Studying overseas (or How to choose a translation course?)

Posted in Weekly post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

All my translations for the day are done and, before I finally head off to my vacation, I’ll treat you with one last post of May.

Today’s post was inspired by this guest post (in Portuguese), by Angélica Cattini, about studying abroad. Since I also had an experience of studying abroad, I decided to share it with you. After all, if you are like me, it can help you decide or make up your mind on what to do yourself. It can also suit those who simply want to study translation/interpreting, but don’t know where to start.

As some of you may already know, I did my MA in England. I fell in love with the country after spending seven months working as an au-pair for my aunt in Cambridge (what’s not to fall in love with in this lovely city, right?) – after concluding my high school studies, before entering university. After this period, I came back to Brazil and started my BA in Letters specialized in Translation at a Brazilian university (UNESP). During my major, all I thought of was to do an MA in Interpreting in England. So I spent four years researching all the possibilities. Every time I had some spare time, I would google several combinations of the words interpreting, MA, England, translation, UK, etc. I found out there were quite a few universities that offered the course in England. The main criterion I used to choose one was price. The pound is really expensive when compared to the Brazilian real (Brazilian currency): it’s worth more than three times more! At the time, the University of Surrey was the cheapest: the total fee for a non-European student was around 9,000 pounds (R$ 27,000.00 Brazilian reais!) – which could be paid in three installments. Obviously, although I already worked as an English teacher and had saved some money, I didn’t have it all. So I talked to my parents to see if they had the money and if they could lend it to me. Luckily, they had and agreed with lending it.

For the admission process, I mailed all the required documentation, which included a proficiency exam with a given grade. They didn’t necessarily demand that I translated my proof of education, which was perfect! I also had a telephone interview (in English, of course) with one of the department’s professor.

As planned, I applied for the MA in Interpreting programme. However, one week before embarking to the UK, I received a phone call from the university informing that, unfortunately, they weren’t able to build a class for Brazilian Portuguese, so I would have to choose another course. Nevertheless, they also offered me some interpreting workshops and said I could attend any interpreting lessons I wished as an audit student. At first, I was really upset. But later on, I realized it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I found out that, actually, I loved more translating than interpreting, and that translating was more adequate to my skills. All in all, I ended up choosing the MA in Translation Studies with Intercultural Communication course.

As for accommodation, I chose the cheapest option: leaving on campus. The University of Surrey offers several accommodation options for students. The one I chose (the cheapest one) was a house for 10 people (only girls) with two bathrooms and a kitchen. I shared a duplex room with a Chinese girl.

In order to pay for my expenses, I worked part-time (with a student visa, you are allowed to work up to 40 hours a week in the UK) as a waitress at a café and at an Italian restaurant. So I had lectures five days a week, all day long, and worked on weekends at the café during the day and at the restaurant during the night.

The full-time course length is 12 months, with two one-month-long “vacation” periods: the first one on Christmas holidays and the other on Easter. “Vacation” periods (between quotation marks) because they were vacation only from lectures. We actually had to write essays (they don’t have tests) and start working on our dissertation during this period. But I also took advantage to work a bit more as well.

At the end, I managed to save quite some money to travel for two weeks around Italy and for my expenses back in Brazil while I didn’t find a job.

In a nutshell, it was a bitter-sweet experience. A dream-come-true, living one year in a country I love, studying something I ‘m passionate about, meeting awesome people, learning tons of things on the process; but I also had a really hard time, working and studying A LOT, missing my family, friends and country. However, it was totally worth it. And I would do it all again if I had the chance. Bottom line is there’s nothing impossible when you really want something. If you really wish, from the bottom of your heart, to do something, you’ll find ways of doing so.

You can find more information about the University of Surrey in the hyperlinks provided throughout the post. Besides, here are a couple of other UK universities I know that offer translation/interpreting BA/MA courses:

University of Leeds
University of Salford
London Metropolitan University

Well, I hope my experience helps some of you. Please feel free to comment or add your own experience.

Note: Please note that, as previously announced, I’ll be on vacation from tomorrow to June 1^st, therefore, there won’t be any blog activities during this period. I’ll resume blogging on June 3^rd.

13May2014

Guest post: Comics translation

Posted in Guest post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Hello, followers! Hope you are having a nice beginning of the week. As for me, rushing through my last workdays before my vacation.
Our guest today is Tatiana Yoshizumi, who is an assistant editor at an international comics publishing house. She’ll be talking about comics translation.

Welcome, Tatiana!

