International Translation Day #theLanguageSandwich with Suzan Brown and Guests
brilliant here we go so I'm recording this for the language sandwich for international translation day which is the 30th of September and I had the idea just to get a few translators together because you're always in the shadows you guys you know people don't realise I think this magically they get all the translated text back to people think I'm a translator because I speak another language but I am so far from a translator. I don't I have not done the studies, I don't have the qualifications, I don't have the specialism. Yes, I understand the language and people get confused you know between people that are bilingual and professional translators and the journey that they have to go on to get to where they are as a qualified translator. So if I go around my screen I would it's a really sort of a quick one to ask you guys just to tell us where you are what languages you specialize in and, well, let's say when you're qualified, how long you've been doing it whereabouts you are, and what are your languages. How does that sound? Great yeah lovely brilliant. So i'm going to start with Layla who is still frozen but we can still see she's really it's really a look for me to be frozen but you can still hear me. Yes absolutely that's fine and I just look confused in the photo so I've been translating for 16 years now that's when I qualified um I did French, German and Spanish at um college and I took them on to university and then i did my MA there as well in translation um and i'm based in the UK you're basically okay brilliant um and what about you uh i'm a translator as well french Arabic it's my tongue mother and french french english I'm working in a martial national in insurance and as frank the freelancer as well so you do you do the both and you're you're joining us from Tunisia so we've got a really international language sandwich today sorry we've got real international some group between us today I obtained the translation diploma 20 years ago maybe I stopped to count years okay um that's it no that's cool that's brilliant for now it's just a really tiny intro and i don't want to put anybody under under pressure either you know um Kiara how about you? Well i'm based in Italy at the moment and I started translating in 2014 and my native language is Italian so i translate from French, German, Danish and English into Italian You're quite active on linkedin as well i think yeah well it depends not on reactive there are members who are more active than than me but i like to keep updated i like to to know what's happening in the sector so yeah and we all we all have our style don't we i'll go i'll come to kelsey now because you are definitely active on linkedin i've seen some really cool videos from you good good girls so tell us a little bit about just about your languages and where you are Yeah so um i am a Yank based in London. I have been in the industry only for about five and
a half years now um and my main language pairs are French to English but the bulk of the work that I do is actually freelance account management and project management um either for direct clients who need their documents translated or for um agencies who kind of need an extra pair of hands and i kind of go in and white label my services that way so um so yeah that that's the main thing that i do but very active on LinkedIn um i went freelance uh about five months ago and decided that I needed to really hit the ground running with LinkedIn and started posting silly tick-tock videos. It's kind of changed has the platform and at the end of the day we do what's best for our personal brand i mean some people it's not you know it's nice not really my cup of tea every day but that that that's that's my me trying to build my brand and you're the same so we do what we can do away and i know i finally got the time right for you so anna what a little bit about yourself. Yeah hi hi everybody so i'm based in Madrid Spain i'm a translator uh content creator and copywriter working with well Spanish is my mother tongue i translate from german and english into Spanish and i normally translate technical and technology applications websites and things like that yeah um about copywriting and content creator is more general because i have i haven't decided uh um like a sector uh right now so i'm just doing a little bit of everything that's good because you're getting experience in different areas that way and antoinette obviously me and ness are known to each other we did work in the same office for a while so how are you and us tell us a little bit fine i'm fine so i'm i'm Brazilian so my language is Portuguese are translating into English from English sorry into Brazilian Portuguese quite often i have to explain that i am not qualified to translate into European Portuguese because there are quite a few differences so it's kind of funny. I've been a translator for a long long time i i don't have a any academic qualification i'm like i'm so old that i'm from the time where you could just you know learn by doing it so i learned by um experience by trying by um you know being a team with different translators and learning from them as well so i was an in-house translator uh a technical in-house translator for you know my my formation here so that was my university um and yeah so i i translate a little bit of everything that's another another you know kind of very general as well more technical uh my background is engineering so you know it's kind of uh what what interests me one of the things that interests me but yeah and that leads me on to sort of another question about how like i know a couple of you sent me messages explained now you go into the industry and some of them were really interesting because it's what what what sort of leads you there what made you decide on that path maybe maybe go to malek first like a mic pronouncing your name correctly yes yes that's it it means angel in arabic oh i love that i'm not as essential as that