Guest post: Game localization

Posted in Guest post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Here we are, as promised, with this week’s guest, Paula Ianelli, a well-qualified professional game localizer, who has translated some well-known games into Brazilian Portuguese – and pretty well, people say (people say, because I’m not very fond of games, so I couldn’t say really). She once told me how game localization works and I was amazed by all the steps involved, and thought it would be interesting if more people could also learn more about it. So here she is!

Welcome, Paula!

Translating Games? That Must Be Piece of Cake!

Whoa, whoa, cowboy. Hold your horses right there.

Game localization surely sounds appealing if you’re into playing, but it poses several challenges we also face when translating a text from many other areas – it is translation after all! That shows in the teams that localize games into different languages: a crushing majority of linguists are highly skilled, experienced professionals who are full-time translators and/or have an academic background in the field.

‘But what can be so challenging about it?’ – you might ask. Well, to begin with, the whole localization process encompasses several different steps that might or might not involve the localization team, but which surely impact our performance. Contrary to popular belief, a game is localized during its production, not after it’s completion, so everything is intertwined. Also, this is not a one-on-one type of thing between translator and end client. We’re talking about hundreds of people, from the first person who had the idea to create that game to screenwriters, producers, designers, engineers, soundtrackers, marketing teams, actors, project managers, translators, proofreaders, testers and so on, up to the last staff member of a printing company which is running the cover one week before the launch date. It might sound a bit dramatic, but this complex network really has a direct impact on how we work and what our target audience will see at the receiving end.

The steps of game localization can be broken down in another topic though. Today we’ll focus on the most common challenges game localizers face. The first one is a translators’ favorite:

Context (or should we say lack thereof?)

Context may be very tricky in game localization. First of all, once again contrary to what one might think, translators do not translate while playing the game, so usually there is no visual context. That means we work with texts, as most translators do, but here is the catch: sometimes, they are not linear at all.

This may happen for a few different reasons. For confidentiality purposes, a few clients believe it is a good idea to mix up sentences of several different batches or texts to prevent a whole scene from leaking. There may also be updates with random words, and it is up to the translator to guess – or ask – what the context is. Another very frequent practice is non-linear batches: we may translate the last stage of a game right at the beginning of a project, when we actually have not had time to understand what is going on.

Here is a quick example: in The Last of Us, Joel and Ellie are talking to Tess. The latter leaves the scene and the dialogue below takes place:

Ellie: ‘When is she coming back?’
Joel: ‘Later.’

Pretty straightforward, right? The translation, however, was quite puzzling:

Ellie: ‘Quando ela vai voltar?’
Joel: ‘Até mais.’

If you understand Brazilian Portuguese, you know this is simply a matter of context. In other situations, ‘Later’ could be a greeting, therefore translated as ‘Até mais.’ We can make an educated guess that this translator received this line of text without its context, can’t we?

That takes us to another issue we constantly face:

Players depend on your translation

Since games are based not only on stories but also on tasks and instructions, the way a game is translated directly affects a player’s performance. Let’s say a character needs to find an item that leads him in the right direction and the instructions read:

‘Find a compass and return to the island.’

All Brazilian Portuguese translators in the room know where this is going, right? If the translation tells the audience to find a compasso, players will be endlessly looking for a different object. Boy, will they be pissed! That’s one of the reasons why game localizers need to be so careful: in addition to the task of creating a new text that is true to its original, carries good rhythm, short enough to fit the screen, perfect grammar and spelling, appealing, etc., we also have to make sure instructions are super clear and the whole story is cohesive throughout the game.

And there are a lot of players

As mobile platforms and social media grow both in developed and developing countries, the amount of gamers throughout the world increases every day – and Brazil is a major market.

On one hand, that means demand for game localization is at its all-time high. On the other hand, that also means we have a bunch of gamers who grew up used to playing without subtitles – and probably understand English by now – who are closely watching our every step.

Don’t get me wrong, they are nice people. But they don’t always love change, you know? And they’ve grown accustomed to choosing the multiplayer option, not the multijogador version. We can discuss whether or not we should translate that kind of term another time, but the thing is that game localizers are constantly faced with the challenge of finding convincing translations for very specific terminology that has been kept in English for over 20 years and it takes time and effort to find good solutions and to get people used to them.

Ok. Is that all?

Not really. We’ve just reflected about three major challenges game localization translators face, but there are many other minor difficulties that are worth mentioning:

When translating a game, we usually work in teams with several translators/proofreaders, which makes it very hard to standardize terms and styles;
We need to be very computer savvy in order to work with different CAT tools both online and offline, and there are usually our beloved tags in the text, so you can’t be too careful;
Deadlines are usually very tight, because after translation there is still proofreading, quality assurance, testing, captioning, etc., and everybody wants to make sure the game already includes its subtitles on launch date.

We are also expected to be very versatile: I might be translating a game full of slang and curse words on Monday, a puzzle for 5-9 year old girls on Tuesday and an epic medieval story on Wednesday – but it goes without saying that this is actually one of the biggest pleasures of working in this area!

All in all, game localization is a wonderful field if you are a professional translator who loves games and is interested in a very fulfilling challenge. Just think twice before translating your favorite games: spoilers, spoilers everywhere!

Thanks a lot for kindly accepting my invitation, Paula! It was a real pleasure featuring such a great professional on my blog! 🙂

Are you also a game localizer? Would like to add something? If not, you can always comment and give us feedback. 🙂

About the author

Paula Ianelli G. Luiz is an ATA-certified translator and interpreter who has always been a gamer. She has a B.A. in Translation Studies from UNESP and a certificate in Conference Interpreting from PUC. Paula works from English and Spanish into Brazilian Portuguese, and she has translated several AAA games for current and next-generation consoles, social media and mobile platforms.

