Translation Confessional

This episode will be divided into two sections. The first one will be directed at clients who request our services as translators and interpreters, so feel free to forward this episode to that one client of yours who may be having some trouble understanding what it is that you do. After a commercial break, the second section of this episode will be directed at you, fellow language professional, wh...

Those of you who have known me for a while are aware of the fact that I don’t use a Windows or a Mac computer. “What the hell do you use then?” one might ask. Well, we’re powered by Linux over here. In this episode, I'll talk a little bit about how and why I started to use Ubuntu, a Linux distribution, as my main operating system and list some of the software or platforms I use in my daily profess...

Today I wanted to highlight the third Italian song here at Translation Confessional Music Edition. It’s called “Vanità” by The Niro. I actually only became aware of this Italian artist because I was working on the English subtitles of a show called "Italian Beauty," which featured the musician. Well, you can listen to this episode's song here: http://bit.ly/TC-S01E-09 After listening to this episo...

A few weeks ago, I had a 5-episode series about CAT tools when I talked about... how they are so crucial for our daily activities as translators how to manage your translation memories how to keep a glossary how tags work within a CAT tool file, and how matches and repetitions help cut down the time we spent on a project and assure consistency throughout a long-term collaboration. You can also wat...

Would you like to learn more about how to become a voice actor? This episode covers the fields where you can find voice-over work, what you need to set up your home studio, some of the difficulties you may find along the way, and tips on how to succeed in this segment. To read the full article, click here . This episode is brought to you by Tomedes , a translation company that has been supporting...

Some of the clients I work with organize their workflow through a portal, where project managers can log in, upload files to, and assign projects to translators who are already on their database. That’s a great way to keep a record of who’s doing what and when a project is due. In this episode, I'll talk about how client portals can also make our lives easier as translators. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-...

Hi everybody! This is just a quick message about something I’m really, really excited about… I’ve put together a 55-minute online session on how to reach out to self-published authors and get book translation deals! I can see that the episodes I had about fiction and non-fiction books during Season 1 of our Translation Confessional podcast became very popular pretty fast, so I know for a fact that...

Today I wanted to highlight the third Spanish song here at Translation Confessional Music Edition. It’s called “La edad del cielo” by Uruguayan singer and songwriter Jorge Drexler. I actually only became aware of this song and Jorge Drexler’s body of work because of last episode’s featured singer, Brazilian singer Paulinho Moska, who recorded a version in Portuguese called “A idade do céu.” By the...

Do you know how to identify the parts of speech in English? If you write or translate in English, you must know how words are related to each other within a sentence. And, as an into-English translator, sometimes you have to modify the role that each word plays into your translated sentences to make sure it reads naturally in English and doesn't sound alike a word-for-word translation from another...

People are usually looked down upon if they have an accent. As if they were not proficient enough in their non-native language. The problem is that many people mistake “accents” with “proper pronunciation” and associate both with intellectual level, which is totally absurd. Here's the "Modern Family" clip I mentioned in this episode―hopefully YouTube doesn't block it if you're outside the United S...

Have you ever stopped to think about your name? Have you made a good name for yourself as a translator or interpreter? Have you been consistent, as far as having an online fingerprint associated with your brand name? I mean, if I google your name right now, would I find your professional profiles, your website, articles you’ve written, presentations you have done, etc.? Or do you have some of that...

Today I’m highlighting “O último dia” by Paulinho Moska . It translates to “the last day,” so the lyrics pose this very important philosophical question: What would you do if this were your last day on Earth? Here are the links I mentioned during the episode: "Adelaide" (official video) "live performance" on a 1980s variety show " Uma barata chamada Kafta" "O fim do mundo" soap opera You can liste...

Today I'll be talking about a first-hand experience involving subtle marketing, that is, when I was able to kind of upsell my services to a long-term client when I saw a window of opportunity opening up. Check out what happened to me and keep this subtle marketing strategy in mind when interacting with clients and peers during some downtime. It's all about not overwhelming people with information...

There is a language-related subject that has always fascinated me: do bilingual people or polyglots change the way they talk, behave, and think according to the language they’re speaking? To learn more about that and get someone's valuable insight, I interviewed Italian translator Sonia de Martino , who wrote her dissertation in college about this very same subject―the technical term is linguistic...

The time has come to highlight the second song in Italian here at Translation Confessional Music Edition. And this one is from one of my favorite bands from Italy: Negramaro. I've already talked about them in Season 1, Episode 40, " How I Learned Italian ." And, if you want to check out the Italian show I mentioned, here's a link to "Untraditional." (Here's the vasectomy bit I was talking about!...

Today I wanted to do something a bit different. Instead of writing about a translation-related subject from scratch, I’ll be reading an article written by a fellow translator, Jorge Davidson , who is an English and Portuguese to Spanish translator, proofreader, editor, MT post-editor, and instructor, besides working as project manager, translator, and editor at Punto y Coma . He originally wrote a...

No writer escapes their writing career without a few patterns they lean on. And that doesn’t just apply to novelists and journalists. It happens to translators, too! If your into-English writing consists mostly of emails and direct messages, you probably have some persistent writing quirks that find their way into everything, even your translation work. While it’s common to have words or phrases y...

The topic I wanted to focus on today is what matches and repetitions actually are. If you don’t work with CAT tools on a regular basis, you may have heard these terms thrown around, but would have no idea how they actually work, right? Well, I'll tell you all about matches and repetitions in this episode. Click HERE to watch some short videos about how CAT tools can help you. For a few weeks here...

I saw that the two episodes I had about subtitling during Season 1 of our Translation Confessional podcast became very popular pretty fast, so I know for a fact that many of you out there are interested in the subject. I can’t blame you―subtitling is indeed fascinating! With that in mind, I’ve put together a 40-minute online session on how to transcribe and translate subtitles on DotSub! Well, if...

The time has come to highlight the second song in Spanish here at Translation Confessional Music Edition. And this one is by yet another one of my favorite bands from Spain: Vetusta Morla. You can listen to the song here: https://bit.ly/TC-S01E05 After listening to this episode, head on over to YouTube for the full experience. I'm translating the lyrics into English on a video here: https://youtu....

Hi, everybody! This is a quick message for the lady translators and interpreters out there. Have you heard about Riveter? It’s a community for working women, as well as allies of any gender identification, and it’s named after the classic icon Rosie the Riveter. It’s where we can get together to share our professional experiences, ask questions, and support each other. Especially if you are just s...

Today's episode is special because, in celebration of women's month, Translation Confessional is participating in a Brazilian campaign called O PODCAST É DELAS, which could be freely translated as "The podcast is female," "Podcasting for women," or "Women own podcasting." This effort is trying to bring awareness to the role of women in the podcasting community and helping listeners find more podca...

The topic I wanted to focus on today is using tags in CAT tools. If you’re unfamiliar with tags, they’re actually a little code that shows up in certain files once you import them into a CAT tool to record your translation. And, to make sure your translation is formatted the same way as the original, you’d have to add those tags in the correct place to leave those words in bold and italics, or as...

Glossary creation is a crucial part of what CAT tools have to offer and having your own glossary will help you keep your terminology consistent with client preferences and areas of knowledge, especially during a long-term collaboration. In other words, until you start updating your own terminology database, you have no idea how much time you have wasted double-checking and confirming the exact sam...

I knew I wanted to highlight a song by Caetano Veloso when I started brainstorming this Music Edition, but it was only when trying to find the perfect one that I realized how hard it would be to translate some of his lyrics. I mean, most of them deserve an essay full of footnotes, because there are so many references that would definitely get lost in translation. The song I did choose to translate...