How did you decide then just did that you wanted to be a translator did it come through a progression of um i i like uh languages in uh in general i started my um university courses by uh literature french literature um studies but i think that uh teaching is not for it's not for me so i found that translation um is a good option to escape from teaching uh so i um i changed my uh my specialty yeah did anybody else start somewhere else and then going to translate or is there anybody that was 100 i want to be a translator me yes it was me i mean when i began at university i studied english philology but definitely i wanted to be a translator it's true that education came into my path but at the end i i noticed how well they match me when you are like teaching grammar you know much better the text you can analyze much better um how words go together how to use the language and things like that so both professions help me a lot when when i work as a translator and even when i teach i also say don't translate this this way because words don't work in this way in spanish or in english so they complement both professions perfectly yeah because i find that the standard of education in in in translators is higher because you know clearly you you're not just just translated you have to understand the written word you have to understand and mother tongue you have to and on top of that you've got to understand all the technologies that's changing all the time the cat tools and the and the software that some of the language service providers offer to you know to enable you to to sort of reach the content um how did you get into it kiara well it's very funny because i think it was i was a child and we used to go on holiday to south tyrol in northern italy and that's a bilingual area and i was exposed to different languages since i was a child and then i started being curious about that strange language which at that time was german then bit by bit i got passionate about languages and i if i think about it i've studied languages for all my life i mean i studied languages at secondary school then i went to university and i i i started translation um with my ba then interpreting with my m.a and then i went went on and on and i couldn't think my life without that language is actually it's a constant challenge and it's so it's so fascinating because you learn so much about people about cultures so that's what i believe as well it does open your mind up to the so the culture is 100 i know that layla has lost her camera i've turned it on and off again i've done the trusty trick but it's not working oh no don't worry just how did you how did you come to to decide on that as a career on translation as a career yeah i think like kiara i've always liked languages i mean i did them at school then i did them at university and i couldn't decide which ones to do and i wanted to do more but i could only do three and i did do italian miles during my masters as well so i've got that about gcse level but i've got no formal qualification in that one i've also done some mandarin and some hindi i used to go to india a lot on holiday and i like to travel in when before i had my daughter i could travel a lot more and so i just really just really enjoyed them and i did have a job after i finished university and but i carried on translating until i felt that i could go full time so i did it so part time to start with and then i decided that's what i wanted to do so i always kept it going because i didn't want to waste all that time and energy and i spent doing the studies and the enjoyment of it to lose it just like that because it's so easy to to lose your languages quickly yeah i get that yeah i mean i i i hear people all the time so well i learned and i got my a level in there in french or german and i've never used it and i'm like oh gosh what a waste because you've got i mean i do think you do have to spend a certain amount of time in the country to to really to get people definitely and what about you can see what's your journey what decided you the the american education system for languages is not that great um only it's probably probably slightly worse than the british one i'm sure you can attest to layla um but uh i just i just thought learning a different language was was the coolest thing that i could possibly do and uh so i studied french in high school did some german and stuff um and when it came to go to university in america they were actually phasing out the french program to the university that i was getting accepted to and i arrived and i said okay well how do i drop out and realize that that was like my main focus is that i wanted to whatever else i did in life i wanted to be able to speak french and be able to communicate in a different language that was really important to me so um i found this this course here in the uk and moved over and it just so happened to be a translation course and so i've just kind of fallen into translation you know much like a lot of us here through the love of language yeah through the levels and what about well you kind of touched on it that's why i changed to the um change to that question isn't it a mess to in this what is the what is your favorite part of being in the translation industry or being a translator what's your favorite bit highlights it's it's that it's always different is that there is always something new that you learn something new that you have to um research that you have to you know read about it's it's you know it's it's even when it's a boring text there will be a little bit of something maybe you know oh my god i'm not sure if this coma is right and then you have to go through you know lots of websites and but something someone thinks one way someone someone else thinks a different way where is that coma going to be always you know it could be it could be um the subject it could be the language itself you know the the mechanics of the language or the you know or they are the soul of the language that you have to there is always