Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Do you like going to conferences?

I do. In fact, I enjoy grasping new information, networking and, whenever possible, giving of myself in the form of a presentation. Right now I am working on one speaking engagement-cum-workshop for translation students in the summer resort of Mar del Plata, Argentina, for October 20-21, 2006.

I got great news regarding my thesis proposal yesterday: it got approved! Obtaining approval for my thesis idea was the easy part. Now it's time to calendar it and work hard at it.

I recently finished reading an excellent book, El lenguaje de las ciencias, by Bertha Gutiérrez Rodilla (Editorial Gredos, 2005). A must-read title for translators interested in terminology issues.

Back to translator education and books: last week I received in the mail Don Kiraly's A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education and Dorothy Kelly's A Handbook for Translator Trainers. Although I haven't had a moment to review them, I hope to do it soon as I begin working on my master's thesis.

There seems to be a market for translator trainers outside of the university realm. As many universities in Argentina --to name one country in my experience-- hold on to a rigidly academia-centered translator training model, mostly objectivistic in its pedagogy, most of the 400+ translators graduating across the country have little or no knowledge about areas that are critical to their professional wellbeing: translation project management and translation environment tools.

Well-known translation tool crusader and writer Jost Zetzsche has said to translators that they should first look at their workflow to determine if a translation environment tool (otherwise known as a CAT tool) is needed or ideal before going to purchase it. Teddy Bengtsson, in an article published in the December 2005 issue of Localisation Focus, said this in regards to translation tools in Argentina:

I hope we will see a move towards availability of freely available satellite versions of TM software, as well as smart and affordable solutions for small- to medium-sized vendors, as this would help to progress and develop the local market.
More to come.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Of Translation and Writing

I am hard at work preparing a workshop on translation for a private Institute in Resistencia, El Chaco (Argentina). Instituto Genea has recently won Ministry of Education approval for its 3-year Translation syllabus. It's a college degree to train future technical/literary translators.

It is a pilot program that uses the 2-year syllabus for the "Traductorado Literario y de Especialidad" (Literary and Specialty Translation Studies) from Universidad del Museo Social Argentino (http://www.umsa.edu.ar/carreras/05.01.00_01.php). I agree that this UMSA syllabus is arguably ineffective or insufficient to educate and train functional translators. The translation syllabus offered by the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba's Facultad de Lenguas spans 5 years and still graduates translators who are ill prepared for the realities of the translation market.

However, I see Instituto Genea's pilot syllabus as a half-full-glass opportunity. I've been invited to teach a workshop on translation. To beef up my offering, I asked Prof. María Inés Arrizabalaga's help and she happily obliged with a plan to serve up notions on literary translation and related topics. I am still working on my own list of topics; since this is a workshop, however, I plan on making attendees work real hard. That's where today's reflections come handy: the art of writing.

In short, if you can't write properly, you have no business doing translations at all. At best, you'll become a mediocre translator. So, part of my workshop will be devoted to writing exercises. For example, I could use my own cellphone as inspiration:

- Class, see this cellphone? Are you familiar with it? It's a popular Nokia model, versatile and cheap. Let's split the class in three groups: group A will write a blurb about the technical advantages of this cellphone; group B will write a short ad about the cellphone and group C will pen an instructional on the cellphone's main features. All papers must be written in Spanish (the students' mother tongue, of course).

What is the point of this exercise? I sense that most translation training programs center too much on language training and not translation skills training. I don't care if someone is fluent in two or more foreign languages, if he/she does not know how to write different types of text in his/her own language, stylistically and terminologically well, he/she can't translate.

More to come!

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Chocolate lounges and split sentences

One thing I miss is the ubiquitous Starbucks. In Lakeland, FL, where I last resided in 2005, Florida Avenue has one, not far from the small downtown. It's crowded, though, and not apt for quiet readings in cloudy afternoons.

The May 8, 2006 issue of BusinessWeek came with a juicy article on chocolate lounges. Penned by Adrienne Carter, the article notes that it's the latest fad in American big cities, from Portland, OR to Chicago, IL to the East Village in Manhattan.

I love reading newspaper and mag clippings on language as part of my continuing education in translation. I deplore, however, the trendy yet horrendous practice of splitting an innocuously long sentence at the 'but.' You may call that nipping it in the but.