25Mar2014

Guest post: Literary translation (in Portuguese)

Posted in Guest post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Better late than never, right? After a busy day with four deadlines, it’s time to welcome today’s guest, Reginaldo Francisco, who will talk about literary translation.

Welcome, Reginaldo!

Traduzindo literatura

Decidi ser tradutor quando tinha dezessete anos.

Na época, analisando o guia de profissões da UNESP, logo concluí que o curso de Tradução da UNESP de São José do Rio Preto, oficialmente chamado de Bacharelado em Letras com Habilitação de Tradutor, tinha sido feito para mim, ou eu para ele. A imagem e o texto sobre o curso na época não eram esses do link acima, mas acho que minha identificação não seria diferente com a apresentação atual. Apaixonado por leitura e escrita desde criança, curioso por quase tudo, especialmente por línguas estrangeiras, tendo aprendido inglês sozinho desde os treze/quatorze anos, vi que tinha encontrado exatamente o que gostaria de passar minha vida fazendo.

Para encurtar a história, que seria suficiente para outro post — ou para um blogue próprio —, estudei muito, passei no vestibular, mudei da cidadezinha de Cabrália Paulista, na região de Bauru, para São José do Rio Preto, e formei-me tradutor nos idiomas inglês e italiano. Ao longo da graduação e nos primeiros anos que se seguiram, tendo de me sustentar e “pagar as contas”, fui bolsista, professor, garçom, secretário, mas nunca abandonei a meta de ser tradutor.

Aos poucos fui conseguindo os primeiros trabalhos, divulgando meus serviços, melhorando meus preços (e nesse ínterim também fiz o mestrado em Estudos da Tradução na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina – UFSC). Os primeiros trabalhos, e a parte principal da minha atividade ainda hoje, foram de tradução técnica, vertente da profissão pela qual também me apaixonei, mas nunca deixei de tentar entrar no ramo mais restrito da tradução literária.

A primeira tradução de literatura veio em 2008, por indicação de um amigo e colega de sala da época da graduação que não pôde aceitar o serviço por estar comprometido com as próprias atividades como professor de idiomas. Tratava-se da tradução para o italiano de três pequenos volumes de poesia do poeta paulista Aguinaldo de Bastos, com direito a citações de trechos do poema “Navio negreiro”, do Castro Alves, que também tive de verter. Trechos, aliás, bem longos: juntando-os ao final, vi que tinha traduzido 60 % do poema. Um grande desafio, bastante incomum, que teve um resultado satisfatório especialmente pela colaboração com a revisora, Silvia Marianecci, tradutora italiana nativa. Porém, acabou sendo um trabalho isolado em minha carreira, sem grandes desdobramentos posteriores além da amizade com a Silvia, que depois se mudou para o Brasil e hoje mora em Belo Horizonte, e com o Marcos Petti, que intermediou o trabalho e foi o responsável pela tradução das partes em prosa dos livros.

Voltei a traduzir literatura em 2011, depois que a diretora executiva da Editora Autêntica esteve na UFSC para ministrar uma palestra e manifestou interesse por propostas de projetos de tradução, especialmente de obras em domínio público. Como tinha vontade de traduzir literatura infantojuvenil, fui pesquisar os clássicos infantojuvenis italianos e escrevi para a editora propondo algumas ideias. Assim consegui emplacar a tradução do Diário de Gian Burrasca, que foi publicada em 2012 e acabou selecionada no Programa Nacional Biblioteca da Escola (PNBE) do MEC — pelo que soube por uma amiga, os exemplares chegaram às escolas no final do ano passado.

Na sequência, traduzi duas HQs do personagem Corto Maltese, de Hugo Pratt, para a Editora Nemo, também do Grupo Autêntica, e em 2013 aceitei o desafio de traduzir do francês A guerra dos botões, de Louis Pergaud, que deve sair este ano.

Quando a Carol me chamou para escrever um artigo sobre tradução literária para o blogue dela, fiquei muito feliz e honrado com o convite, mas também preocupado por não saber se teria muita coisa interessante para escrever sobre o assunto. Acabei decidindo compartilhar minha história, que procurei sintetizar ao máximo para não ficar maçante, e um pouco do meu processo de tradução, que apresento a seguir. Não é nenhuma receita de como traduzir e não sei se funcionaria para qualquer pessoa, mas para mim dá bastante certo.

Costumo traduzir, especialmente textos literários, em quatro etapas. A primeira é uma leitura da obra, o que não quer dizer que eu leia a obra toda primeiro, apenas que começo por essa leitura. Normalmente, antes de terminá-la, quando ainda faltam alguns capítulos para ler, inicio a segunda etapa, na qual faço uma tradução-rascunho, com bem pouca pesquisa e quase sem consultar dicionários, internet, etc. A sobreposição me possibilita distribuir o trabalho de acordo com o meu “pique” em cada horário do dia, trabalhando nesta segunda etapa durante o dia e apenas lendo os capítulos que faltam à noite ou quando estou cansado, por exemplo.

Essa tradução-rascunho serve principalmente para fazer um reconhecimento das dificuldades do trabalho. O resultado é um texto cheio de asteriscos marcando dúvidas e pontos que precisarão de mais pesquisa ou reflexão, e barras separando possibilidades de solução.

