“The Glamour of Grammar” by Roy Peter Clark

You know, I’m a translator, a Foreign Languages student and, on top of all, an English language lover. I’m interested in anything related to English language and culture, and I’d like to learn as much as possible about them. I’m constantly finding ways to keep me updated and to put what I’ve learned into practice. On a typical day, you can find me listening to songs in English, surfing websites in English, or even (over)using English words in conversations. I’ve liked the English language since I was a little girl: I spoke my very first English words when I was 4 (no, I wasn’t raised in a bilingual environment… my Dad taught me a few words and sentences he knew), even if I knew very little then. I started studying English when I started middle school, and haven’t stopped ever since.

Back to the book, I read about “The Glamour of Grammar” by Roy Peter Clark for the first time on Jenn’s blog, In My Bag, where she posted a very interesting review. She’s a freelance writer and blogger, and owns several blogs.

Here’s a description of the book:

Early in the history of English, the words “grammar” and “glamour” meant the same thing: the power to charm. Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools, aims to put the glamour back in grammar with this fun, engaging alternative to stuffy instructionals. In this practical guide, readers will learn everything from the different parts of speech to why effective writers prefer concrete nouns and active verbs. THE GLAMOUR OF GRAMMAR gives readers all the tools they need to”live inside the language”–to take advantage of grammar to perfect their use of English, to instill meaning, and to charm through their writing.

Some information about the author:

Roy Peter Clark is vice president and senior scholar at The Poynter Institute, one of the most prestigious schools for journalists in the world. He has taught writing at every level–to schoolchildren and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors–for more than thirty years, and has spoken about the writer’s craft on The Oprah Winfrey Show, NPR, and The Today Show; at conferences from Singapore to Brazil; and at news organizations from the New York Times to The Sowetan in South Africa. A writer who teaches and a teacher who writes, he has authored or edited fifteen books about writing and journalism, including his most recent, Writing Tools.

You can either get a copy of the book online, or take part in Jenn’s giveaway by following the guidelines on her blog.

SSLMIT Forlì – My experience and some notes (part I)

(originally posted in Italian on May 16, 2010 and translated into English on July 11)

As you might already know, after passing an entrance test, last year I started my MA in Specialised Translation at the Advanced School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators (here’s the website) of the University of Bologna (but the Faculty is actually in Forlì). I attended it for a semester, then I left it.

Here’s a “review” of the course, in which I list positive and negative facts and compare it with the undergraduate course in Translation and Liaison Interpreting (Language Mediation and Intercultural Communication) I attended at the University of Chieti-Pescara.

• Distance from home. It took me 5 hours to get to Forlì by car, so such a journey was very stressful for me every time. When I was an undergraduate student in Pescara, I could return home almost every weekend, while when I was in Forlì I came back home once a month.
• The places. Forlì is a small town, where there are few people around at 8 pm, shops close at 7 pm (some at 7:30) and few places for young people are available. Pescara is a small town on the sea that is more appealing to young people, in my opinion. It was almost always cold, humid and foggy in Forlì. If you’re in Pescara, you can go to the beach and even study there for the Summer exam session; while if you’re in Forlì and want to go to the seaside, the beach is at least 20-30 km away.
• The universities. The Advanced School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators costs around 3000 € per year (add rent and other expenses if you don’t come from Forlì), unless you get a bursary or meet some economic criteria (in this case, you pay less). In Pescara taxes are less expensive than Forlì, but you have to buy textbooks. Yes, textbooks. I noticed that in Forlì most study materials are available online on virtual classes (we use those in Pescara as well), but you have to buy fewer textbooks (maybe even because Specialised Translation is a more practical course). The Ruffilli Library is very rich in resources (foreign magazines and newspapers are also available). In the Faculty there’s a computer lab with printers (which can be used for free) and a terminology lab in which you can learn how to use CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) tools and other resources for translators. Unfortunately, there isn’t a canteen/cafeteria, and the cost of living is higher than in Pescara.
• The Forlì course. I highly recommend the Advanced School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators to aspiring translators, because its MA course in Specialised Translation is focused mostly on translation practice, tools and techniques. There are few theoretical exams. In case you decide to attend the School, get ready for stressing days with classes from 9 am to 7 pm (plus assignments for the following day) and to kiss most of your free time good-bye.

