Ana Laura Millán - TRADUCTORA

The life of slang… dot com

2012-01-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

Author

Julie Coleman

Julie Coleman is Professor of English Language at the University of Leicester. Her Life of Slang will be published by OUP in March 2012.

At my son’s recent tenth birthday party, I was struck by differences in the slang used between two groups of friends from different schools. We tend to think of slang as ‘British’, ‘American’, or ‘Australian’ or perhaps as belonging to sub-groups like teenagers or rappers, but it isn’t really that simple because individual social networks develop their own micro-climates of slang usage from among the various words available.

Under the influence

If all the kids in your class use wonga for money, for example, it’s likely that you will too. It isn’t something you’ll think about consciously, probably, but you’ll have heard it used by the children you like and admire, and you’ll have picked it up from them. When they adopt another term, you’ll do the same andwonga will be quietly forgotten. But the people you’re adopting slang from almost certainly won’t have made it up themselves. They probably picked it up from the friends, siblings, or cousins that they look up to. New words are obviously spread by the media and the internet too, but they only become slang when people start using them within their social groups.

Birds of a feather…

During school terms, children spend much more sociable time with the same group of people than adults do. They’ll also be influenced by their friends’ interests in deciding which TV programmes to watch and which computer games to play when their friends aren’t there. Once they start spending unsupervised time online, using social-networking on sites like Facebook and MySpace, slang micro-climates probably become more exposed to external trends, but for now, ten-year olds in two East Midland schools, less than thirty miles apart, are using slang in very different ways.

Change can be awesome

My 10 and 6 year old sons changed school just over a year ago, and in that time they’ve altered their accents (five now sounds like foive, for example), their grammar (oh how I miss those past participles!), and their vocabulary. They’d certainly heard wicked and awesome used to express approval before we moved, but both terms have become much more frequent. Noob and loser were new additions to their vocabulary, both used as general terms of abuse. They also, for a while, used dot com as an interjection giving humorous emphasis to whatever the last speaker had said, but I haven’t heard that recently.Whatever has the opposite effect, and is particularly effectively used to infuriate parents.

Meanwhile, slang usage had changed in the school my sons used to attend. The old friends who came to the recent birthday party were using sweet, epic, andlollage as interjections and adjectives expressing approval: Mr Smith is epic; Sweet!; my new class is lollage.

Nothing new under the sun

Most of these terms aren’t new, and some have a long history that can be traced in the Oxford English Dictionary and in Green’s Historical Dictionary of Slang.Sweet was first used to mean “extremely good” by British criminals in about 1821, with wicked (1842) and awesome (1975) first developing this sense in the US. Wonga “money” was adopted as a slang term from British Romani in around 1984, though it had been in use among Romani-speakers since at least 1874. The use of wonga has increased since it was adopted as the name of an online credit company.

Social outcasts have been called losers since at least 1955, originally in the US, and the US Secretary of Defense included whatever among a list of new slang terms defined for the benefit of returned prisoners of war in 1973. Google blogsearches show that epic, lollage (from LOL “laugh out loud”, since 1989), andnoob (from newbie “a novice” from 1970 in the US military but also later used by computer enthusiasts) have all been used with these senses since at least 2000. My son’s friends said that they had picked up lollage from CBBC, but it is more likely to have originated online.

Dot com was first recorded in US student usage in 1999 in the Online Slang Dictionary and in 2004 on Urban Dictionary, with an emphatic function, so thatMike is stupid dotcom means the same as Mike is very stupid, with the implication that Mike should own or feature on the stupid.com website address. This usage probably spread into humorous use in British primary schools via the New Boyz 2009 track Dot Com.

Posted on: January 17 2012

Source: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/01/the-life-of-slang-dot-com/

Seis claves para usar las siglas y las abreviaturas

2012-01-24T10:39:00.000-08:00

Las siglas y las abreviaturas tienen características distintas; conocerlas permite escribirlas apropiadamente.
Siglas

Se forman por lo general con las iniciales de la expresión que abrevian, normalmente las iniciales de los sustantivos y los adjetivos (Organización de las Naciones Unidas: ONU), pero a veces también las de otras palabras (organización no gubernamental: ONG).
No llevan punto abreviativo: ONU, no O. N. U.
Las Academias de la Lengua desaconsejan el uso de una ese minúscula para formar el plural en la forma escrita (las ONG mejor que las ONGs), aunque en la lengua oral es normal y correcto que se pronuncie la ese («oenegés»).