Essa estratégia traz bons resultados por dois motivos. Primeiro, porque o próprio texto pode ter, mais adiante, soluções ou dicas para chegar a soluções para as pendências; muitas vezes na etapa seguinte a melhor escolha entre duas ou mais opções iniciais fica clara pela relação com dificuldades e necessidades verificadas em outros pontos do texto. O segundo motivo é que nosso cérebro trabalha mesmo sem percebermos. Sabe quando ficamos tentando lembrar o nome de algo e não conseguimos de forma alguma, para depois a lembrança vir quando nem estamos mais pensando no assunto? Pois é, nosso cérebro deve ficar vasculhando os próprios arquivos e testando sinapses até encontrar a resposta. Daí a tradução para aquele trocadilho do original, ou para aquele versinho que não estava rimando na música que o personagem cantarolou, vir de repente no banho (já me ocorreu), ou na cama, no ônibus, na rua…

A etapa seguinte é a tradução propriamente dita, com toda a pesquisa e as tomadas de decisão necessárias. Aqui não pode sobrar mais nenhum asterisco de dúvida, e para todo problema é preciso dar uma solução — e só uma. É a etapa mais difícil e mais densa, mas é bastante facilitada pela anterior e traz a satisfação de ver seu texto definitivo se delineando, o livro começando a se tornar uma obra em português. Costumo começá-la quando concluí por volta de 70 % da etapa anterior, de modo que há uma nova sobreposição, que me permite fazer este trabalho mais denso quando estou com a cabeça mais fresca, normalmente de manhã, e voltar para a tradução-rascunho à tarde ou quando já estou cansado.

Além de deixar meu expediente menos cansativo, gosto dessa sobreposição também por outras razões. Por exemplo, o fato de assim trabalhar simultaneamente em dois pontos distintos do livro contribui para tratá-lo como uma unidade de sentido, evitando incoerências e ajudando a pensar em soluções tradutórias que funcionem bem para o texto como um todo. Além disso, conforme vou resolvendo impasses das primeiras partes, os rascunhos das partes finais vão ficando com menos asteriscos e barras, mais próximos da tradução definitiva, o que leva a uma aceleração das duas etapas na reta final.

Normalmente sem sobreposições é a etapa final, que consiste na leitura do texto em português, tentando vê-lo como a obra independente que será para o leitor final, que o lerá sem ter lido antes o original — daí procurar evitar a sobreposição com a etapa anterior, mais ligada ao texto estrangeiro. Aqui são aparadas as últimas arestas para chegar à tradução “final” enviada à editora.

O “final” entre aspas é porque o processo de produção do livro ainda terá várias outras etapas. O texto passará por revisores, preparadores, diagramadores (e voltará, espera-se, para eu aprovar as alterações feitas), e seguirá seu curso até a publicação, que pode ocorrer vários meses após a entrega da tradução, obrigando-me à hercúlea tarefa de controlar meus níveis de ansiedade.

I love learning about other translators’ experiences! Is it just me, or do you also like it? I think we can always learn something from them. And, of course, it didn’t surprise me that I enjoyed reading yours, Reginaldo! Such a beautifully written text. Thanks a lot for accepting my invite and for taking your (precious and busy) time to compose something this great. 🙂

Anyone?

About the author
Sou tradutor técnico e literário, com seis traduções publicadas e uma no forno. Sou bacharel em Letras com Habilitação de Tradutor pela Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) e mestre em Estudos da Tradução pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC). Eventualmente, ministro cursos e palestras sobre tradução e participo de congressos na área. Também sou autor, junto com a Profa. Dra. Claudia Zavaglia, do livro Parece mas não é: as armadilhas da tradução do italiano para o português.

18Mar2014

Guest post: Pro bono translation

Posted in Guest post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Here we are again, with another guest post. Today, Elis Portela talks about pro bono translation and also suggests a couple of serious organizations we can help if we like.

Welcome, Elis!

Translating for a Cause

Being a good translator is a lot of hard work, but it is also a great privilege. It takes a great deal of studying, reading, writing, practicing and learning from mistakes and experience. But afterwards, all of this hard work gives us translators access to an unbelievable amount of information and, very often, a background that allows us to be more understanding of other cultures. Usually, we are avid readers, researchers and communicators, and we are always working towards understanding as best we can someone else’s point of view and sharing it with different audiences.

But maybe after a while working daily with translation, we might start taking for granted the invaluable access we have to information, and we might end up applying our skill sets in a way that is much more restricted than it has to be – after all, such skills can be applied to raising awareness and promoting education about important issues. If we take a good look around, we can identify many causes that are worth spreading information about, but remain restricted to smaller communities or groups due to linguistic barriers. We all know that both language and, in a wider sense, information, are tools that can be used to divide and deprive people or, inversely, to join them around a common cause or belief.

Apart from our paying jobs, translators can choose what kind of information they believe is important spreading, and volunteer to share such information. We can benefit greatly from working around subjects that impact other people’s lives and – why not? – the world we live in; in the very least, we benefit from developing a wider understanding of different themes and communities. There are many charitable and humanitarian associations that rely mainly on donations and don’t have a budget for translation, and that could really use our help. (By the way, an important distinction should be made here: like many professionals of all areas, it really annoys me when big companies call for volunteers to translate or “crowdsource” their materials for free. There is no reason qualified professionals should just give their services to a company that makes profit. And I also find it a little unsettling when big websites use students from English courses to “translate” their content for free and sort of give translation a bad name, but that is just me.)