(to be continued…)

(clicca su “Continue reading” per la versione italiana)

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New Year’s Resolutions

OFFLINE:

• Go to a gym or exercise at least once a week
• Read more books
• Spend less time in front of my pc
• Watch more movies, especially in their original language
• Maybe do an internship (at a translation agency, hopefully)?

ONLINE:

• Spend less time on Facebook/games and more on my site
• Update my blog more often
• Translate some old posts when running out of ideas

What are your resolutions for 2010 (by the way, is it “two-thousand and ten” or “twenty-ten”?)?

It’s time I wrote a post in English!

Now that I have more free time, I’m finally back with a post in English! *hopes her English-speaking readers didn’t miss her*

I should update this site more often, because “Learning by Translating” is a site I created to share my experiences as a student translator (or Translation student, fate voi, like we say in Italian). Unfortunately, I’ve been very busy with my classes and couldn’t update more than I actually did. Classes till 7 p.m. almost every day + homework = very little time for other activities (besides writing, I’ve been neglecting another hobby of mine, scrapbooking).

As some of you may already know from reading my posts on Twitter, I switched to Mac. My MacBook Pro has  a 13 inch monitor, OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) installed, a 160 GB hard disk drive, 2 GB of RAM (which are enough for running OS X, but not for using XP as a virtual machine with Parallels. I created a partition for XP using Boot Camp, and if I boot XP at startup, it works perfectly). I needed to install XP on a partition because, as you might already know, Trados doesn’t work on OS X. I’m going to learn how to use it in the second semester, so I have to install it somewhere. I use Subtitle Workshop for subtitles (I’ve been subtitling short films in French class), and there isn’t a Mac version of the software. By the way, I’m happy with my new computer! It hardly crashes, and there’s no need to format your hard drive because of viruses. I’m getting used to the different keyboard shortcuts, and to the fact that there’s no “Del” button on Mac keyboards.  I didn’t need to insert a CD when I plugged my printer, OS X recognized and installed it by itself! I still have a lot to learn though. I’ve been told: “You’ll never get back to Windows after you get a Mac”. I hope so.

P.S.: You can even choose which language to use. For example, I’m using it in English. It was in Italian when I bought it, and it took me a while to realize that “Scrivania” is “Desktop” and “Archivio” is “File”. Why were they localized that way, when “File” and “Desktop” are commonly used in Italian? I don’t get it.

La traduzione alla Commissione Europea

Prima di tutto, ho cambiato layout al sito, sperando che questo sia un po’ più user-friendly dell’altro (sicuramente mi mancherà!). Il layout precedente aveva una pecca: mostrava solo l’ultimo post in home page. A parte quello, ogni volta che postavo dovevo per forza caricare un’immagine con il logo, altrimenti usciva quella predefinita del tema (che non c’entrava niente con Ilaria-Translations.com). Forse avrei dovuto ricaricare il tema/layout, ma non fa niente… questo che c’è adesso mi piace ugualmente (e c’è anche l’icona per Twitter, l’uccellino blu in alto a destra).

Ieri 13 novembre, alla Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori dell’Università di Bologna, c’è stata una giornata di studio, “La traduzione alla Commissione Europea e alla Corte di Giustizia”. Noi studenti della Laurea Magistrale in Traduzione Specializzata abbiamo incontrato due traduttori che lavorano (appunto) alla Commissione Europea: Paola Rizzotto e Italo Rubino. Non solo abbiamo avuto modo di sentirli parlare del loro lavoro durante questa giornata di studio, ma Paola Rizzotto ha anche preso parte ad alcune lezioni (per lo più del secondo anno).

La DGT (Direction Générale de la Traduction) è una sorta di Ministero della Traduzione. Qual è il suo scopo? Permettere ai cittadini dell’Unione di comunicare con le istituzioni senza che imparino un’altra lingua, ma anche fare in modo che le informazioni, le direttive e così via siano facilmente accessibili ai cittadini europei.

