Maria José Wyborn

Question and Answer

• What is your name?
  • Maria José Wyborn
• Where do you live?
  • Cheshire, United Kingdom
• What made you decide to become a translator or interpreter?
  • Opportunity that rose in between jobs
• List one strength that you think sets you apart from your colleagues.
  • Technical knowledge
• Name the one thing that you most enjoy in your translating or interpreting career.
  • Making something unreadable easy and pleasant to read.
• We all have worked on those not-so-perfect assignments. Write about one such assignment that was not ideal and what you learned from it.
  • A document that had been translated from Japanese to English that was written with "rr" changed to "ll". The whole set up and was enclosed in "flames" - since the subject was electrical engineering, this was odd. I discussed this with the client and the whole document had to rewritten in "proper" English.
• If you could go back in time to when you were just starting out as a translator or interpreter, what advice would you give to your younger self?
  • To look immediately for direct clients.
• Name one resource – such as a phone app, CAT tool, website, and so forth – that you find especially helpful in your translating or interpreting work.
  • MemoQ
• What's the best book you've read this year?
  • Do not have a best book

Jennifer O'Donnel

Question and Answer

• What is your name?
  • Jennifer O'Donnel
• Where do you live?
  • UK
• What made you decide to become a translator or interpreter?
  • I was jumping down a mountain in Japan when I was 18 and realised that I loved Japan and Japanese so much that I wanted to be an interpreter as a career. One thing led to another and now I have an MA in Translation do freelance translation. I plan on taking classes in interpreting this year.
• List one strength that you think sets you apart from your colleagues.
  • Adventurous
• Name the one thing that you most enjoy in your translating or interpreting career.
  • Working with interesting people and texts.
• We all have worked on those not-so-perfect assignments. Write about one such assignment that was not ideal and what you learned from it.
  • It was 900+ pages of a dating sim script for 2 of the characters. The pay was around $1 a page in the end and I worked on it for 2 months. Taught be great time management and improved my speed. Also taught me that I need jobs that will pay rent.
• If you could go back in time to when you were just starting out as a translator or interpreter, what advice would you give to your younger self?
  • Go to Japan to do your MA in Translation. The UK education is more academic than vocational and being in Japan for my MA would have been better for me in the long run.
• Name one resource – such as a phone app, CAT tool, website, and so forth – that you find especially helpful in your translating or interpreting work.
  • jisho.org
• What's the best book you've read this year?
  • まおゆう：魔王と勇者 (Maoyuu: The Demon Lord and The Hero)

Marzieh Izadi

Question and Answer

• What is your name?
  • Marzieh Izadi
• Where do you live?
  • Iran
• What made you decide to become a translator or interpreter?
  • Personal pleasure
• List one strength that you think sets you apart from your colleagues.
  • Being studious
• Name the one thing that you most enjoy in your translating or interpreting career.
  • It is never finished, always rolling
• We all have worked on those not-so-perfect assignments. Write about one such assignment that was not ideal and what you learned from it.
  • In the first year of college, I had to translate the little princess English book into Persian. I did the translation and it proves my that I cannot pass on as literary translator.
• If you could go back in time to when you were just starting out as a translator or interpreter, what advice would you give to your younger self?
  • Reading as many books as you can.
• Name one resource – such as a phone app, CAT tool, website, and so forth – that you find especially helpful in your translating or interpreting work.
  • Pros.com
• What's the best book you've read this year?
  • Sovashoun by Daneshvar

Alzbeta Takacsova

Question and Answer

• What is your name?
  • Alzbeta Takacsova
• Where do you live?
  • Slovakia
• What made you decide to become a translator or interpreter?
  • As bilingual since I was born I found language as something easy to learn and interesting in the same time. I love to understand other people and I love to keep on learning everyday.
• List one strength that you think sets you apart from your colleagues.
  • I am a very precice translator and fast learner, quick at writing and technical issues
• Name the one thing that you most enjoy in your translating or interpreting career.
  • Learning new things
• We all have worked on those not-so-perfect assignments. Write about one such assignment that was not ideal and what you learned from it.
  • I had a very nice project, PIL, to proofread for an Indian customer. Unfortunately, I has never been paid.
• If you could go back in time to when you were just starting out as a translator or interpreter, what advice would you give to your younger self?
  • Never give up.
• Name one resource – such as a phone app, CAT tool, website, and so forth – that you find especially helpful in your translating or interpreting work.
  • Internet :D
• What's the best book you've read this year?
  • The Bone People by Keri Hulme

In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes, part Maori, part European, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon's feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where Maori and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge.
Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered wordplay and mesmerizing emotional complexity.