To give an overview, I selected materials available from the websites of some organizations that rely on volunteer translation-related work to give us some insight on what they do and maybe some inspiration about what we can do:

On the website of The Rosetta Foundation (whose mission statement is to “Relieve poverty, support healthcare, develop education and promote justice through equal access to information and knowledge across the languages of the world.”), for instance, we can read inspiring testimonials from translators about their volunteer work and about the projects they feel proud to have worked on. One of such testimonials reads:

Worthwhile and helpful actions in the world should be amplified, not impeded, by language. Non-profit organizations provide often-invaluable services to society and I believe it is important to contribute to their efforts wherever possible. Providing translations is a simple contribution, but one that can make a huge difference.

On the website of Translators Without Borders, we can see their count of 15,868,825 translated words donated so far, and on their About Us page, we read:

Knowledge is power. It saves lives, lifts people out of poverty, ensures better health and nutrition, creates and maintains economies.
Access to information is critical. Language barriers cost lives. Aid groups working in crisis-situations face a mission-critical challenge in disseminating knowledge in the language of those who need it.

On the About Us page of the website of Global Voices Online, we can read:

Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.

Global Voices Online created the Project Lingua, which “amplifies Global Voices stories in languages other than English with the help of volunteer translators.”

These are just a few examples of what we can dedicate our time and expertise to, but, of course, there are many others. Hopefully, each one of us can find a cause that is dear to our hearts and just get involved!

Thanks a lot for your lovely contribution and for raising our awareness, Elis! It was a real pleasure having you on the blog.

Do you do pro bono translation? Do you work with any of these organizations? Would you suggest any other?

About the author
I have a BA in Translation Studies (English and Italian) from Unesp. Currently, I am getting my Postgraduate degree in Discourse Analysis with emphasis in Marketing from Uniara. I have been working with translation ever since my graduation in 2008, at first in a company and currently at home. I absolutely love being a free-lance translator and – for now – would not trade my job for any other job I can think of.

11Mar2014

Guest post: Feedback

Posted in Guest post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

And… we’re back with our guest series! Did you miss it? I missed all the engagement you always provide in our posts!
So let’s get back to business! Today’s guest is Cesar Faria, a fellow translator and dear friend who has also studied at the same university as I did. He’ll talk about feedback – in my opinion, a pretty important topic for all translators.
Welcome, Cesar!

Embed from Getty Images

Feedback: Good Even When Bad

It was a warm Friday, 4 p.m., and I had just shut my laptop down after a quite busy week splitting my days into my two careers at that time – English teacher and translator on my first steps. I just wanted some time to relax and take a quick rest to charge batteries for the night to come, but then my cell phone rings…

To my surprise, it was the QA coordinator of the only agency I used to provide services to at that time. I had her as a contact on Skype, but never really had the opportunity to talk to her. Well, once she identified herself, my blood went cold, a rabble of insane butterflies invaded my stomach and I knew that I could not expect anything exciting from it.

And I was right. She introduced herself very kindly and asked me to open my Skype so we could talk about a file I had translated some two months before. It was a big and complex .ppt file about investment funds to be translated overnight, so they offered me a very good rush fee. I had started working as a translator no more than six months before that, but I felt I could do the job properly, since my productivity was fine at that time. I was deadly wrong. Deadline was almost not met, a lot of mistakes were pointed out, the main client returned the file with lots of complaints and a discount penalty was applied.

I couldn’t feel any more frustrated with such unpleasant situation. However, the QA coordinator was quite nice and empathetic, and told me very gently that I could learn from that experience and use it to improve my skills and attention. By then, I had never had any kind of feedback and, mainly because it was a negative one, it served to put me in a very attentive and cautious state before, during and after any translation job. I can sure say that my concerns regarding quality started being built and developed by such traumatic event.

Time has passed, and now a great deal of my jobs consists on project coordination and editing/reviewing, and for most of them I have to provide feedback for the translators involved. As I always remember the extremely polite manner my former QA coordinator handled the aforementioned situation – and since that made me grow professionally as well – I would like to share some hints for translators, especially beginners, on how to deal with feedback:

Read all corrections and suggestions, and create a separate file with them. I always keep a feedback file per client and a master file with all the feedback I received. This can help you learn from specialists or clients from very specific fields, and you will always have that ace up your sleeves if a terminology/consistency problem occurs in a future project for the same client.

If you don’t agree with something, question it. Naturally, if you think you are right, you are going to do some further research to prove your point of view. Do it politely and don’t forget to include good sources. In our profession, there is no room for arrogance. Everybody knows time is critical and short, and – as human beings – mistakes can happen, even from those who are supposed to correct them.

After receiving, reading and agreeing on what was written about your job, do not just turn your back, forget about it and go back to your translations. It is always a good idea to reply to the message. Preparing lists of mistakes, indicating corrections, suggesting ways to improve style, among other things, is very time-consuming and stressful. Particularly, I am not very fond of being responsible for giving someone a negative feedback, but when I have to do it, it is good to know from the person evaluated that everything was understood and next time will be better.

Finally, we all know that translation is an activity that requires continuous learning; we will never know everything; and we should learn from our mistakes. And I am also completely aware that last sentence was a total cliché, but I do believe that all those thoughts are essential to make us more careful and responsible when a job is assigned to us.

Thanks Carol for the opportunity, and I will be tremendously happy to read comments and other stories related to this topic. Feel free to email me as well: cesarhf.translator@gmail.com.

Thank you, Cesar, for accepting my invitation! I really appreciate your taking the time to write something for our blog. Your advice is great, and I hope our followers also enjoy it.