I traduttori della DGT lavorano, a seconda della loro lingua madre, a Bruxelles o a Lussemburgo (per esempio, per quanto riguarda l’italiano, ci sono due sezioni a Bruxelles e una a Lussemburgo; ma ci sono anche alcune sezioni che sono interamente a Bruxelles, come quelle delle lingue degli ultimi Paesi entrati nell’Unione). Il 74% lavora all’interno delle istituzioni, il 26% da freelance. Per svolgere il loro lavoro, i traduttori interni hanno diritto ad accedere a risorse interne per la documentazione e la formazione, come Quest Metasearch ed EURAMIS, che permettono di effettuare delle ricerche terminologiche su testi paralleli inserendo il settore d’appartenenza del termine, la lingua di partenza e quella d’arrivo. Il CAT Tool usato per le traduzioni è SDL TRADOS e, inoltre, delle macro per Word create appositamente per velocizzare il lavoro permettono di consultare testi paralleli, creare memorie di traduzione, allineare testi, ecc…

Passiamo alle lingue. In media, un traduttore della DGT lavora con 4 lingue, e il minimo richiesto è 2. Si traduce verso la propria lingua madre. Gran parte dei testi da tradurre è in inglese, quindi non lo si deve trascurare, ma conoscerlo bene, perché è indispensabile. La prima lingua di partenza deve essere inglese, francese o tedesco; la seconda deve essere tra le altre 22 lingue ufficiali dell’UE. Una lingua di uno dei nuovi Paesi dell’UE, poi, dà sempre una chance in più.

Quali sono le competenze che i traduttori devono avere (secondo me, possono valere anche se non si lavora per la DGT)?

• Competenza linguistica e tematica. La conoscenza delle lingue non basta, bisogna specializzarsi.
• Capacità di gestione.
• Competenze informatiche e redazionali.
• Adattabilità a condizioni di lavoro difficili. Ad esempio,  specialmente se ha molto lavoro da sbrigare, un traduttore deve dimenticare il classico orario di lavoro 9 to 5, ha sempre delle scadenze da rispettare e spesso è costretto a lavorare anche di sera.
• Anticipazione.
• Spirito imprenditoriale. Questo vale specialmente per i freelance, perché you are your own boss, sei tu il tuo capo. Devi gestire i rapporti con i clienti, vedere se riesci ad arrivare a fine mese, ecc…

Per quanto riguarda i tirocini, sono retribuiti (1003 € al mese), e la durata massima è di 5 mesi (non rinnovabili). Ci sono due sessioni (da marzo a luglio e da ottobre a febbraio) e, per fare domanda, occorre compilare un formulario online: per la prima sessione, da giugno a settembre dell’anno precedente; per la seconda, da dicembre a marzo dello stesso anno. Occorrono almeno una Laurea triennale,  due lingue di partenza (obbligatoriamente, una tra ENG-FRA-DEU) ed essere cittadini di uno Stato membro dell’UE.

Purtroppo non ho potuto seguire la seconda parte della giornata, sulla Corte di Giustizia.

Consigli ai laureandi

Avendo studiato Mediazione Linguistica all’Università, ho dovuto scrivere una tesi che trattasse di comunicazione interlinguistica e/o interculturale. Sin dal secondo anno di corso ho pensato a vari argomenti: traduzione assistita da computer (o Computer-Assisted Translation), il lavoro degli interpreti delle istituzioni europee, la preparazione degli interpreti a una conferenza. Arrivata alla sessione estiva del terzo anno, visto che gli argomenti che avevo pensato di trattare erano troppo vasti o generici e non me la sentivo di fare la classica tesi compilativa, ho optato per una tesi di traduzione.