something new there is never one day that is yeah i've done that knowledge don't we from just from the sort of the areas where i work especially if i mean i get that some people will have real specialism like anna did you say technical and even in that you'll find different areas where you learn I reckon you must be learning sort of every day I mean stupidly I took a job as a customer service rep speaking you know speaking French and goodness hat you know and it was for a bathroom company and I had french plumbers ringing me up and asking me why the certain thing didn't fit there and I ended up having to explain to these plumbers in France how to fit our products so and I'm clearly had to buy a technical dictionary so I think I could probably help a plumber fit a shower in France now because I know all about olives and things like that but it was very valuable Does anybody else have any sort of highlights or funny stories about their time translating? Not directly translating, but how language was useful that you wouldn't have expected it. When we went on holiday to Cuba and for some reason the key card system on the door of the hotel room would stop working we couldn't get out! I rang the reception and they were saying oh just bring the key card down to the reception and I say no literally we cannot get out the door and this guy came along and he was on the other side of the door and he was speaking in Spanish and he's saying move out of the way I've got a pickaxe and all this stuff if it wasn't for me being in there we were on the first floor in like an apartment block that was nowhere near reception if I hadn't if I hadn't been able to speak Spanish at the time and actually you probably wasn't that great but I was trying my best with without a dictionary because I didn't really know what pickaxe was in Spanish um but it was funny because he literally he broke the door down but we could have been up there like god knows how You don't think initially but that could be quite scary actually well I was a bit concerned because my husband it wasn't my husband at the time but he was going to jump out the window and I was like we're actually on a first-floor window I don't think you'd actually not break something so um this is how situations end up getting a bit more complicated but in terms of funny funny text i had to i helped once with this um doll catalog of products so it's like sandy is standing in a pretty purple dress with flowers on talking to her super friend um whatever it was you obviously had to make it sound like this little kids this little kid doll and she was friends with so-and-so and she was wearing this pretty dress and and that was interesting especially when you were looking at the term whether we know like the english dolls have no hair and you wouldn't say they're a bald doll it really was really difficult to translate the way that they wanted it translating without it sounded like this doll sounded very strange like it had no hair but it was normal like that the translation made it sound like it just didn't work in this language and how however they wanted me to do it i was thinking you can't put a bald baby but that explicitly explained it as this bald baby and i knew that meant one of those dolls with the slight indentations you know where it's pretend hair ended sometimes you have to make a compromise that you're really not happy with that sounds like that sort of a situation because something's just not they just don't come across do they yeah and you often want to put a note on but then you think well but will the note what will the outcome be because maybe that is all you can do yeah so yeah sometimes you you aren't quite happy but you have to do what works in english sometimes it's it's cutting putting parts out because especially when you do german to english there's a lot more explanation in german just know which bits are good which bits you can get rid of which bits are going to be losing meaning so there is that there's always that tug of war between getting the right balance really and that's something you get over time that's the experience you get because initially you're taught to stay quite close to a text from your studies obviously in practical sense that doesn't really work and because it just sounds strange and there are so many different areas actually we put post on yesterday about you know drug translation localization and trans creation i mean we will we could save that for another time the horizon transcreation gone wrong does anybody actually do any transcreation between you ladies yeah yeah i work for it quite a lot um there's always one of the funny things that i've had to do before is um with in kind of seo stuff um which happened to be a little bit of transformation as well um but it was for it was for a video game and um they were translating keywords so not only do you have to do the keyword research on them and everything but they're translating the negative keywords uh which took some cultural adaptation because um you know you think about an online game and the type of things that teenage boys type into their chats and stuff like that things that you don't want to rank for and then trying to explain those concepts to you know your japanese team and then your spanish team and your french team you all get very embarrassing very quickly yeah so i've tried to think about teenage by googling yeah i had to translate once a block list that's what they called at the time so words that would not be allowed as um usernames and they were all offensive words so when i was approached for the job is like um would you be you know would you be okay would you be comfortable translating that because you're gonna be reading a lot of bad words reading them is not a problem but writing them it's great oh my god i don't want to look at it well malik what's your favorite part about being in the industry what's your highlight you need to put 10 pounds in the mute box now would strive to point out disappeared completely this diversity of texts