So what do you say? What’s your opinion on feedfback?

About the author
I graduated in Translation in 2004, but started working as an English teacher during and after graduation. In 2009, I quit the job and traveled to Canada to have some fun. There, I played the bass in a heavy metal band in an almost coast-to-coast tour, started dating my wife and working as a translator. When I got back to Brazil in late 2010, I decided that I wanted to be a freelance translator and that is what I am since then.

25Feb2014

Guest post: Newbie translators (in Portuguese)

Posted in Guest post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Hello, dear followers! It’s good to have you back. 🙂
We had a slight change in our calendar, so our guest today is Maria Regina Canova, talking about translation difficulties.

Welcome, Maria! 🙂

Conselhos aos tradutores iniciantes

Fiquei muito feliz quando a Carol me convidou para escrever no blog. Decidi falar sobre as dificuldades na tradução, principalmente as que eu encontrei quando comecei a traduzir, mas apesar de eu trabalhar mais com tradução do alemão, esta postagem não é sobre dificuldades exclusivas do alemão, são dificuldades que podem atrapalhar qualquer tradutor iniciante. Apesar de os assuntos que decidi abordar serem óbvios para alguns, acho importante compartilhar as minhas experiências.

Antes de entrar no mercado de tradução, os tradutores devem conhecer bem o mercado, para saber quais oportunidades de trabalho eles podem ter com aquele idioma. O que não foi o meu caso, eu não sabia nada sobre o mercado de traduções técnicas quando decidi me dedicar à tradução. Só depois que consegui o meu primeiro estágio que descobri que São Paulo é o maior polo industrial alemão fora da Alemanha. O que isso significava para mim? Que na área de traduções técnicas do alemão, grande parte dos textos é da área de exatas. Tudo que eu odiava! Ou achava que odiava na época.

Além de conhecer o mercado para saber quais áreas têm bastante trabalho, os tradutores também precisam conhecer a área (ou as áreas) com a qual eles trabalham. Ou seja, não dá para traduzir um texto sobre algo que você não entende no idioma original. O texto vai ficar igualmente ininteligível depois da tradução. Conheço alguns tradutores que fizeram uma segunda faculdade para aprender sobre a área específica que eles desejavam traduzir, mas sei que isso é para poucos. E não acho que fazer uma segunda faculdade seja um pré-requisito para virar tradutor, eu não aguentaria fazer uma faculdade de engenharia. Mas o tradutor deve, pelo menos, pesquisar o assunto na internet e estudar um pouco.

Mas não adianta saber sobre um assunto se você não souber bem o idioma. É fundamental para qualquer tradutor ter fluência nos idiomas com os quais ele vai trabalhar. Lógico que é difícil ter o conhecimento dos termos técnicos quando você começa a trabalhar na área, mas o tradutor deve conhecer as regras gramaticais dos idiomas. Por exemplo, como o alemão é uma língua declinável, a frase não precisa seguir a ordem Sujeito Verbo Predicado. O tradutor deve conhecer as declinações dos artigos para identificar qual é o sujeito e qual é o predicado da frase.

Por último, o tradutor deve lembrar que os dicionários são os seus melhores amigos! Sei que é difícil encontrar dicionários técnicos bons e que eles são sempre caros, mas valem o investimento.

Thanks for accepting my invitation, Maria! It was nice learning a bit more about your experience as a German translator in Brazil.

As always, feel free to comment below. 😉

About the author
Sou bacharel em Letras: Português e Alemão pela USP. E sou completamente apaixonada pela língua alemã. Atualmente traduzo textos técnicos de engenharia e mecânica/automotiva.

18Feb2014

Guest post: Freelance versus in-house translator

Posted in Freelance life, Guest post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Here we are again, with yet another guest in our series. Today, Mariana Sasso will talk about the differences between a freelance and an in-house translator. I hope you enjoy her writing as much as I did.

Welcome, Mariana!

Working in-house or from home: A few insights

When I graduated from university a few years ago, I had no idea what my future professional life would hold in store for me, but I was pretty sure I wanted to translate for a living. And that’s what I have been striving to do ever since, but not without a lot of support of colleagues and friends who’ve blazed the trail of living as a professional translator before me. Carol is among the dearest of them, so, when she asked me to share my take on in-house and freelance translation with her readers, I was more than glad to oblige.

However, the first thing that crossed my mind was my awareness that my professional experience is still so slender that I was not completely sure I’d be the right person to write about the perks and bereavements of these two ways of working as a translator. But, then I thought of all those who have taken their time to share their own experiences with me and how good it was to just listen and learn from them, no matter how much or how little their professional experiences related to mine. So I figured that it would still be worth (and fun) sharing my ever-under-construction experience here, however small it may be now. So I selected four aspects about working as an in-house and/or a freelance translator that I feel most comfortable exploring (and that I have been experiencing with greater intensity on a day-to-day basis over the last years) to share with you. I hope you enjoy the ride!

So, the first one is PRODUCTIVITY. When it comes to how much a translator can actually produce in a given workday, it goes without saying that too many a variable are involved, so let us focus only on the environmental one here. From working in-house, I found that there are certain things that can be inconvenient about being inside an office, surrounded by other people or professionals from different areas. Concentration breakers, such as overhearing talks and whispers of people around you or being interrupted by a fellow colleague who has a question (or just a comment on the weather) or by the door opening for mail delivery (without mentioning the telephone ringing almost non-stop) are less likely to happen at home. Not that these examples are necessarily bad things (I actually happen to enjoy them and find them important at times!), but, in the silence of your own home office, these things tend not to happen just as much. However, at home, for those living with stay-at-home family members (such as retired parents, siblings, children, spouses) we just can’t say that there’s unbreakable silence, right? In any case, being interrupted or having the train of thought lost by whatever reason it may be is something that people may consider as the primary factor to influence production, so if your productivity is significantly impaired by noise and distractions, you might find a lot of comfort working from home.

