Tradurre: a webcast (in Italian) about translation

If you speak Italian and are a translator / a translation student / interested in translation, you may find this twice-monthly webcast very interesting. It is about different aspects of translation and the translator’s job. Each month there is a different theme on which the webcast’s episodes are based (for example, April’s theme is the translator’s visibility, March’s one was the quality of translations). Tradurre (to translate, or translating) is a webinar, hosted by Andrea Spila and Melani Traini of the European School of Translation, that features a different guest (working in the translation field) each time. Quoting Wikipedia, a webinar is:

a specific type of web conference. It is typically one-way, from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, such as in a webcast. A webinar can be collaborative and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, pointing out information being presented on screen and the audience can respond over their own telephones, preferably a speaker phone. There are web conferencing technologies on the market that have incorporated the use of VoIP audio technology, to allow for a truly web-based communication.

If you would like to participate, you can sign up for free a few days earlier (see the EST blog for dates and topics. You can also subscribe to the EST Newsletter). By participating, you can interact with the hosts and the guest(s). There are also polls related to the topic of the day. If you miss an episode, or would like to watch past episodes, you can watch videos on the Archivi (Archives) page. You can also watch videos of past webinars organized by the EST, like this one on WordFast, which I watched a few days ago. Two years ago, I downloaded WordFast Classic out of curiosity, and tried it with a text. Once I even got an 82% fuzzy match, because two sentences in the text were similar (since I wasn’t using a translation memory, I got mostly “no matches”, and zero 100% matches). Thanks to that video, I learnt something about WordFast I didn’t know before (CAT tools are usually taught during MA courses in Translation, while I attended a BA course in Translation and Interpreting, during which I studied translation theory and techniques, and translated different text typologies, but without CAT tools).

I signed up for the upcoming webcast (it is on April 30), which is going to be on the visibility and the status of the translator’s profession. I’ve never taken part in a webcast/webinar, but I watched the previous episodes of Tradurre, so I already know how it is structured.

I also realized that I’ve been blogging for two months today! Happy 2 months, Learning by Translating!

Some random language-related facts about me

1. I speak two languages (Italian and English) fluently, and would like to become more fluent in French (it is more of a “passive” language to me… if you study interpreting, you know what I mean).
2. I wanted to learn Japanese when I was in high school.
3. I actually started learning foreign languages (English and French) when I started middle school, but I already knew how to count from 1 to 10 and some words and phrases in English (my Dad taught me). I have a short film of mine when I was 4, in which I translate cartoon character names, some words and phrases (like “How old are you?” and “What time is it?”) from Italian into English!
4. I attended a high school mostly based on languages (“Liceo linguistico” in Italian), in which I have studied English, French (both for five years) and German (for three years) language and literature. There were also Italian and Latin language and literature, besides other subjects such as maths, physics, biology, physical education, religious education, history, philosophy, chemistry and earth science.
5. For some reason, sometimes, while talking to other people in Italian, a word might first come to my mind in English, rather than in Italian!!
6. I would like to learn Spanish. Two years ago I bought a DVD course that came out every week with a newspaper, “Il Sole 24 Ore”. I haven’t watched all the DVDs yet, only the beginner level ones (there are also intermediate and advanced level ones), but I don’t remember much… if only I had more time on my hands, I would start watching them again.
7. I studied Translation and Liaison Interpreting (“Mediazione linguistica” in Italian) at university. I chose that course over a Foreign Languages and Literatures one because I’ve always liked translating and studying languages with a more practice-oriented approach even if, before attending university, I wanted to become an English teacher.
8. When I started studying Interpreting during my sophomore year at university (there was only Translation in the first year), I immediately became a fan of the subject! During the first lecture I was wondering: “How do (simultaneous) interpreters manage to speak and listen at the same time?”. I studied mostly Liaison Interpreting, but there were some lectures on Conference Interpreting as well (even if I only did consecutive interpreting and no simultaneous, because it is usually taught in MA courses).
9. I tend to speak English with an American accent but, when it comes to writing, I try to use British spelling as much as possible (even if sometimes, for example, I happen to use the simple past instead of the present perfect, like in “I just had lunch” instead of “I’ve just had lunch”).
10. If I have a dictionary (I mean, any type of dictionary) on my hands, I usually close it only after a while! I like monolingual dictionaries the most, and printed versions more than online or CD-ROM ones.
    

By the way, LBT has a new layout now! I like this theme better than the previous one because everything looks neater, since the links and the like are only on one column instead of three. I also made a new header which fits the blog name and subject. I wanted one with a notebook, and I was undecided between this image and a spiral-bound notebook one (consecutive interpreter style).

You really learn something while translating!

I’m back! I know, I haven’t posted in here for almost 3 weeks, but I have been busy with my studies.

I graduated in Translation and Liaison Interpreting!

I wrote a translation thesis (from English into Italian) about interpreters working on television. I translated two texts and wrote a comment, in which I explained the translation methods and the strategy I used. There were also references to technical terms, words used in a particular sense, idiomatic expressions and the typology of the texts I translated (not in that order!). It took me about 6 months to finish my thesis (I also had to study for the last 3 exams), but I enjoyed this experience from the very first moment, because I considered it as an opportunity to learn something new, and to start putting what I have learnt in the last 3 years into practice. I felt like I was translating a book! It was a very enriching experience, because it wasn’t just another translation exercise this time, but an opportunity to “take a closer look” at how a translator actually works. In addition, even if it may sound banal, I learnt words, concepts, expressions and idioms I had never heard before (I actually am a fan of idiomatic expressions and proverbs in any language).

Some lessons I have learnt:

• learning how to proofread a translation well is very important. I think that proofreading is a task that should be done very thoroughly.
• sometimes you might think that a translation is never really finished, because you happen to think about ways in which you might improve it (for example, you realize that “y” sounds better than “x” in that context)  everytime you (proof)read it… but at a certain point you also have to realize you have come to a possible final version of the text.
• I discovered a domain I would like to specialize in.
• For technical terms, it is better to use parallel texts or online glossaries than to use a dictionary, because you might not find them there. Thank God for the Internet! It is a very precious resource for translators/interpreters.

By the way, even if I’ve been writing in English more, I’ll keep this site bilingual, but I won’t be adding an Italian translation to every single post I will write from now on.

Comunque. anche se ultimamente sto scrivendo di più in inglese, continuerò a usare due lingue in questo sito, ma d’ora in poi non aggiungerò la traduzione in italiano a ciascun post che scriverò.