Example: Speaking of the delicious chocolaty concoctions served at these lounges, Adrienne closes her article thus:

They may not have the same jolt as a Starbucks drink. But as far as the
experience, a choco lounge is a tasty alternative.

For shame, Adrienne!

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Different locales, different teaching aims

Back in 1998, my friend and mentor Leticia Molinero shared with me her concern that U.S.-based Spanish translators were losing projects due to outsourcing to translators residing in Third-World countries. She invited me to sign in a petition of sorts at the time. I can't say I signed or declined. I can have such bad memory for grassroots movements.

Fast forward to 2006. Yes, translation projects continue to be outsourced to third-world translators. I remember writing an article in 2005 for Apuntes magazine titled "Why you should prefer a U.S.-based Spanish translator." In this feature, I attempted to educate potential clients and Spanish translators about the pros and cons of outsourcing work. I suppose the best I could hope for was to help my fellow translators understand that market forces cannot be fought back with complaints and whining.

In January 2005, I wrote to Dr. Sue Ellen Wright, Kent State University (Ohio) and asked her, "What can be done to promote syllabus changes to bring it more in line with real-life realities for translators?" She replied:

One of the facets that I have encountered is that although there are certain universities in Spain that do a very good job, in particular, Grenada and a consortium of unis in Barcelona (Pompeu Fabre/Autónoma), as well as some institutions in the Luciphone [sic] area, there are nonetheless other unis [universities] in the Mediterranean area that are really, really averse to pragmatic approaches--Italy and Greece being cases in point, although Trieste in Italy is an exception. I know that many Italian and Greek academics feel that "this sort of thing" belongs in trade schools and not at the university level. I wonder if any of this rubs off on unis in Argentina; it wouldn't surprise me.

Yes, I could verify that the way things are done at Facultad de Lenguas (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba) is full of this aversion towards pragmatic approaches, deeming them more fit for professional (v.g., vocational) studies than the academics-oriented programs they promote.

I have recently been pondering about translator education after fielding some enquiries from a private college in El Chaco (Argentina). I drafted some ideas on how to teach translation skills in an interactive way to people who, despite their language skills, may be have to be deprogrammed --or disabused of their erroneous ideas about the translation process.

I believe we have to tailor translation education to the locale where translators live and plan to work. We cannot train translators residing in Europe or United States the same way we train translators living in South America; nor we can train translators who live in one country half of the year and in another the other half the same way we train translators who never left their motherland. For example, translators living in the United States who migrated to that country in childhood have a different linguistic competence than those who arrived in the U.S. in their 30s. So, in my mind, translator education and training has to be adapted to the desired linguistic and cultural competence in the translator, which is dictated by market forces.

Didactics of translation should occupy itself more on doing research on this proposed selective translator training. For example, a Chile-based translator might not need to be deeply versed in American culture if he/she translates mostly for his/her countrymen; for example, an American insurance company may not have to sell some of its products and services in Chile because of regulatory or market restrictions, so there is no need for the in-country translator to become familiar with such unapplicable products and services. I recognize that this point is arguable because, yes, we don't have the empirical research to discuss it in depth. However, I believe that didactics of translation and marketing have a lot to share, so that we can educate translators that can hit the ground running wherever they live. Ideally, every self-respected translator will live in the source language country for a few years to learn the culture represented by the language, but most third-world translators can't afford to do that.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Distance education for us translators

Over the years, I have attended several ATA conferences as well as seminars sponsored by InTraDes (the ATA special-interests group for Spanish translators). Sure, I punctually attended and was awarded a nice certificate. You can collect them in the course of many years and still you will feel you haven't achieved much. That's a passive activity for continuing education.

Regardless of how much I wanted to achieve my higher education goals as a translator, I approached my pre-enrollment in the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC) last year with much trepidation. I hadn't been in a classroom in more than a decade! My future college mates would surely have a huge advantage over me in terms of knowledge and understanding. Well, one has to start someplace.

The Facultad de Lenguas (originally founded to train language teachers, not translators, mind you) at the UNC requires 80% attendance at its graduate programs (master's and doctorate). These are brand new (read unproven) programs that have yet to yield master's and PhD holders. While I am still completing my master's, I thought it a good idea to pre-enroll in the doctorate program offered by Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain. The nice thing about this doctorate program is that it is 80% online! Except for attending core courses in Spain during a 6-week period and the thesis defense date, you can enroll in this program from wherever you are in the world. Anthony Pym is its director, by the way.

