 10; the first half of that post also applies to Version 11.) I’ve gotten pretty good about backups, but there are always a few little things that I miss for my memoQ setup. Term bases? Check. TMs? Check. Light resources? …Well, shoot, I didn’t think of that!

Luckily, others can learn from my mistakes. If you, too, hate having to figure out complicated “memoQ Web Search” settings and whatnot for each new computer, read on. These are more complicated to back up than you might think, but it can be done!

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Life Happens

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I’d planned to end the week with a tiny update of miscellanea on emergency planning. I’m still doing that, but originally it was going to be upbeat, and it hasn’t quite turned out that way. Still, here’s your emergency planning quickie:

1. And lo, planning works!

Almost a year ago, I had a hard drive fail on me that left me without a computer for a day or two. Luckily, I was not mid- freelance assignment, and the awesome IT department at my workplace helped me out with the full-time assignment! Still, it left me realizing I needed to plan for catastrophic computer failure. What if this had happened on the due date of a freelance assignment? So, I immediately ordered a relatively inexpensive, non-customized backup laptop, which later became my main laptop for non-video use. I installed a new hard drive in the old laptop with help from IT, and I resolved to keep BOTH laptops up and running, just in case.

At the beginning of the week, Main Laptop’s screen failed! Luckily it was under warranty, so the fix is free, but it will still take a week. Am I freaking out? Nope. Thanks to having a second laptop that I’ve kept most of the same programs and templates on, when a client came along with a $750 job, I was able to accept with no problems. Yay planning!

2. Life happens. (Also, here’s a PayPal tip.)

Like I said at the beginning of this series, emergencies can and will happen to anyone at any time. This morning, I got the call that an emergency is happening, and I need to get my butt on a plane tomorrow morning. I think many of us have been there. So yep, this isn’t just something I blog about. It’s all real!

Also, here’s a fun fact about plane tickets: American Airlines will now let you buy tickets via PayPal if you buy through their site. This is important because if you have PayPal Credit added to your PayPal account, purchases above a certain price generally have suspended interest for six months (check at time of purchase). So as long as you’re responsible and keep track of how much you’ve paid each moth, you can pay for that expensive ticket in installments instead of all at once. Which, in cases of emergency, is pretty awesome.

3. A timely video.

Remember how last time I was talking about finding a trusted colleague for emergency backup? That would sure be useful right now for this $750 project that’s getting interrupted by my second emergency of the week. I think I’ll still be able to finish it, but this is a good reminder to me of why having trusted colleagues is so smart. And here’s a video Corinne just posted on exactly that. Go check it out!

Emergency Business Planning: Illness & Injury

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In my first post about emergency business planning, I asked the question, “What can go wrong?” That was a little terrifying, but now for the good news: Once we know what can go wrong, we’re ready to start strategizing!

You will probably have noticed that some disasters I listed on the “What could go wrong?” list were qualitatively different than others. #4 in particular is in a category of its own: “I could become sick or injured.”

Hopefully none of us will spend too much of our time so ill that we can’t work, but both short- and long-term illness/injury can happen to anyone, of any age. So we need to prepare for this. We don’t want short-term health problems to impact our client relationships, and we don’t want long-term ones to tank our businesses!

In preparing for this piece, I put together my own knowledge, my research, and notes from an interview with a friend who has unfortunately encountered this particular emergency. Here’s what I came up with:

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Happy 2015! Do You Have an Emergency Business Plan?

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Happy New Year! Yes, it’s January, that month when many of us think about what we want our lives to be like. We ask ourselves, Do I need to lose weight? Do I want to quit a bad habit? What do I want to accomplish most? We all know the “resolutions” drill.

But if you’re a freelancer or you run a business, there’s an urgent question that you may not be asking: Do I have an emergency plan for my business?

Any month is a good month to safeguard your business, but I’ve decided to devote this January to blogging about my emergency-preparedness plan for my translation business. Today’s post is all about the first step: admitting that eventually, there’s going to be a problem.

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“Pictures and Sound” Presentation Slides

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As many of you know, last month, I gave a presentation at the 55th annual American Translators Association conference called “Pictures and Sound: Translating Television and Other Audiovisual Media.”

After the presentation, a few attendees asked me for copies of the slides. At the time I replied that I had no plans to release them, due to the fact that they contained video clips which I had copyright concerns about distributing.