WORKDAY FLEXIBILITY. Some people tend to mention the working hour flexibility as the major perk of being a freelance translator. Schedule flexibility can be a reality, but that is not necessarily true every hour of every day. For instance, if you have few clients and are not near consolidated in the market, if you are at the initial stages of your career and still haven’t reached a somewhat fixed number of jobs a day, then you will probably be stuck at working when there’s work to do (nights, weekends or holidays too). But if that is not your case, yes you can have a very eventful life during weekdays and business hours, as long as you arrange your schedule and plan ahead of time. The word of order here is organization. One’s got to be extra, extra organized if they want to work from home and be self-employed. Remember: there’s no one pushing you forward, so you’ve got to do that yourself. If you have, say, a 9-to-5 job at a company, you’re usually guaranteed at least eight hours of work a day and you’ll stay there doing what is needed of you until the end of your work shift, when, more often than not, you will be “free” to go home and do your things. When you’re a freelance translator, however, those regular, specified and guaranteed working hours are not always a reality, so your schedule flexibility will depend on the jobs you have and their deadlines (and, if you have bills to pay at the end of the month, odds are that your expected schedule flexibility will be secondary to your dues).

BEING A REGULAR EMPLOYER versus BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR. I believe that this is the real deal-breaker for a professional translator to decide whether they can live as a freelance service provider for the long run or not. When you work for a company, its HR department will manage pretty much every aspect involved in the bureaucratic part of the employment relationship: collection, preparation and filing of documents; awareness and compliance with labor laws; collection, payment, deposit and transfer of fees, salaries, taxes, bonuses, vacation pay and rights, including the ever-so-needed FGTS (Brazilian Government Severance Indemnity Fund). When you are self-employed, you have to take care of all those things yourself and/or with the services of an accountant. On top of that, self-employed professionals will only “be paid” if they have work to do and, in order to have work to do, they need to develop their entrepreneurial side and literally go after the job; promote themselves and their work; explain and prove why they should be chosen over other professionals; advertise their services and, not rarely, almost literally dig the job from the mines. However, one might argue that this is no different than the reality of every other professional looking for a job. And I agree, but for self-employed translators, that’s the reality in most days, if not every day! There is an undeniable and material difference between working for a company and being the company yourself, in which case, you would need to take entrepreneurship to a whole new level. While some professionals will find this reality a bummer and extremely hard to deal with, others will find it challenging, stimulating, interesting and rewarding. I believe there is no real way to actually know for sure what suits you best unless you’ve experienced both ways. Believing you can be an effective entrepreneur may be proved right or wrong once you’ve experienced the real deal.

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP. Oh, the wonders of having co-workers by your side, keeping you company, interacting with you all day… (or not! :)). Even though this aspect interfaces with the first one mentioned in this post, this is not about productivity, but mainly about human interaction and being comfortable at your workplace. Some people simply enjoy the company of others as they work, while other people prefer to work by themselves, in the quietness and peacefulness of their own offices, where they can turn the music on, up or down, eat at their desks, not worry about wearing fancy clothes and tight shoes, enjoy the comfortableness of using their own bathrooms, remain quiet if they don’t feel like talking or chatting, and, of course, inevitably revving-up their concentration into full blast productivity. Other people just can’t stand the quietness and solitude: they need company and, sometimes, even noise; they like arriving at the office and dispensing heartfelt “good mornings”, sharing a cup of coffee and cookies in the company of the next-desk friend, gossiping over the latest facts, hearing the latest news, well, ultimately bonding with others during their working hours. That full dose of every-day human interaction at work can be really important and necessary for some (most?) people. Having in-house co-workers can make it easier for people to exchange opinions, experiences, questions, problems, excitements, achievements, frustrations, discoveries; improve and increase their network; learn from other people’s mistakes, you name it. However, in spite of being able to do all that in person, face to face and fairly instantly in an in-house environment, that absolutely does not mean you can’t have most any of those things working from home and using real-time technology to connect you with other people. It all depends on your needs and approach as to how efficiently and productively you want to establish your interpersonal relationships and build a solid network. It is undeniable that there are ups and downs to both ways and that they are not perfectly interchangeable, but I believe that having healthy and productive interpersonal relationships is just as possible at home as it is in the office, if you make it.

Well, there are so many other issues to explore on this topic that I could just go on forever, but Ithought it was best to focus on these four aspects of the topic at hand (Libra as I am, you might figure how hard it was for me to actually make the choice). Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments below and/or contact me at marianasasso@gmail.com.

Best of luck!

Thanks a lot for accepting my invite and for dedicating your time and effort to writing this wonderful post, Mariana! I loved it! 🙂

Our next guest will be Sara Rivera, talking about translation traps between Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Stay tuned!

Any in-house/freelance translators who want to share their takes?

About the author
I graduated in Translations in 2005 and, soon after that, I moved to the USA where I lived, studied and worked as an AuPair for two years. I completed my specialization in Advanced Studies in English Language in 2012 and I have been working as both an in-house and freelance Eng-Por-Eng translator since 2008.

