Interesting article on interpreting in crisis situations, from the Economist

The Economist has published an interesting article on the challenges interpreters face when working in crisis situations:

How language problems bedevil the response to crises

CATs and dogs: funny blog spam

I normally just delete blog spam, but sometimes you kind of see why the spammed  a particular post...

XXX has left a new comment on your post "A step back to the past: translating without a CAT...":

Incredible, you are good to go for the dog preparing school you had always wanted. Presently, we are acquainting you with the 10 concealed diamond schools with 5-star Yelp evaluations that represent considerable authority in the kind of dog preparing you are searching for. Simply ahead and locate the one for you!

SDL Trados Studio Manual 2019 - Just Published

Mats Linder has been publishing (and regularly updating) his "SDL Trados Studio Manual" for many years now, thus providing an indispensable service to all users of SDL Trados Studio, who otherwise would be left at the mercy of SDL's own obscure documentation.

He has just released the newest version of the manual SDL Trados Studio Manual 2019, updated to cover the most recent version of the program from SDL.

SDL Trados Studio 2019 Manual cover

The new version of the manual describes what's new in Studio 2019, as well as the features offered by new plugins released in SDL's app store since the previous version of the manual. 573 pages.

"Unique opportunity"

I got this in the mail:

Offer from XxxxXxxxx  

Xxxx from XxxxXxxxx says Hi!  

Dear Sir/Madam, 

I am a project manager at XxxxXxxxx, and I am very pleased to send you this email, offering you a unique opportunity. Let me tell you about my company's point of view in some detail. Due to the crazy, competitive market we face, our company has established its method, which is based on filling the gap between translators and the translation projects that are most appropriate for them. To do that, we make some tiny changes to the translators' CVs before sending them to our clients. These changes might include removing their contact details and replacing it with ours. This is done so that they don't need to bother themselves with loads of emails. We are going to be the one to contact the client, discuss the project, and then send it to our translator who will definitely be able to make much more money through this saved time. To accept the offer, have a look at our authorization template (attached), have it signed, and then send it back to me along with your resume and cover letter.Finally, I would like you to know that we at XxxxXxxxx have got a highly qualified team of project managers, all of whom work in harmony with a great number of competent translators. And we would be thrilled to welcome you to our team, and to help you reach your full potential through this job!If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this email. 

Thanks for your time and consideration.  

Sincerely yours, 

Xxxx Xxxxxxx 

Project Manager /XxxxXxxxx  team

(I redacted the name of the sender and his company, since I'm not interested in offering them free advertising.)

There is no need to say that accepting their "unique opportunity" would be foolish in the extreme: you would in effect authorize them to use your résumé for their own purposes, and nothing would then prevent them from sending any translation job received thank to your résumé to some cheaper translator or even to a free machine translation engine.

Stay away from this: they are not offering a service: it cannot be anything other than a new scam.

The Punctuation Guide

The Punctuation Guide is a useful online resource that shows the current style of American punctuation. According to the author,

In creating this guide, I have consulted dozens of authorities, both online and in print. Where the authorities disagree, I either have explained the various positions or have presented the style I believe to be most useful. 

The Punctuation Guide was created by Jordan Penn, a longtime enthusiast of American language, usage, and style.

An interesting article on "Google Translate" and its legal implications

The Volokh Conspiracy, a law blog, recently published an interesting article on some legal implications of the use of Google Translate: "Google Translate" and the Law of Consent Searches.

How to preview a Bitly address without clicking on it

Sometimes we receive Bitly shortened addresses in e-mails, or sometimes we see them in tweets or blog posts.

The problem is, how to be sure that clicking on them won't redirect us to a malicious address?

A solution, of course, is to just never click on such shortened addresses... but that might mean missing on some interesting sites or links. fortunately, for Bitly there is a way of checking to see what the real address behind the shortened one is, and also what reputation that address has:

Just copy the Bitly address to your browser's address bar, add a "+" sign to it, and hit Enter--you'll be sent to a preview page for the link, where you'll be able to see the real address, and any warning about the reputation of the address, like the following:

SDL invents new language

Not content with providing some of the best-known software tools for translators, SDL, a language technology company, is apparently hard at work inventing previously unknown languages.

The proof: recently translators have been receiving messages to offer them free training. and apparently that training is available in multiple languages.

One of them is "Mexican":

Mexican, a brand new language brought to you by SDL

When asked about the new language, SDL representatives said they could not answer right now about Mexican, as they were busy at work developing other new languages, including Swiss and Belgian.

They confirmed, however, that work on the Yugoslavian language had been definitely put on hold, as news that the country of Yugoslavia no longer existed had finally reached SDL's headquarters.

Re-Posting from the Xbench Forum

I'm re-posting this directly as it appeared on the Xbench forum, as it may be of interest for all those who use Studio and the Xbench Studio plug-in:

With SDL Trados Studio 2017 Cumulative Update 9 (CU9) the Xbench Edit Segment (Ctrl+E) feature may stop working (it does not open the Studio document).
To be able to use the Edit Segment functionality after you updated your Trados Studio 2017 to CU9, just download and install the latest Xbench plugin for Studio (build 13)

What tools do technical writers use and prefer?

As translators we have to deal with the work of technical writers, but apart from some obvious programs (like MS Word), we often don'know the tools that technical writers use in their work. For a look at what tools technical writers prefer, see Technical Writing Tools: The Ultimate Choice of 83 Experts.

Infographic: Software Tools for Translation

I'm currently developing a course on CAT tools for the University College of Denver University.
I find mind mapping useful to generate and organize my ideas, so I created a mind map of the kind of software tools used by translators - CAT tools, of course, but also other types of tools, from those that help us manage our projects, to those we use for more specific tasks.

I asked Jost Zetzsche to take a look at my mind map, to see if he had any suggestions about types of programs I might have forgotten or things that should be changed.


Jost gave me some suggestions, and asked for a copy of the infographic for his Tool Box Journal.

Here is a copy of the infographic:

Software Tools for Translation

You can click here for a larger copy of the file, and here for a downloadable pdf.

I'd appreciate any suggestion or idea for future improvements.