Un post in italiano, stavolta

[...] Auslander a trentaquattro anni non aveva seri rimpianti riguardo alla sua vita. Malgrado tutti i suoi piccoli errori di calcolo, tutti i momentanei errori di giudizio che erano valsi unicamente a dimostrarle che le conveniva seguire i propri istinti, non c’era nulla che avesse infine realmente sconvolto il saldo equilibrio che aveva raggiunto. Abitava lo stesso appartamento nel Greenwich Village da una dozzina d’anni; aveva alcuni amici di cui si fidava e che non esigevano troppo da lei, né come tempo né dal punto di vista emotivo; il suo lavoro era un lavoro che le piaceva e nel quale eccelleva. Il lavoro in particolar modo era una vera fonte di piacere per lei; eppure non era il lavoro che si era prefissa di fare. Aveva cominciato come poeta, e non pensava di essere stata un cattivo poeta. Già allora riusciva a distinguere tra i veri poeti e quelli che giocavano a fare il poeta per il loro proprio divertimento. La poesia come autoanalisi o come catarsi non faceva per lei – non le bastava – e sapendo che non sarebbe mai stata uno dei pochi veri poeti, aveva rinunciato senza troppo dolore.
La decisione di affermarsi come traduttrice delle opere di altri e più bravi poeti era stata presa quasi a sua insaputa: aveva scoperto che stava andando in quella direzione da anni, quasi intenzionalmente. Fin dalla quinta elementare aveva scoperto di avere molta facilità con le lingue: le lezioni di ebraico che suo padre aveva insistito che lei prendesse erano uno scherzo, un piacere; aveva imparato da sé a leggere e scrivere in yiddish, che era la lingua che parlavano in casa sua. Alle medie aveva imparato il francese, ingoiando lunghe liste di vocaboli come se non avesse bramato altro durante la sua breve vita. A quell’età tutto questo le era sembrato normale; soltanto in seguito si era resa conto che la facilità per le lingue era considerata un talento, un dono speciale. A sedici anni, parlava correntemente il francese, l’ebraico, lo yiddish e lo spagnolo. A diciotto, vi aveva aggiunto il tedesco e l’italiano, e terminata l’università conosceva a fondo anche il portoghese, il romeno e il russo. La decisione di diventare traduttrice, se ne rendeva conto, era una sorta di compromesso tra le sue aspirazioni e le sue capacità, ma era un compromesso che la soddisfaceva.
Conosceva i suoi limiti. Questa, secondo Auslander, era la sua migliore qualità. Poiché non si faceva illusioni, non poteva soffrire di delusioni. Sapeva sempre quello che poteva aspettarsi da se stessa. [...]

Citazione tratta da M. Hermann, Auslander, trad. di Paola Forti. L’ho trovata qui.

Ho messo in grassetto le parti in cui mi rispecchio.

Per chi non lo sapesse, in passato scrivevo poesie per hobby (qualche giorno ne posterò qualcuna qui sul blog), sia in italiano che in inglese. Non ho mai preso in considerazione l’idea di fare la poetessa professionista, però. Sognavo di diventare insegnante di inglese, ma anche web designer. Ora sono decisamente per la traduttrice.

A Student's Life, Resources

May 25, 2009

Ilaria

1 Comment

Tools of the “Trade” (Translation Student Edition) – part II

3. RSS Feed Reader

I read several blogs (about translation, languages and graphics design) and have a Google Reader account. Google Reader (it is not the only RSS feed reader though) helps me keep track of all the blogs I read. Every day there is always something new to read.

Until last year, I used to have a list of my favourite blogs on Firefox, then I discovered Google Reader. Now I can imagine how time consuming it was when I didn’t have an account there. I used to click on every single blog I had bookmarked to check if there were new posts on them. Having a feed reader saves time because, thanks to it, you can know when there is a new post on a blog. There is no need to visit the site (you can add any site with an RSS feed to your reader, not only blogs) most of the times: you can read the whole post on your feed reader. There are also other times (I think that depends on the blogging platform used) when the feed reader only shows part of the post, and a link you can click on if you’d like to read the whole post.

The video below is a simple tutorial on how to use Google Reader (very simple to use, in my opinion), but there are also links to other RSS feed readers you can use.

Even “Learning by Translating” can be read using a feed reader.

I found the video here. I tried to put it on my blog, but for some reason the code didn’t work.

A Student's Life, Resources

May 20, 2009

Ilaria

No Comments

Tools of the “Trade” (Translation Student Edition) – part I

Here’s my list of software, websites and tools I find useful while translating, making glossaries, doing my homework, etc. For this post, I got inspired by one posted on Translation Musings some time ago.

1. Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer. Let’s start with a basic “tool”! I use both Word and Writer. In case you’re wondering why, it is because I have Windows Vista on my laptop, and older versions of Microsoft Word (I have Word 2002) or Microsoft Office in general don’t run on Vista. I also heard that in Word 2007 everything is arranged in a different way, and this discouraged me from buying it. “Why pay when I can have something similar for free?”, I thought when I heard of OpenOffice.org. I like Writer because it has a very interesting feature: you can save your file as a PDF, which is always useful when you would like to send a file written with a word processing software to someone else or to view it using a different computer… everything stays the same (there would be no problems in case you decide to use a font which is not a standard one like Times New Roman, for example), and this might not happen if you save the file as a .doc one. I wrote my degree thesis using Word because when I went to a photocopy and typing agency to ask some questions about the format of the thesis, they gave a me a leaflet with instructions to follow when writing it with Word (e.g. how wide the margins should be, acceptable font sizes, and so on).

2. Mozilla Firefox. I started using it three years ago out of curiosity, but I realized that it is the best browser I’ve ever had! Unlike Internet Explorer (IE from now on), it doesn’t crash often (it is very stable). When I first tried it I found it innovative because it is very customizable (lots of add-ons, like themes and search tools are available here). Some add-ons I have installed include Wired-Marker (a tool for highlighting text on web pages, very useful!), abcTajpu (to insert non-ASCII letters when writing something) and the Delicious Bookmarks Add-On. You can add many search engines to Firefox (some of them are useful for students/translators: Wikipedia, Wordreference, Oxford Paravia ENG-ITA dictionary, De Mauro Paravia ITA synonyms and antonyms, Merriam-Webster, etc.). I use both the “standard” version of Firefox and a portable one (you can download it here), since I use three computers and so I have all my bookmarks saved in the portable version.

(to be continued…)

A Student's Life, Translation & Interpreting

May 14, 2009

Ilaria

7 Comments

To become or not to become an interpreter?

I want to study and get my MA in Translation.
You read right.
Not Interpreting, t r a n s l a t i o n .
The interpreter’s job still fascinates me, though. Whenever I see photos of interpreters behind the booth’s glass I think “Wow!” and start daydreaming… but I realized that I feel more confident when it comes to translating written texts.
I just wanted to write this, I don’t have much inspiration to write a detailed post today.

EDITED on 05/18/2009

I still want to become an interpreter.
I eventually decided to try both the entrance tests: the one for the Translation MA course and the one for the Interpreting MA course, just to have two possibilities.
At least I will have said I gave the Interpreting one a try.
Sometimes I get discouraged because I’m afraid of not being able to deal with a fast speaker while doing simultaneous interpreting, but I realized that there are techniques that are taught during the Interpreting MA course. I never really did simultaneous interpreting, I actually gave it a try on my own, but I’ve just started. I have a degree in Translation and Interpreting, but liaison interpreting (which I studied) and conference interpreting are different. I still have a lot to learn and, for the moment, I do simultaneous interpreting practice with speeches which aren’t fast.
Maybe Interpreting is the course for me… or maybe it is Translation… but only the future will decide which one is better for me.
I won’t change my mind anymore.

A Student's Life, Resources, Translation & Interpreting

May 4, 2009

Ilaria

2 Comments

Let’s get it started! (FSTI #001)

(no, I’m not going to write a blog post about the Black Eyed Peas song with the same title!)

FSTI stands for “From Student To Interpreter”, a new blog category I’ve just created!

My preparation for the entrance exam has officially begun!

I only hope that four months are enough (the exam is going to be in September).

I downloaded past exam audio files to do some practice. The exam consists of two cloze tests per language and one reformulation exercise for each language. The cloze tests are different from the ones I am used to, because in the former the text is purely oral (I suppose), and in the latter it is written. At the entrance exam you have to fill in a grid with the missing words (you have to insert a word for each beep you hear in the audio file). The “Video Vocab” videos on Business English Pod have a similar exercise, in which there is a part in which words related to a certain topic, their definitions and examples containing them are shown, and then an exercise in which you have to insert the missing word, that is structured almost in the same way as the entrance exam one (I wrote “almost” because you can read the sentence, instead of just hearing it).

Does anyone know any websites where I can find similar exercises? I would like to do practice on as many subjects as possible, since you can’t know on which subjects you must get ready for the exam. Thanks in advance!

Yesterday I came across an interesting acronym that can be referred, in my opinion, to both studying and interpreting: Preparation Prevents Poor Performances.