Comics Translation

When Carol invited me to write a post for her blog, we talked a little bit about what I should write about: assistant editor’s tasks or comics translation. Since this is a blog about translation, we decided it would be more interesting to write about comics translation.

How it all began

Translating is not necessarily a task of an editor. However, my team is small (we are just nine people), the publishing house I work for is international, so I had the opportunity to translate. I started translating Sticker Albums, which is quite simple, then some parts of books and finally comics, which is really fun.

I translated Italian comics, which is called Fumetti, and Adventure Time, which is based on the cartoon with the same name.

Comparison with other types of translation

When translating comics, you can use and combine many techniques you use on other types of translation:

Literary translation: translating comics is quite similar to literary translation, especially if you think about the dialogues. Usually, you have to use informal language, trying to simulate the oral language.

Game localization: depending on the genre of the comics you are translating, there are lots of slangs. Also, you need to consider the context and images which must correspond to the text.

Technical translation: sometimes, the characters may use technical terms and you need to research to find the right one in your language. Or, you have to research about a specific subject. For example, in one of my translations, I had to learn about Italian Colonization of Ethiopia.

Poems: sometimes, you have to choose between meaning or form; if you want to translate the words and “lose” a joke, or keep a joke and not translate the “right” meaning.

Main challenges

Now I want to present you the main challenges I have faced until now.

The first one is to balance oral language with writing. Usually, we try to use oral language in characters’ speech in order to sound natural, so we use abbreviations, slangs, contractions, sometimes even wrong grammar. However, there is always a limit. So, a pattern must be created.
Each character has a specific way to talk, and you have to bring it to your own language, re-create that specific way, create a pattern, a vocabulary for that character.
You need to pay attention to the art. The text should correspond to what is drawn. This means that if you are translating a text and choose to change words in order to make a joke, that is all right. However, if you are translating comics and the word is illustrated, you cannot change it.

A lot to be discussed

I write many other things and give examples, but I think I passed you an overall idea of how is it to translate comics to me.

I hope you have enjoyed my post and if you want to know more, please comment here or contact me!

Thanks for reading, and thank you, Carol, for having invited me!

Thank you, Tatiana, for accepting my invitation and kindly taking the time to write something interesting to our readers. 🙂

Note: Please remember that I’ll be on vacation the next two weeks, therefore, there won’t be any guest posts during this period. We’ll resume normal blogging activities on June 3rd.

About the author

Tatiana Yoshizumi has a BA in Translation Studies (English and Spanish) from Unesp. She has already done volunteer job, worked for a small translation company and afterwards for Italian Consulate (International Foreign Trade Department). Currently, she works as an Assistant Editor.

8May2014

Language competition, TweetUp and vacation

Posted in Events, Miscellaneous, Weekly post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

First of all, I’d like to thank all of you, my readers, for all the support you give to this blog. You always surprise me with comments and compliments on our posts (mine and from our lovely guests). They mean a lot to me and make me dedicate myself to the blog even more.

THANK YOU! 🙂

That being said, today’s post will be about three topics, which are actually announcements.

1. Top 100 Language Lovers 2014 competition

This week, the bab.la language portal and the Lexiophiles language blog announced the start of this year’s contest: the Top 100 Language Lovers 2014 competition. There are five categories: Language Learning Blog, Language Professional Blog, Language Facebook Page, Language Twitter Account and Language YouTube Channel. For now, they are only asking our help to nominate our favorites on those categories.

Obviously, I have already nominated my blog, my Facebook page and my Twitter account (I don’t have a professional YouTube channel yet). If you also think my blog, my Facebook page and/or my Twitter deserve being nominated, I kindly ask you to access this link and do it. Required information to do so:

Name of nominee: Caroline Alberoni
Email of nominee: caroline(at)alberoni(dot)com(dot)br
URL of page/blog: please find URLs of my Facebook page and Twitter account above by clicking on the hyperlinks
Category: second, third and forth, respectively

Nominations end on May 19th.

Thank you in advance for you support and trust! 🙂

2. TweetUp

Since this is a topic specifically for Brazilians, I’ll write in Portuguese. If you aren’t a lucky Brazilian, please go straight to topic 3 below. 😉

Há algum tempo, anunciei uma surpresa aos meus seguidores brasileiros do Twitter. Tentei um envolvimento com eles, mas foi em vão. Portanto, a surpresa será anunciada mesmo assim e, caso vocês gostem da ideia e tenham Twitter, podemos levá-la adiante.

Vocês sabem o que é um TweetUp?

