Translation Journal Update | August 4, 2014

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Written by Karen Hodgson

It has been a joy so far for all us of working on the Translation Journal website and this newsletter. On behalf of our small-but-mighty team – Vic, LeeAnn, Christian, and myself – I wish to express sincere thanks for all of the wonderful comments and useful suggestions for improvements to the website and new features and information you’d like to receive in the future.

Please continue to email your thoughts and suggestions. They do matter to us, as we wish to continue to provide a valuable resource for translators and interpreters.

New Additions to the Translation Journal Website

We have added 20 more events to the Events Calendar. Here is a link to the events starting in August.

You can click on the events for more information about them. If you are sponsoring an event or know of one not listed, please send us the details and we will be happy to post it. Here are a few not-to-be-missed upcoming events:

Here are some recommended events:
If you will be in Brisbane in August, you may wish to attend the International Applied Linguistics Association Conference to be held in Brisbane, Australia, August 10–15.

Localization World Conferences always draw huge crowds. They are the one “must-attend” conference for many translators and interpreters, and there are always many translation industry VIPs present. The next conference will be held in Vancouver Canada from October 28–31.

If you will be in the Chicago on November 3-5, the ATA Conference will be well worth your time. Many translators in the USA wholeheartedly agree that this is a not-to-miss conference. You will come away with new insights and perspectives on the translation industry, and quite probably with new friendships and potential clients. If you have never gone to an industry conference, you might seriously consider attending one; the benefits are often well worth the costs.

Have you signed up to the weekly email newsletter? For more information about conferences and recommended tools and other information around the web click here to join and receive the weekly newsletter straight to your inbox.

Recent Contributor Spotlight: 

Our current issue of the Translation Journal features the article "World Literature in Translation: A Threat to the Sovereignty of the Original?" by Anouar El Younssi. Anouar El Younssi is a doctoral candidate in comparative literature and an instructor of comparative literature and Arabic studies at Pennsylvania State University.

He writes, "Some critics in the field of translation studies contend that translation is a suspect practice. They underscore that a work of translation at best cannot and should not be treated as an equal to the original, alerting us to the yet unbridgeable gap between the source and target texts and the respective cultures that inform or inhabit them." To read more on this topic click here.

Plucked from the Web

How many English words do you know? Now you can test how good your English is, right in the privacy of your own home! The Ghent University Center for Reading Research has developed a 4-minute online test that will provide you with a valid estimate of the size of your English vocabulary. The test was developed as part of a research project, and over 500,000 people have participated so far.

The test results have been tabulated and published, and their findings show that some stereotypes appear to have their basis in reality. According to the results to date, men are more likely to know words related weaponry and engineering - such as Humvee, solenoid, and paladin- whereas women have a greater knowledge of words pertaining to fashion and flowers, such as decoupage, taffeta, and bodice.

You can take the test here http://vocabulary.ugent.be/wordtest/start and then head over to Facebook to share your results!

Technology Tip

Our tip of the week is Dropbox .

If you have not yet jumped on the Dropbox bandwagon, get on it right now! Dropbox is an awesome service you can use to back up your data to the cloud, sync information between computers, and share even large files with your clients and friends. It's particularly useful for translators, who routinely work with multi-gigabyte files.

Dropbox is also perfect for dealing with confidential information because Dropbox encrypts everything you upload or download through a secure HTTPS connection. You can also use Dropbox in other ways, such to print files from any computer, to quickly install Android apps, to host your website, and more! The only downside is that a free account comes with only 2GB of storage, which will max out fairly quickly.

I hope you've found this information useful - have a great week!

All the best!

Karen Hodgson