Abreviaturas

Se forman con parte de la palabra o las expresiones que abrevian; una palabra puede tener más de una abreviatura: para página, por ejemplo, se usan p. y pág.
Llevan punto abreviativo (a. C.; pl., admón.) o, más raramente, barra (c/ Bailén); en las abreviaturas con más de un elemento, tras el punto abreviativo se deja un espacio (se escribe EE. UU. y no EE.UU.); si la abreviatura lleva una parte volada, el punto se coloca antes de esta (n.º, no nº. ni nº).
Cuando tienen más de una letra, generalmente se pluralizan añadiendo una ese (pág. – págs.); si constan de una sola letra, esta se suele duplicar (p. – pp.)

Fuente: http://www.fundeu.es/recomendaciones-S-seis-claves-para-usar-las-siglas-y-las-abreviaturas-1189.html

Para hablar, los jóvenes utilizan sólo 240 palabras

2012-01-23T10:28:00.000-08:00

Fuente: Clarin.com

http://www.clarin.com/sociedad/hablar-jovenes-utilizan-solo-palabras_0_617938332.html

Es un 25% de lo usual. Lo asegura un estudio de la Academia del lenguaje. Hay especialistas que lo ven como un peligro, pero hay otros que afirman que eso no implica riesgo alguno.

Un notero de un programa de entretenimientos entrevista a Leito, líder del grupo Wachiturros

– ¿Qué hobbies tenés?

– ¿...?

– ¿Cuáles son tus hobbies preferidos?

– Ehhh, no sé qué quiere decir.

– ¿Qué hacés en tu tiempo libre?

– Ahhhh, tiro facha con la moto...

Siempre se dijo que el idioma español es un organismo vivo: en su uso diario anida su fortaleza y su crecimiento. De acuerdo a un cálculo de la Academia española de la lengua actualizado al 2010, mientras “un ciudadano medio utiliza entre 500 y 1000 palabras” del español para comunicarse cotidianamente, los jóvenes usan un 25%, “algo más de 240”. El castellano cuenta con casi 100 mil vocablos, o sea que, de ese gran abanico de posibilidades, utilizan un 0,03%. Ahora bien, ¿qué determina esto? ¿Los jóvenes empobrecen su lenguaje y, con ello, su pensamiento? Más aún: ¿está asociado esto directamente con la capacidad de reflexionar? ¿O simplemente ese recorte significa una simplificación y no una derrota cultural?

Las opiniones están repartidas. No hay duda de que manejar un número mayor de vocablos favorece una mejor expresión. Ya lo dijo Roberto Fontanarrosa en su histórico discurso durante el Congreso de la Lengua en 2004 en Rosario. Luego de defender el uso de “malas” palabras como “pelotudo” y “carajo”, el fallecido dibujante dijo que “cuantos más matices tenga uno, más puede defenderse, para expresarse, para transmitir. Por eso hay palabras de las denominadas malas palabras, que son irreemplazables, por sonoridad y fuerza”.

Acaso en las antípodas de ese pensamiento, hace casi dos meses, en un reportaje en La Nación, Pedro Barcia, presidente de la Academia Argentina de Letras, fue categórico y alarmista: “Cuando no hay capacidad de expresión se achica el pensamiento. Lo vemos todos los días con jóvenes que no leen, que no saben escribir correctamente y terminan con un lenguaje empobrecido. Y ese empobrecimiento intelectual y verbal –arriesgó Barcia– le hace muy mal al sistema democrático”.

Pese a esa admonición, hay especialistas que son mucho más cautos. O incluso optimistas. La Dra. María Laura Pardo, del departamento de Lingüística del CIAFIC-CONICET, asegura que “los jóvenes son creativos en cualquier estratificación social. Que las palabras nuevas que crean no estén en el diccionario no quiere decir que no sean vocablos y que no deban ser contados a la hora de estos estudios. Lo que hoy parece una irreverencia idiomática, mañana estará en la RAE y en otros diccionarios como nuevo léxico”.

En la misma línea, Mara Glozman, docente de Semiología de la UBA, cree que plantear una “pobreza léxica” en ciertos grupos o colectivos supone que existen otros “colectivos o sectores que tienen una mayor amplitud léxica y eso suele asociarse a un mejor conocimiento de la lengua. Digo que ‘suelen asociarse a un mejor conocimiento lingüístico’ porque se trata de ideas que tienen más relación con las representaciones sobre la lengua que con las realidades lingüísticas de los hablantes”.