Um TweetUp é um encontro de seguidores do Twitter. A priori, é um encontro informal, normalmente em um barzinho ou em um café, em que os tweeps se encontram para bater um papo e trocar ideias. A ideia já é usada por tradutores de outras partes do mundo (Bruxelas, Londres, Alicante, Atenas) e, como a achei bastante interessante e divertida, pensei em organizar um TweetUp em São Paulo. No entanto, para isso, preciso de participantes! Como no Twitter ninguém se manifestou (talvez as pessoas ainda estejam acanhadas), gostaria de saber quem de vocês, seguidores do blog (e do Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest), tem Twitter, gostou da ideia e teria interesse em participar.

CHAMADA AOS TUITEIROS DE PLANTÃO!
Quem topa marcar um encontro de tradutores e intérpretes em São Paulo para networking, nos conhecermos, batermos um papo, relaxarmos um pouco, trocarmos uma ideia?

Ainda não é meu seguidor no Twitter? Está esperando o quê para me seguir? -> @AlberoniTrans

Não é tuiteiro? Talvez esta seja a sua chance de criar uma conta, me seguir e participar!

O Twitter é minha plataforma social preferida. A integração que ele possibilita é fantástica! E os tuiteiros do mundo inteiro são pessoas incríveis, carismáticas e mega queridas!

Estou aguardando a opinião de vocês quanto ao TweetUp, ok? Mandem-me mensagens aqui pela publicação, no Facebook, no próprio Twitter, no Google+, no LinkedIn, por email ou sinal de fumaça, se preferirem, mas não deixem de me dizer o que pensam e se topam participar. Aguardo ansiosamente o contato de vocês! 🙂

3. Vacation

I’ll finally have a well-deserved and much longed for vacation! 😀

Two dear Polish friends who live in England will be visiting Brazil for the first time and I took advantage of it to take a two-week vacation. I’ll take them to different places in Brazil so they can have a general idea of the country, therefore, I’ll be totally out-of-reach. No work, no blog posts, no engagement on Twitter, no updates on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest, nothing, for two dreamy detox weeks. Therefore, don’t worry if you don’t hear from me. I won’t be dead, only on vacation. 😉

When? From May 16th to June 1st.

I’ll wrap things up on May 15th and be back at full speed on June 2nd. Please try not to miss me too much during this period! 🙂

Meanwhile, I look forward to your nominations on the Top 100 Language Lovers competition and to your opinions on a possible #SPTweetUp (the first Brazilian TweetUp, in São Paulo).

6May2014

Guest post: Simultaneous interpreting

Posted in Guest post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Hello, dear readers! Hope you’ve had a great Labour Day holiday last week. As for me, I’m on my countdown for my two-week vacation and for welcoming two dear Polish friends who are visiting me next week. While they don’t arrive, let’s welcome today’s guest here on our blog, Marina Caproni, who will talk about simultaneous interpreting – our first guest post on interpreting.

Welcome, Marina!

Simultaneous Interpreting: Leaving the Comfort Zone

My path in interpreting is a little controversial, since I am graduated as a translator, but not as an interpreter and also, because this world kind of dragged me in unexpectedly. I never tried to get into the interpreting world, but when I did I loved it. So, it happened like this:

The phone rang:

— Hello, Marina. I have your résumé in my hands and I see you are an interpreter.

I was a little confused because I had just woken up and I said:

— No, I’m not. Sorry.

And he said:

— Really? It’s in your résumé!

— In my résumé? — I said. — This is Marina Caproni. Are you sure this is my résumé?

And he said:

— Yes, I am. It says here that you worked in a company as a translator and interpreter for one year.

That was the first time someone has focused on the interpreter part of my résumé. I worked for one year in a project with people from different nationalities and sometimes I had to do some consecutive interpreting at the office. But when I was still confused about this new title he had just assigned to me, he said:

— Hey! Why don’t you come to the office and try it? It will be a short test and we will see if you fit the job. We are five minutes away from your place.

I said yes but started to get nervous thinking: “I can’t do this. It will be a shame. I’m not an actual interpreter.”

I thought about not going, but in the end I said:

— Ok, I’ll go.

In the worst scenario, it would be an opportunity of increasing my translation network.

I met the man on the phone and started the test, interpreting a Steve Job’ speech on the iOS. After 40 seconds interpreting the video I got a new job.

I had a proper training before starting to work, of course, but just one week later there I was, working on an UNO’s conference in Brazil. It was awesome. I was so excited, so happy, feeling like I had just found a brand new world. From that moment on, I was a simultaneous interpreter.