Un consiglio che vorrei dare ai laureandi che magari non hanno idea dell’argomento su cui fare la tesi è questo: prendere spunto dagli argomenti trattati a lezione. Ce n’è stato uno che vi è particolarmente piaciuto? Ne volete approfondire uno e parlarne nella vostra tesi? Tenetelo in considerazione, però dovete rendervi anche conto che deve essere qualcosa che sia alla vostra portata. Ad esempio, non chiedete una tesi di traduzione di alcuni testi sulla fisica nucleare se non siete per niente portati per la fisica, o ad esempio una basata su un testo letterario, quando la vostra passione sono le materie scientifiche e i linguaggi specialistici. Puntate tutto su ciò che sapete fare meglio, tirate fuori il meglio di voi stessi, visto che la Laurea è uno dei momenti più importanti della vita studentesca e dovete dimostrare di aver padroneggiato ciò che avete imparato negli anni di corso. Ad esempio,  per la mia tesi ho tradotto due testi dall’inglese (lingua che padroneggio sicuramente meglio rispetto al francese, nel senso che per me inglese è una lingua “attiva”, mentre francese è solo “passiva”) sugli interpreti che lavorano in televisione (mi affascinava l’argomento; veramente prima avevo l’intenzione di diventare interprete, poi ho cambiato idea quando mi sono iscritta alla specialistica). Uno dei due testi l’ho studiato per un corso di Interpretazione Inglese al secondo anno, quindi ho chiesto alla docente di quel corso (che è stata la mia relatrice) se il libro da cui era tratto aveva dei testi simili. Ho verificato se in effetti era così, e da lì ho preso anche il secondo testo. Ah, se volete fare una tesi di traduzione, dovete trovare un testo/libro/ecc… che non sia stato ancora tradotto in italiano.

Ho cominciato a tradurre a luglio dello scorso anno. Sì, la discussione della tesi era ad aprile, ma avevo anche altri tre esami da sostenere, quindi ho sia studiato per gli esami che preparato la tesi (altrimenti, per sostenere l’esame di Laurea a luglio, avrei dovuto pagare le tasse di un intero anno accademico, cosa che volevo assolutamente evitare, dato che era fattibile che mi laureassi nella sessione straordinaria, ad aprile). Oltre alle traduzioni ho scritto un commento in cui c’era l’analisi traduttologica dei due testi. Ho spiegato perché ho usato certi procedimenti traduttivi, qual era la mia strategia traduttiva (procedimento traduttivo e strategia traduttiva sono due cose diverse), qual era la funzione dei testi, i termini tecnici, le espressioni idiomatiche, quali erano gli elementi e i concetti che ho trovato difficili da tradurre e come poi ho risolto il problema…

OK, passiamo ai testi che vi consiglio per affrontare una tesi di traduzione. Ho trovato ottimo il libro di Peter Newmark, “La traduzione:  problemi e metodi” (Garzanti, 1988) per quanto riguarda i procedimenti traduttivi e questioni tipografiche, ad esempio in che modo va usato il corsivo. Un’altra guida molto utile è “Terminologia della Traduzione” (Hoepli, 2002), che spiega i vari termini usati in traduttologia ed elenca le traduzioni in quattro lingue (inglese, francese, tedesco e spagnolo) dei singoli termini. Un “classico” sulle tesi di Laurea è “Come scrivere una tesi di Laurea” di Umberto Eco (Bompiani, 2001), ma bisogna tenere presente il fatto che ogni Facoltà ha degli standard redazionali per quanto riguarda le tesi di Laurea che possono variare.

Per ora è tutto. Per consigli, domande, ecc… sono a vostra disposizione!

Welcome Back, Student Translator Life!

(Warning: long post!)

Let’s go back to September 14. I went to Forlì, 300 miles away from the town where I live, to sit an entrance exam for a Laurea Magistrale course (Master’s Degree equivalent) in Specialised Translation (ITA: Traduzione specializzata). It took me five hours and a half to get there, and it was also raining that day! I visited the city centre, and went shopping (I bought a shirt I wore during the exam). On the following day I sat the entrance exam (it lasted four hours, starting at about 9:45 a.m.) . It was divided into two parts (that lasted two hours each): in the first one you had to translate two texts into Italian, and in the second one you had to translate two texts into the languages you study. In my case, I had to translate from English and French into Italian and viceversa.

