Elena Patarini Slawinski

Question and Answer

• What is your name?
  • Elena Patarini Slawinski
• Where do you live?
  • Canada/Italy
• What made you decide to become a translator or interpreter?
  • Love for language, desire for precision in transposition, freedom, love for literature, natural ability with languages
• List one strength that you think sets you apart from your colleagues.
  • Wide culture
• Name the one thing that you most enjoy in your translating or interpreting career.
  • Precision
• 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 always learn from all translations. Bad texts stimulates me even more, as I try not to betray them but at the same time attempt make the translation acceptable and interesting for the readers. It takes out the perfectionist in me
• 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?
  • I am still quite at the beginning so I would really welcome advice from more "seasoned" translators
• 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.
  • Online dictionaries
• What's the best book you've read this year?
  • After Babel, G. Steiner

When it first appeared in 1975, After Babel created a sensation, quickly establishing itself as both a controversial and seminal study of literary theory. In the original edition, Steiner provided readers with the first systematic investigation since the eighteenth century of the phenomenology and processes of translation both inside and between languages. Taking issue with the principal emphasis of modern linguistics, he finds the root of the "Babel problem" in our deep instinct for privacy and territory, noting that every people has in its language a unique body of shared secrecy. With this provocative thesis he analyzes every aspect of translation from fundamental conditions of interpretation to the most intricate of linguistic constructions.
For the long-awaited second edition, Steiner entirely revised the text, added new and expanded notes, and wrote a new preface setting the work in the present context of hermeneutics, poetics, and translation studies. This new edition brings the bibliography up to the present with substantially updated references, including much Russian and Eastern European material. Like the towering figures of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault, Steiner's work is central to current literary thought. After Babel, Third Edition is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the debates raging in the academy today.

Osama Ali Ata El Manan

Question and Answer

• What is your name?
  • Osama Ali Ata El Manan
• Where do you live?
  • Abu Dhabi, UAE
• What made you decide to become a translator or interpreter?
  • I like languages from my childhood. I have very good skills in Arabic writing and English. I used to write stories. I started by learning words with their meanings. I fond of reading novels, classic and contemporary. I find myself acquiring new translation skills every time and then. Now I don't feel i am an excellent translator, as everyday I face new challenges.
• List one strength that you think sets you apart from your colleagues.
  • Arabic and English medical and legal translations
• Name the one thing that you most enjoy in your translating or interpreting career.
  • Reading others translation works.
• 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.
  • Translating DNA Research.I spent much time trying to translate new DNA terms into Arabic.It is very difficult job. I started asking Arab DNA experts, who helped me a lot. I have learned new terms, concepts and methods.
• 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 live, study and work in a country where English or other languages is a native language.
• 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.
  • Google translate
• What's the best book you've read this year?
  • An Arabic translation of Animal Farm
    By: Orewl

Gabriel Rymberg

Question and Answer

• What is your name?
  • Gabriel Rymberg
• Where do you live?
  • Israel
• What made you decide to become a translator or interpreter?
  • Opportunity
• List one strength that you think sets you apart from your colleagues.
  • I see it a a way to serve - lovingly.
• Name the one thing that you most enjoy in your translating or interpreting career.
  • Every day is different.
• 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.
  • Patience
• 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?
  • Patience
• 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.
  • A good dictionary
• What's the best book you've read this year?
  • Mastering the Money Game
    By: Tony Robbins

Zaneta Barska

Question and Answer

• What is your name, where do you live, and how long have you been an interpreter or translator?
  • Zaneta Barska
• Where do you Live?
  • London, UK
• What made you decide to become a translator or interpreter?
  • I always knew I would become a translator.
• List one strength that you think sets you apart from your colleagues.
  • Unusual language combination Polish and Greek
• Name the one thing that you most enjoy in your translating or interpreting career.
  • Learning new words
• 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.
  • One of my first assignments was a translation of a book. I was recommended by a friend and the director of the publishing house was my friend's friend.
    I did not sign any contract, but felt safe that I will get paid since it was someone that my friend knew. Unfortunately, in the end the director did not want to pay me.
    I hired a lawyer and got paid only 2 years later. From this experience, I learned that I always have to sign contracts with all my clients.
• 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?
  • I think the best advice for my younger self is to talk to other people about my job and start networking as soon as possible.
    Also, learn from more experienced translators about the business side of the profession.
• 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.
  • linguee.com
• What's the best book you've read this year?
  • Mo Yan, Big Breasts and Wide Hips

In his latest novel, Mo Yan—arguably China's most important contemporary literary voice—recreates the historical sweep and earthy exuberance of his much acclaimed novel Red Sorghum. In a country where patriarchal favoritism and the primacy of sons survived multiple revolutions and an ideological earthquake, this epic novel is first and foremost about women, with the female body serving as the book's central metaphor. The protagonist, Mother, is born in 1900 and married at seventeen into the Shangguan family. She has nine children, only one of whom is a boy—the narrator of the book. A spoiled and ineffectual child, he stands in stark contrast to his eight strong and forceful female siblings.

Mother, a survivor, is the quintessential strong woman who risks her life to save several of her children and grandchildren. The writing is picturesque, bawdy, shocking, and imaginative. The structure draws on the essentials of classical Chinese formalism and injects them with extraordinarily raw and surprising prose. Each of the seven chapters represents a different time period, from the end of the Qing dynasty up through the Japanese invasion in the 1930s, the civil war, the Cultural Revolution, and the post-Mao years. Now in a beautifully bound collectors edition, this stunning novel is Mo Yan's searing vision of twentieth-century China