11Feb2014

Guest post: Public Health translation

Posted in Guest post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Hello, followers! Good to have you back!
Our guest series had a great start last week. I’m extremely happy you liked the idea. Thank you!
So here we are again with our next guest, Carolina Ventura, who is a professional translator in the Public Health domain.

Welcome, Carolina!

Me, my translations and the Public Health field: a love story

First of all, I’d like to thank my friend and fellow translator Caroline Alberoni for inviting me to write a post about my experience as a translator for her blog! This is the first time I do something like this, and I can say that I’m enjoying every bit of it – to actually WRITE something instead of TRANSLATING something that somebody else wrote is wonderful for a change!

I decided to be a translator when I was 20 years old. In 1991, I was in my first year of the Biology undergraduate course at Universidade de São Paulo – USP (Brazil), but all of a sudden I understood why I had been so miserable since the beginning of the course: I’d made the wrong choice. I didn’t want to be a biologist after all – I wanted to study languages. In fact, I wanted to continue studying English, something that I’d been doing for the previous ten years at a private English school, but I didn’t want to be an English teacher. I wanted to be a translator.

I abandoned the Biology course and in 1992 I started the English Language and Literature Undergraduate Course at Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUCSP). I majored in Translation and I’ve never been miserable about my choice in twenty years working as a professional translator!

I can say that I chose my career, but the translation specialty chose me. In my first year of the English course at university, my father, who is a professor at the School of Public Health of USP, told me that a fellow professor needed to translate a paper into English to publish it in an international journal, and asked me if I could do it. I accepted the challenge, the author liked the result, and she and my dad started indicating me whenever they had an opportunity. Some say that word-of-mouth communication is more efficient than advertising, and I must agree with it. Interestingly enough, the translation direction also chose me: I can say that 99% of what I do is translate from Portuguese into English, and 1% accounts for English -> Portuguese translations. It’s been like this since the very beginning, but I didn’t choose it.

So, I’ve been translating academic papers in the area of Public Health from Portuguese into English for the past 20 years. “Do I get sick of it sometimes?”, you might be wondering. Well, no! Within the Public Health area, you can translate a paper on perinatal mortality in hospitals of São Paulo on one day, then translate a study on malaria treatment among pregnant women in the Amazon region, and end the week translating a paper about the contributions of anthroposophical medicine to integrality in medical education. Besides enhancing my personal knowledge about a theme that I like (after all, I wouldn’t have chosen to study Biology if I weren’t interested in the Health Sciences, right?), I really enjoy helping to give international visibility to the research production of Brazilian scientists! I like to think about the role I play when papers about Brazil’s achievements (and also failures) in the Public Health area are published in international journals.

I also translate texts from other areas, mainly Education, Applied Linguistics, Communication and Business Administration. This surely helps me not to feel bored about my work, but nothing pleases me more than being asked to translate an academic paper in the field of health. When I translate texts from other areas, I have to spend more time doing research before I start translating, whereas when I must translate a public health text, all I have to do is sit in my chair, turn the computer on, and start translating the text right away!

I work for two kinds of clients, always as a freelance translator: individuals who wish to submit their papers to international journals and scientific journals that have their own translation teams. In recent years, I’ve been working on a regular basis for six Brazilian journals: one about Public Health, Education and Communication; one about Nursing; one about Physical Activity and Health; one about Human Growth and Development; one about Business Administration; and one about Brazilian cities and metropolises. My payment is made in three ways: the papers’ authors pay for the translations themselves; the journal is bilingual, so it pays for the translations; the journal and the author pay 50% of the translation cost each. Unfortunately, the payment made via the Institution that houses the journal can take much longer than expected – well, who said it would always be a bed of roses?

Do I use any CAT tools to help me translate the papers? As this is a fashionable topic nowadays, I feel I must approach it, so here it goes: no, so far I haven’t. I’ve already attended a couple of courses on CAT tools, but translating academic papers involves respecting the academic style, the style of the area (for example: public health papers are written differently from applied linguistics papers, both in terms of academic style and jargon), and the author’s idiosyncratic style, and I don’t think CAT tools are of much help here. Besides, my services are not hired through translation agencies, which means I don’t have to deliver translation memories and the like. I’ve asked some of my colleagues who work with me in the same journals about this, but they haven’t felt the need to use CAT tools so far. No client has ever asked us to translate their papers using TRADOS or memoQ. For the time being, our work can continue to be similar to that of an “artisan of words”, and I guess Google Translate won’t replace us in the near future. Obviously, necessity is the mother of invention, and it’s more than likely that we’ll have to adapt to the new reality soon – and I’m okay with this!

Well, this is the “love story” I wanted to share with you! I hope you’ve liked it! Please feel free to post any doubts or comments you may have!

It’s my pleasure having you as a guest in our blog, Carolina! It’s interesting to see how people have different starts in our profession, and learning more about the Public Health domain was also great! 🙂 Thank you for sharing your experience with us!

Our next guest will be Mariana Sasso, talking about freelance versus in-house translator. Stay tuned!

About the author
I have a BA in English Language and Literature (majors in Translation and Teaching) and an MA in Applied Linguistics and Language Studies from PUCSP (Catholic University of São Paulo). My Master’s thesis focused on the translation into English of Annual Reports released by a Brazilian retail company. I’m also a public sworn translator for the State of São Paulo, Brazil.

4Feb2014

Guest post: Proofreading (in Portuguese)

Posted in Guest post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Hello, dear followers! Today we start February with exciting news in our blog: kicking off a guest series. I have invited friends and fellow translators to write about something they are good at, passionate about or simply related to their area of expertise. The idea popped up because many of them work in specific domains, and I thought it would be interesting if we had them talk about it to know more about other fields as well.
Our first guest is Beatriz Camacho, who is a professional proofreader and will be talking about her job (in Portuguese).