Alejada por completo de una visión elitista del uso del lenguaje, Pardo reconoce la existencia de estudios que aseguran que “algunos hablantes solo utilizarían entre 280 a 1000 palabras en su vida diaria”, pero agrega que en ese tipo de trabajos “no se pondera el valor de la creación léxica”. Además, por lo general, “no se tiene en cuenta que la lengua es un ente vivo, siempre cambiante, imposible de cuantificar y siempre rico, aun por fuera de lo supuestamente ‘correcto’”.

Según el escritor y ensayista Juan Becerra, “lo que olvidan los defensores de la cantidad es que el poder del lenguaje no radica en las palabras, sean estas pocas o muchas, sino en la inteligencia que las asocia”.

Cognitive scientists develop new take on old problem: why human language has so many words with multiple meanings

2012-01-20T10:49:00.001-08:00

January 19, 2012 by Emily Finn

Why did language evolve? While the answer might seem obvious -- as a way for individuals to exchange information -- linguists and other students of communication have debated this question for years. Many prominent linguists, including MIT’s Noam Chomsky, have argued that language is, in fact, poorly designed for communication. Such a use, they say, is merely a byproduct of a system that probably evolved for other reasons -- perhaps for structuring our own private thoughts.

As evidence, these linguists point to the existence of ambiguity: In a system optimized for conveying information between a speaker and a listener, they argue, each word would have just one meaning, eliminating any chance of confusion or misunderstanding. Now, a group of MIT cognitive scientists has turned this idea on its head. In a new theory, they claim that ambiguity actually makes language more efficient, by allowing for the reuse of short, efficient sounds that listeners can easily disambiguate with the help of context.

“Various people have said that ambiguity is a problem for communication,” says Ted Gibson, an MIT professor of cognitive science and senior author of a paper describing the research to appear in the journal Cognition. “But once we understand that context disambiguates, then ambiguity is not a problem — it’s something you can take advantage of, because you can reuse easy [words] in different contexts over and over again.”
Lead author of the paper is Steven Piantadosi PhD ’11; Harry Tily, a postdoc in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, is another co-author.
What do you ‘mean’?
For a somewhat ironic example of ambiguity, consider the word “mean.” It can mean, of course, to indicate or signify, but it can also refer to an intention or purpose (“I meant to go to the store”); something offensive or nasty; or the mathematical average of a set of numbers. Adding an ‘s’ introduces even more potential definitions: an instrument or method (“a means to an end”), or financial resources (“to live within one’s means”).
But virtually no speaker of English gets confused when he or she hears the word “mean.” That’s because the different senses of the word occur in such different contexts as to allow listeners to infer its meaning nearly automatically.
Given the disambiguating power of context, the researchers hypothesized that languages might harness ambiguity to reuse words — most likely, the easiest words for language processing systems. Building on observation and previous studies, they posited that words with fewer syllables, high frequency and the simplest pronunciations should have the most meanings.
To test this prediction, Piantadosi, Tily and Gibson carried out corpus studies of English, Dutch and German. (In linguistics, a corpus is a large body of samples of language as it is used naturally, which can be used to search for word frequencies or patterns.) By comparing certain properties of words to their numbers of meanings, the researchers confirmed their suspicion that shorter, more frequent words, as well as those that conform to the language’s typical sound patterns, are most likely to be ambiguous — trends that were statistically significant in all three languages.
To understand why ambiguity makes a language more efficient rather than less so, think about the competing desires of the speaker and the listener. The speaker is interested in conveying as much as possible with the fewest possible words, while the listener is aiming to get a complete and specific understanding of what the speaker is trying to say. But as the researchers write, it is “cognitively cheaper” to have the listener infer certain things from the context than to have the speaker spend time on longer and more complicated utterances. The result is a system that skews toward ambiguity, reusing the “easiest” words. Once context is considered, it’s clear that “ambiguity is actually something you would want in the communication system,” Piantadosi says.
Tom Wasow, a professor of linguistics and philosophy at Stanford University, calls the paper “important and insightful.”
“You would expect that since languages are constantly changing, they would evolve to get rid of ambiguity,” Wasow says. “But if you look at natural languages, they are massively ambiguous: Words have multiple meanings, there are multiple ways to parse strings of words. … This paper presents a really rigorous argument as to why that kind of ambiguity is actually functional for communicative purposes, rather than dysfunctional.”
Implications for computer science
The researchers say the statistical nature of their paper reflects a trend in the field of linguistics, which is coming to rely more heavily on information theory and quantitative methods.
“The influence of computer science in linguistics right now is very high,” Gibson says, adding that natural language processing (NLP) is a major goal of those operating at the intersection of the two fields.
Piantadosi points out that ambiguity in natural language poses immense challenges for NLP developers. “Ambiguity is only good for us [as humans] because we have these really sophisticated cognitive mechanisms for disambiguating,” he says. “It’s really difficult to work out the details of what those are, or even some sort of approximation that you could get a computer to use.”
But, as Gibson says, computer scientists have long been aware of this problem. The new study provides a better theoretical and evolutionary explanation of why ambiguity exists, but the same message holds: “Basically, if you have any human language in your input or output, you are stuck with needing context to disambiguate,” he says.
Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news : web)
This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.