and fails that we can discover uh across the translation and um uh the attention of detail has said uh even for a comma or a point but I think after years of translation we have this uh how to say professional deformation you know judge people about uh they don't put a capital letter or something like this i think that i can judge them about the details like uh like this and uh the search that we make all over the day um even about a small i don't know a phrase or an expression and even after years that i have the same passion for uh learning a new language uh i um i studied two years of Spanish now i started the Italian it's not the same 20 years ago the mind is pressured i think but this passion to discover because across the language you can discover all the culture of well um when it comes to interpreting and translating i think the best part of it is teamwork because i really like to work under the foreign principle and it gives you a different perspective it makes you grow it makes you learn so i really like to work in tandem with another colleague whether in the booth or when translating and regarding what layla was saying before i have a i have a story um about how how much languages were useful in difficult situation in 2011 i was stuck in Denmark because of a snow storm and i was at the airport my flight had been cancelled and so everyone was waiting there i went to the customer service desk and i spoke Danish to the lady at the desk and luckily i got rebooked on another flight and i and i flew first class it happened only once in my life but um i always use it as an example to make people understand how important is to first know the culture of the language you you are learning and how useful it can be to speak another language so that's my actor i love that that was the reason i went that i went to Switzerland in the first place to learn the language because i was every time i went on holiday somewhere everybody spoke english back to me we expected it and i just i honestly found it a little bit rude that we just expect everybody to speak english and i just thought i don't want to be that person that doesn't actually make an effort i'm not learning enough about about other cultures and it was the best thing ever did go to switzerland and france and yeah it didn't take me down a translator's career but it definitely i think it made me a better person has anna have you have you got any and it does only favorite parts about the industry well my favorite part uh the same as the colleek has said i mean the variety of the things you are doing you are learning every day so i remember for example at the beginning of the summer i was translated a technical manual for a huge machine and i was scared of the machine because i thought it was just a tool you know but then i saw an image on the internet and say wow no that is huge i mean it was oh my god i'm scared of this match i know how it works how i mean the security systems and everything and now i'm providing an application about healthier style so and and the nutrition things like that so everything you can learn from just translating or just a single project is is amazing and well my anecdote is not so well it's fun of course but i i felt so embarrassed i remember i went to rome like um um seven years ago i was in a wedding and then we were doing some uh sightseeing around and we were in a square um there are a lot of cats there they are allowed to be there and you can feed them and and whatever you want and and there was a family with some kids and uh one of them was next to me and i say have you seen the cuts so slowly in english because i heard them speaking english and the little girl just turned to me like what language are you speaking and i was so involved like oh my god i can't speak english and kids will come out because they won't be thinking to hear another accent or anything like that the mother's things are bless you kids are the worst when you're learning a little language because you think you've got to a certain level and then you'll say something to a kid and they'll say well what did they say could you even speak it it'd be good to learn from and when i was on the year abroad i was looking after these boys that um i lived with the family in germany and one of the boys was three and one was six and we used to play lego together and i never knew about like what a tour was in german or you know what a flat tour to build this thing we're building or whatever and they didn't speak any english at all and i found that my language came on a lot quicker there because i was listening to them they were obviously listening to what i was saying and correcting me if they wanted to because they obviously knew better and and i really enjoyed that experience there actually because it was really challenging to never be able to speak english because it was too easy when you go to classes yeah i think total total immersion is is just the best thing isn't it we are we are coming up half an hour and i don't want to keep i don't want to monopolize monopolize you you that is when you've given me your time already i genuinely i am genuinely in awe and you do a fantastic job that was a reason just just to have a little chat you know people do online seminars and let's talk about the you know details about technical things and then the all the tools that you use and i just want to put it out there let you all speak and just say that you do a fantastic job it is international translators day it's not about the technology and the big companies it's about it's about you guys that got boots on the ground and you're doing it every day so thank you i can just say thank you give me thank you susan yeah yeah thank you so much for the amazing day always good to see faces thank you so much for coming and giving me a little bit of your time thank you for inviting us you're welcome nicer gathering girls yes hope it wasn't too painful have a lovely lovely afternoon and thank you thank you bye thank you bye-bye still here
2021-10-03 15:15