Welcome, Beatriz!

O (incompreendido) revisor

O perfil do profissional

Dizem por aí que todo revisor sofre de TOC. Será? Piadinhas à parte, ser detalhista é sim condição fundamental para quem almeja seguir a profissão.

E, além do alto grau de atenção aos detalhes, gostar de ler também deve fazer parte do pacote. Mas gostar somente não basta; tem de amar. Incondicionalmente. Afinal, você alternará seus dias entre vampiros, zumbis, fórmulas químicas, mapas, receitas de bolos, milionários sadomasoquistas e não terá como fugir!

Recomenda-se ainda ao revisor cultivar um viveiro de pulgas atrás da orelha: duvidar de tudo e de todos. Nenhum dado ou grafia pode passar batido. Ao menor sinal de desconfiança, deve-se deixar todas as supostas certezas para trás e pesquisar como se não houvesse amanhã.

E, tocando num ponto delicado: como saber a hora (e a real necessidade) de intervir no texto e a hora de respeitar as escolhas alheias? Revisor sofre…

*pausa dramática*

Bom, vamos lá: como agir numa situação em que você precisa ter um olhar crítico sobre um texto e, ao mesmo tempo, aceitar escolhas de outras pessoas, mesmo não concordando com elas? Bom senso. Fácil assim? Hum… mais ou menos. Na revisão, a prática não leva à perfeição (o que me mata de catapora!), mas pelo menos nos ensina a tomar algumas decisões mais conscientes e maduras, como o desapego. No início, é difícil pro revisor entender/aceitar que ele não precisa necessariamente mexer em tudo (mostrar serviço, poxa!). Mas que também se não mexer em nada deve desconfiar de que há algo errado (sempre haverá erros!). Esse meio termo é o que embola tudo e, às vezes, acaba deixando autores/tradutores com raiva!

Mas vamos com calma, gente! Depois de alguns anos de experiência, aprendi basicamente que: o que for facultativo deixa como está; se quiser incluir alguma sugestão que você considera relevante, um recadinho a lápis (ou balão de comentário) não faz mal a ninguém, mas quando houver ERRO… aí pode baixar a Stabilo vermelha!

Por fim, precisamos ter em mente que cada profissional tem seu papel dentro do processo editorial, o que parece óbvio, mas na prática não é bem assim. O revisor é o primeiro leitor de uma obra. Um leitor mais crítico, uma espécie de filtro para o público. É ele quem vai escolher palavras, ajustar frases, corrigir vícios de linguagem, enfim, deixar o texto fluido na língua nativa do leitor comum.

Uma revisão criteriosa, mais que simples perfumaria, é o cartão de visitas de um livro.

O trabalho

De um modo (bem) geral, o trabalho do revisor consiste em corrigir erros ortográficos e gramaticais.

Ah, se fosse só isso… *suspiro profundo*

Agora, inclua aí: verificar coesão e coerência, eliminar traços remanescentes da língua estrangeira, ambiguidades, repetições e vícios de linguagem, analisar a disposição dos elementos na página (se não há buraco ou estouro), conferir os pesos dos títulos e a paginação, bater o sumário com o miolo, acertar o tamanho das letras e as fontes etc. etc. etc.

UFA!

Viu, gente? Não é só trocar ‘esTe’ por ‘esSe’, não!

E é importante mencionar que os trabalhos citados acima, na maioria das vezes, são divididos em etapas: preparação (copydesk), primeira revisão, segunda revisão, releitura e controle de qualidade. Nem sempre todas elas são contempladas no processo, seja por falta de orçamento ou prazo, o que impossibilita uma divisão exata da função do revisor em cada uma.

Perspectiva de carreira

O campo de atuação do revisor é extenso: editoras (livros em geral, revistas, jornais, material didático), agências de publicidade, universidades, escolas, agências de tradução, produtoras editoriais, gráficas etc.

As editoras literárias (sonho de consumo de 9 entre 10 revisores) não costumam contar com uma equipe interna. Geralmente, o trabalho é terceirizado, por meio da contratação de freelas. Já em editoras que trabalham com livros didáticos, é muito comum haver uma equipe contratada trabalhando internamente.

A carga horária do revisor deve ser de 6 horas por dia, segundo norma do sindicato, mas nem sempre isso acontece.

Bom, acho que é isso…

Gostaria de agradecer à Carol pelo convite e parabenizá-la pela iniciativa de discutir assuntos que envolvem a tradução.

Espero que tenham gostado! E caso tenham alguma dúvida ou queiram conversar mais sobre o assunto, meu e-mail é: beatrizfcamacho@gmail.com.

You’re more than welcome, Beatriz! Thank you for being so kind and enthusiastic about my invitation (and for being the first guest). I loved learning more about the life of a proofreader. 🙂

Our next guest will be Carolina Ventura, who will be talking about medical translation, on February 11.

Are there any other proofreaders out there that would like to add something? Please feel free to share your thoughts.

About the author
Sou graduada em Tradução e mestre em Linguística pela Unesp. Desisti de seguir na carreira acadêmica e, em busca da minha real vocação, acabei descobrindo que a tradução era apenas a porta de entrada para o incrível mundo editorial. Hoje, oficialmente, sou revisora de livros didáticos, mas também edito, preparo e traduzo, como freelancer, para várias editoras.