Since my pre-enrollment didn't go as I'd anticipated, I started looking for another distance program while I'm waiting to finish this UNC's master's degree and thus qualify for the URV doctorate program. I found an interesting program, a master's in audiovisual translation at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. The program, headed by Ms. Pilar Orero, consists of virtual courses and it's inexpensive (about 3,500 euro).

If you know of other distance graduate programs you could recommend, please share it.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Teaching informs research, which in turn informs practice

In a recent article written by Edwin Gentzler for the first ATISA Journal for Translation and Interpreting Studies, I was caught by the simple phrase up in today's title:

Teaching informs research, which in turn informs practice.

We career translators, regardless of our area of expertise, naturally distrust translation theorists because, well, we don't feel the benefits of TT in our daily working lives. To translation theorists throughout the world, I'd like to join in with Janet Jackson: What have you done for me lately?

As we hone our skillset, perfect our methods, increase our vocabulary and apply translation techniques, we take from translation theory what we need. Boy, and what a squeezing-blood-from-a-turnip enterprise this has been!

Yet there's hope. In "Can Theory Help Translators?" (by Andrew Chesterman and Emma Wagner), Chesterman describes what's been going on. He says that the prescripitive trend in theory has been turning descriptive in the last few decades. He adds that most of the translation theory that has been done involved literary translation because of the abundance of material for research (several classics have multiple translations in the same language). Then Wagner pointedly indicates: "Most translators, on the other hand, would be happy to have some concrete advice and guidelines, even doctrines, as long as they are practical and realistic. It is regrettable that 'prescription' has been out of fashion in linguistics for the past few decades --the same decades that have seen the emergence of the would-be professional translator." Regrettable indeed, Ms. Wagner.

At the school of languages where I am completing my master's, they still teach translation with an obsolete model. Yes, lots of linguistics, contrastive grammar and phonetics/phonology, plus courses on culture and literary texts, and a predictable variety of texts (journalistic, technical-scientific, medical, etc.) for the future translator to practice on. Nothing on translation tools, assisted translation, project management, professional services marketing. Nothing on pricing, searching and retaining clients or doing research. Of course, I am floating the question: should a translation program at a college level include the latter?

The first problem I see with this picture is the name of the school: a school of languages. The skillset a student needs to become a language teacher is different from the one for a translator. That may sound obvious to you and me, seasoned translators, but not to a 18-year-old girl who wants to be a translator on the outside but a language teacher on the inside. Or worse. Late last year, I was introduced to a senior from the translation program who wanted to be...a language interpreter for tourists! Why on earth did she spend 4 years of college education to do just that when a 2-year course on language and the tourism industry would have done it for her? Baffling, bizzare...and a bit dumb.

Next time, I hope to comment on the latest article written by Dan Kiraly for the ATISA Journal of TIS. Until then, bye.

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Welcome!

Last year I decided to do more than just living my days out in translation. Well, translators and bilinguals alike already live in translation (Niranjana, are you reading this?). However, I wanted to do more, to add pizzazz to my otherwise dulled intellectual pursuit to improve on what other translators have done. So I chose to leave central Florida for a while and enroll in a master's program in Translation Studies.

I had no idea what I had done.

Facultad de Lenguas at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC), my alma mater, let me enroll late in the year (2005) and so I started attending their seminars and workshops. The first one, aptly titled Linguistic & Cultural Competence and Translation, was taught by Lisa Bradford, PhD, from Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. She had us read dozens of pages at a furious clip and furiously I did read! I learned (or relearned?) that translation is a genre and not a mechanical exchange of meanings, that pseudotranslations are alright as marketing ploys, that translators can be very invisible in today's global economy (thanks, Lawrence Venuti!) and that translation, among other things, helped bring about the colonization of so-called inferior civilizations (once again, thanks, Ms. Niranjana!)

My mind geared up to wider and deeper goals, I felt I had struck a goldmine of purpose. And I wanted to share it with other translators. Among my new objectives, as I was learning more and more about translation studies, I came to realize I wanted to teach them at a more practical level. I realized that UNC's master's program, while all-encompassing, is being taught mostly by professors and PhDs who are not translators themselves. That's grating and unfair to us students of translation studies. I want to help change that.

So I welcome your thoughts, experiences, case studies, hopes, critiques and ideas. Fabricando fit faber.


Mario Chávez