However, I’ve now decided to release a PDF version of the slides, so that no video will be distributed but you can still see some of my notes, including parts of the presentation that I did not have time to get to. Just click here: ATA55prezi.

This is my work, so please do not distribute this PDF, but feel free to give anyone who might be interested the link to this blog post.

Thank you to all who attended the session, and especially to those who’ve reached out to me since then to share your thoughts about it! When I heard from two people that it was their favorite presentation of the conference, it made my year. :)

FAQ #3 Followup–Another Perspective on Translator Education

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In my previous post, FAQ #3: Did Your Bryn Mawr Education Prepare You For Your Career?, I discussed how a liberal arts education prepared me for a career as a translator.

My colleague Frode Aleksandersen, an English/Danish/Swedish/Japanese to Norwegian translator who specializes in technical translation, checked in with me afterwards to offer a contrasting perspective. Since my FAQ series is intended to answer questions that aspiring translators ask me, I feel it’s helpful to present multiple sides to these issues. Happily, Frode’s given me his permission to share his thoughts with everyone.

Here’s what he has to say:

“How much [a liberal arts education] helps depends on what kind of translation you’re going to be doing I think – I do mostly technical translations, and having an IT background has been invaluable for getting into that fast, whereas the subjects I took at the university in Oslo [have had] zero impact on it. Being an expert in the fields you’re going to be translating is what really matters. I think the only thing that had an influence is that I audited (didn’t have time to do the homework or take the exam) a class in translation theory, while already working as a professional translator. It got me thinking a bit more about things such as “who is the customer”, and also being able to explain different types of translation to other people, even though I don’t actually do those kinds of translations.

For translation of popular media such as books, manga and TV I completely agree that you need a very solid background in both the culture and history you’re translating from and to. Knowing a little about a lot of things also helps, but you do get a part of that simply from working on translations and researching different things as a result. Most important is knowing how and where to look.”

My take on this? Like Frode says, subject expertise really matters. And having research skills–“knowing how and where to look”–is certainly the most important thing. It’ll make or break you, both in translation and in life. But you’re not born knowing how to research; it’s a skill that most of us need to specifically learn (see “Research, research, research” on the So, You Want To Be A Translator? page).  I’ve argued that you can acquire it very well through a liberal arts education, but the route you acquire it through is not what’s most important. What’s most important is that you acquire it.

FAQ #3: Did Your Bryn Mawr Education Prepare You For Your Career?

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Another FAQ!

Much as I love my alma mater, the question “Did your Bryn Mawr education prepare you for your career?” is, I think, actually a bigger one: “Did your liberal arts education prepare you for your career?” Because Bryn Mawr is a liberal arts school, and I think the practical usefulness of the liberal arts is what people are really getting at here.

The short answer: yep, it did.

The long answer: Here’s what a liberal arts education is, and why it’s useful to a translator’s career even though it’s by definition not career-specific.

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Pictures and Sound: Audiovisual Terminology

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Tomorrow November 8th, I’ll be presenting my first-ever American Translators Association conference session. If you’ve ever wondered what translating audiovisual content is all about, come join me for session T-10: “Pictures and Sound: Translating Television and Other Audiovisual Media” from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

So that attendees don’t have to give themselves hand cramps scribbling down new vocab or carry around yet another sheet of paper, I want to make a short list of the medium-specific terminology I use here. Please enjoy!

  • Dubbing/ADR – 吹き替え – Recording over a source for which audio has already been recorded, but is unusable or in another language.
  • Recording – アフレコ – Though the Japanese comes from “after recording,” this is recording voices for the first time to a video source (think cartoons in their original language).
  • Lip flaps (or “flaps” for short) – 口パク – The movements of the characters’ mouths onscreen. This term is mainly for animated video.
  • Subtitles – 字幕 (**Caution: サブタイトル in Japanese often refers to an episode title in a TV series or the secondary title/”sub-title” of a work.)
  • Script/screenplay – 台本/脚本 – We’ll be talking lots more about this in the presentation!
  • Dialogue/lines – 台詞
  • Licensor – English term for the rights holder of the TV or film. Licensors license distribution rights to other companies.
  • Licensee/distributor – The entity to which the licensor grants rights to distribute the film.

I look forward to meeting many of you. And if you translate from Japanese, Korean, or Chinese into any other language, don’t forget to bring your business cards!

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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