A while ago, a fellow translator here was looking for other translators to follow. It’s been 5 months since her post, so I thought I’d ask the same thing: translators, where are you? Boost if you know any translators or professionals working in the translation industry. I’d love to meet fellow translators here so we can get discuss our routines, our joys, CPD, and everything in between.
@Renata@translators
Let me join.
I used to translate legal texts but in recent years changed to books - fiction, not always my favourite genres, but the authors are nice - I mostly work for authors who self publish in German, some of them after getting the translation rights back for their works which have been previously published by big publishers who did not wish or manage to sell the rights to German publishers. Others changed to SP also in English.
@fedithom@translators I don't know anything about gaming (I mean, I know what an AAA title is, but that's all haha), so I have a lot to learn from you. Glad to meet you!
@Renata@translators
Thanks for shouting out, happy to meet you, Renata.
I've translated books from English or Spanish into German for the last 30 years, fiction (fantasy novels) and non-fiction (medical and/or psychological topics) and I love it.
Apart from books, I often discuss other topics here - like climate, environment, human rights, gender gap, AI and so on - that are also of huge medical/psychological significance in the end.
@Renata@translators EN-DE translator (medical, pharma, biotech etc.) & medical writer here (but not posting much - social media overload since the beginning of pandemic). Also try #xl8 :-)
@Renata@translators i'm a translator, i do science & medicine & engineering stuff, originally a biochemist by trade. I also teach writing in english to IT students, heavy on the contrasts between what make a text good in german & english.
@Renata@translators I started it a couple of years ago at the insistence of herself (who is a lecturer in an English dept & teaches English teachers) & I have basically developed the course out of the hobbyhorses I had collected in my brain from 20 years of translating & editing stuff by German speakers. Also borrowing ideas from Joseph Williams & Gregory Colomb. >
@Renata@translators My students are software developers, their English is generally quite advanced, but what they're missing is what it takes to make a coherent paragraph in English. Heading for the 4th run of the course this fall, I hope I've got it worked out now. It's been a bit chaotic & experimental so far 🤪
@Renata@translators I hope to turn the basic course concept into something I can offer to company clients. What was my normal translating business is more or less comatose atm; I want to relaunch it in a much more targeted way. >
@Renata@translators People usually look for a translator too late in their project cycles. Everything is done & dusted & then they want the translation quickly. I'm bound to be an expensive, complicated pain in the ass at that point. I have to get to ppl in a phase where they're not thinking about ordering a translation yet, & get into a conversation about how English texts need to be different if they're to work well. >
@Renata@translators The ideal job might be if they will let me work as an English-first copywriter (with briefings in German); that's high value and actually faster for me than struggling to rescue something out of a German text that's already been signed off ... <>
@twobiscuits@translators sounds like a great translation business idea! I’m thinking of doing something more targeted as well. I’m going back to studying marketing to sort out my strategy and my target audience/clients.
@Renata@translators A long-time translator on long-term hiatus. I worked mainly on literary projects (Spanish to English) by experimental writers, so lots of experience translating the untranslatable.
@Renata@translators I worked on a book you can access online called The Xul Reader. I think it's most representative of the sort of work I've done. Lately, I haven't done much translation, though I did as an exercise a translation of a poem by Oliverio Girondo (who is Argentine). It was fun. It's somewhere on my blog. And you? What are you working on?
@theleavingyear@translators I’ve never translated poetry or any sort of literature. I’m sure it’s pretty hard! I prefer working on more creative translations, but today was all technical. IT. I’m gonna look the book up.
@Renata Thanks for the interest. The book is an anthology. I was one of many translators. I filled in gaps doing poetry, essays, articles. It was kind of amazing it was published by Roof Books. I think whatever you translate requires creativity. It's the nature of the beast.
@Renata It's a lot like finding a path through an extremely dense forest. And you have to be impartial. The material may be a challenge or not to your liking, but the work is neutral in that respect. Over zealous literary translators can get into trouble. I worked with a poet whose Neruda's translation received a lot of criticism. He didn't care. He was a good poet himself.
@theleavingyear wow! He didn’t care at all? I don’t know if I’d manage to be that detached from the text. I like the metaphor you used. Being impartial is hard, but we have to do it.
@Renata I am much more cautious... and have been slammed for that too. But, it wasn't as if I was translating word salads. I had to look after the "sense" too. Walking that line is hard. It must be freeing to think, I'm a great poet translating a great poet and the result will be beautiful.
@theleavingyear yeah, it must be liberating. I see many Brazilian writers becoming translators or editors. Do you see that there as well or is it less common?
@Renata I have seen it. It's a way to make a living when writing doesn't pay the bill. Actually, Julio Cortazar has a funny essay about translation in Voice Overs: Translation and Latin American Literature. It's called "Translate, Traduire, Tradurre: Traducir." It's a good anthology.
@Renata@translators I live in Ontario! I've had an English-French translation degree since 2004. I had a handful of contracts over the first decade but everything just dried up and I was never able to turn it into a career. I've been thinking it would be really ideal if I could though! I could use a job I could do from home and keep if I move.
In your position, I would dust off my CV and apply to a bunch of Canadian translation agencies, focusing on any subject matter expertise you have acquired in the past decade or so.
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