On September 29, the results came out, and I got in! What I felt afterwards is something that is difficult to describe. I was very happy, and tears of joy soon covered my face. In four words, a dream come true. I had wanted to study at the Advanced School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators for the last two years, since I was an undergraduate student. As some people already know, I wanted to become an interpreter, but I eventually chose to become a translator because I don’t think that I have the personality of an interpreter, and I also like translating written texts. Interpreters should translate quickly, and I am too much of a perfectionist when it comes to translating most of the times. I have to be sure that the words I’m using are the right ones for conveying the meaning of the source text I’m working on. I also think that learning words on lists in a decontextualised way is not for me (even if you can put examples on a glossary)… I prefer having dictionaries and other resources always at hand. I prefer working on something I can always proofread at a later time (unlike oral translations). I celebrated with a few friends of mine by inviting them at home, and we had piadinas for dinner.

On October 2, I started looking for a place to stay in Forlì. I found it on the 4th, and I moved there on the same day. Classes started on Monday (the first one I went to was an English Language and Linguistics one), which was my birthday. I celebrated by eating a crescione and a slice of Sachertorte for dinner. I started doing my first translations for the course (I’m studying literary, multimedia and technical translation), I met new people and got to know the School (SSLMIT from now on) and the city better.

On October 9, I went to my first translation-related conference (organized by the SSLMIT): “Technologies for Translation”. It was very interesting because I had the opportunity to discover CAT tools (especially TRADOS, since I’m going to learn how to use it during my M.A. course) and their latest versions, but also the latest developments in localization, machine translation and translation memory research. It was an international conference, so there were also presentations that were held in English. Simultaneous interpretation into Italian was available, and I alternated between the original speakers and the interpreters’ translation (by the way, they did a very good job!), otherwise I would have been mentally exhausted at the end of the conference, since I’m not used to listening to  another language for a very long time when someone talks using technical terms (and last, but not least, QUICKLY!!).

Okay, I think that’s all for now. As I’m going to be busy with my studies once again, I might update this site less often than usual, but I have to say: welcome back, student translator life!

The Beginner’s Guide to Interpreting [FSTI #002]

You read right, another post about interpreting.

Last night I dreamt that I was shadowing a simultaneous interpretation from English into Italian! I was doing an actual reformulation, not a mere repetition of words! No, I wasn’t interpreting, just rephrasing what was being said in Italian. Maybe that dream is a reminder: practice.interpreting. I haven’t done interpreting practice in a while, I should catch up with it.

When I practice interpreting, I do it just for fun. I download podcasts and play them using VLC media player (if they’re too fast for my level, this software allows me to “slow them down”… it’s rare to find audio files that are slow enough for beginners like me). I record myself using either Audacity (you can also play the audio file you’re interpreting with it, and listen to the original and the interpreted versions after you’ve finished) or a digital audio recorder (before buying one, I used my cell phone’s audio recorder that allowed me to record up to 5 minutes at a time).

Ways in which I practice interpreting:

• Simultaneous interpreting (I think this is self explanatory enough)
• Consecutive interpreting (you take notes using a spiral-bound notepad and a pen/pencil while the speaker is speaking, then you translate after he/she finished his/her speech. You can’t note every single thing, because you don’t have the time to, and you have to pay a lot of attention to the speech. I noticed that the more I pay attention to taking notes, the more I get distracted. Interpreters must learn to split attention between two activities, and I think this doesn’t apply only to simultaneous interpreting, in which you listen and speak at the same time, but also to consecutive interpreting. Most interpreters use abbreviations or symbols while taking notes)
• Sentence-by-sentence interpreting (a kind of interpreting that is usually done in a liaison interpreting context. First there is the sentence in language A, then you interpret it into language B, then the language B speaker replies to the language A speaker, and you interpret what he said into language A, etc. It is not done simultaneously, but it is rather a form of consecutive interpreting without notes)
• Shadowing (like I wrote at the beginning of the post, it is an exercise in which you reformulate, or repeat, what a speaker says in the same language. You can also do it after a few seconds from the original utterance, trying to lag behind the original speaker as if you’re doing simultaneous interpreting)

(I know, I wrote that I’m more of a written translation person, but I’ve got bitten by the interpreting bug from the very first moment)

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.

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…)