However, the job is not easy. It demands full concentration. You have to work inside a cabin with a partner. You talk for 20 minutes and then pass the stick to your partner. Forget it if you don’t know how to work as a team because you cannot work alone. It demands such a concentration that in 20 minutes you are already exhausted.

One important thing: you have to be humble and know that only in a partnership the job is well done. The ego has to be left outside the cabin because the work is ruined when you think you’re better than your partner. And trust me, it happens a lot.

But the most important thing is to always be ready. The preparation is the hardest work – working on glossaries on the subject and reading everything you can find about it, practicing with videos on the theme, collecting any material you can get from the client about the subject at issue, working on your voice tone, talking to the speaker before the speech to clear up any doubts and solve any possible problems.

One day you will be interpreter in a conference on the Korean culture, with people talking about the beauties and advances of that country, but on the other day you will work in a conference on a 3D mesh for hernia surgeries, including an interpretation of two live surgeries.

You can start with a proper course. There are 2-year graduate degrees on interpretation if you’re already an undergraduate, or you can go to a translation and interpretation school, if you are not. I started studying by myself, reading a lot of books, articles, videos on the theme, and learning by doing it. I had been working as a translator for more than six years and one day I realized I had a huge vocabulary, which is vital for the job since you have to think fast and not being stuck on a term you can’t remember the translation.

No matter which path you choose, it will be hard work, but it is also very fun. You will know people from all over the world with different accents, cultures, lifestyles and, in the end of the day, you will feel complete as a professional.

It is a crazy world, where you have to be a fast thinker, very focused, and know how to work under pressure, but it is also a nice opportunity to leave your comfort zone behind your computer and face the world outside.

As always, it’s lovely to hear how different colleagues have started out as translators and/or interpreters. Thanks a lot for your kind contribution, Marina! Your life seems quite interesting as an interpreter.

Please, do comment!

About the author

Marina is graduated at UNESP as a translator. She works in the area since 2006 and as an interpreter since 2012. Most of her work is related to technical areas such as law, aeronautics, and human rights.

1May2014

Brazilian Portuguese facts and learning resources

Posted in Weekly post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

No, we don’t speak Spanish in Brazil. Neither do we speak Brazilian (there is no such a language, by the way). We speak Portuguese. No, not the same as in Portugal (European Portuguese). Here, we speak a variant, Brazilian Portuguese. Just like American English is a variant of British English. Get it?

And just like the US speaks English due to Britain’s influence during its settlement, Brazil speaks Portuguese because, obviously or not, the Portuguese colonized it. For some time, Portuguese coexisted with the lingua franca spoken by Jesuit missionaries, based on Amerindian languages. With the expansion of the colonization and the increasing immigration of Portuguese people though, Portuguese affirmed itself as the national language.

Portuguese is a Romance language (just like Spanish, Italian, French and Romanian, the most widely spoken ones) spoken by over 200 million people worldwide (besides Brazil and Portugal, seven other countries also have Portuguese as their official language – Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor, Macau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe).

Our alphabet has 23 letters (plus three foreign ones: W, Y and Z). Additional characters (accented vowels and cedilla): á, à, ã, â, é, ê, í, ó, õ, ô, ú, ç. Alphabet pronunciation: á bê cê dê é efe gê agá i jota ele eme ene ó pê quê erre esse tê u vê xis zê.

Although both variants (European and Brazilian) differ in many aspects, from pronunciation to vocabulary, an orthographic agreement (spelling reform) was reached between both countries in order to create a single common orthography. In Brazil, it went into effect in 2009.

Why should you consider learning Portuguese?

It is the 6^th most widely spoken language in the world
The number of Portuguese speakers is on the rise
Trade is increasing between Brazil and the rest of the world
Brazil will host the World Cup this year and the Olympics in 2016

Sources and resources
The differences between English and Portuguese
Wikipedia: Portuguese language
Wikipedia: Brazilian Portuguese
Omniglot

Resources for learning Portuguese
BBC Languages
eLanguage School
Learn Portuguese Now
Sonia-Portuguese
Portuguese Language Guide
Brazilian Portuguese phrasebook (scroll down to “Phrase list” for a list of useful sentences you can learn in Portuguese)
Babel
Brazilian Portuguese Proficiency Test (test for self-evaluation purposes of your knowledge level of the language)
Livemocha
BrazilianPodClass (free podcasts on iTunes)
Learn Brazilian Portuguese – The Guardian
Language Guide (pronunciation in many languages)

Hope you find this post useful. Would you suggest any other resources?