Fuente:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-cognitive-scientists-problem-human-language.html

Localización de imágenes descomplicada con Adobe Photoshop

2012-01-06T11:31:00.000-08:00

Excelentísimo aporte de las chicas de Palabras del Plata. Muchas gracias por su contribución y guia en un tema que tantos dolores de cabeza nos trae a veces.

Me tomo el atrevimiento de compartirlo para que llegue a un mayor número de colegas.

Gracias!!

Por Melina Carbajales

El cliente no pudo encontrar la imagen en su formato nativo (PSD: formato de Adobe Photoshopcon capas) y nos ha enviado un ejemplar en formato JGP para localizar… ¿suena familiar, eh? La primera reacción será de desesperación, pero no nos quedará otra opción que recurrir a todas nuestras habilidades relativas al tratamiento de imágenes para lograr una localización precisa en el idioma meta. A continuación, explicaré cuáles son los pasos que podrás seguir para localizar la imagen de tu cliente con Adobe Photoshop.

Imagen original enviada por el cliente (Imagen de muestra)

2.1. En primer lugar, se deberá ejecutar Adobe Photoshop y desde Archivo > Abrir, abrir la foto a localizar.

2.2. Una vez abierta la foto, debemos desbloquear la capa haciendo doble clic sobre ella (en el recuadro que se encuentra en la esquina inferior derecha, en la pestaña «Capas»), y una vez desbloqueada, es recomendable duplicar la capa de imagen, de modo que nos quede una de muestra y la otra sea la capa de trabajo, es decir, la localizable. Es conveniente bloquear la capa que queda de modelo con el icono del candado, a fin de no realizar ningún tipo de modificación por error sobre ella. Entonces, de momento, veremos las dos capas de la siguiente manera:

Es posible cambiar el nombre de las capas, si lo consideramos necesario.

2.3. Una vez hecho esto, podemos comenzar a trabajar sobre la capa localizable. El primer paso, será borrar las palabras en inglés. Para ello, necesitaremos utilizar dos herramientas: elcuentagotas y el pincel. Con el cuentagotas es posible tomar muestras de color ya existentes en la capa de trabajo, con el pincel «borraremos», o mejor dicho, «pintaremos» las palabras en inglés con el mismo color de fondo que hayamos tomado de muestra con el cuentagotas. Entonces, los pasos exactos serán: 1. tomar una muestra del fondo con el cuentagotas y 2. cambiar al icono a pincel y pintar sobre las letras en inglés. Hay que tener cuidado, ya que el fondo de la imagen puede sufrir leves cambios de color, lo cual nos obligará a tomar nuevas muestras a medida que avancemos en el proceso.

Botones cuentagotas y pincel (primero y último de la imagen debajo)

Imagen en proceso de localización: fase I – eliminación de las palabras en inglés

2.4. Una vez que hemos quitado todas las palabras en inglés, tendremos que definir cuál fue el tipo de letra que utilizó el cliente en su imagen y comenzar a trabajar sobre la traducción en una nueva capa de texto. En este caso, para el texto principal, el cliente ha utilizado la fuente Arial.

2.5. En primer lugar, crearemos una nueva capa, para lo cual utilizaremos el icono. La llamaremos: texto ARIAL normal. Con el icono que tiene una «T», creamos un cuadro de texto e introducimos la traducción. Es posible que la fuente haya sido levemente alterada por el cliente, para lo cual utilizaremos una serie de funciones que nos servirán para lograr el mayor parecido posible con el original. Estas funciones se encuentran en los paneles Carácter y Párrafo.

Mediante estas funciones, podremos realizar escalas verticales (estirar la letra verticalmente) y horizontales (estirar la letra horizontalmente), definir el interlineado y el tamaño de la fuente, entre otras cosas. Habrá que jugar un poco con estas funciones hasta lograr el equilibrio adecuado. Para poder posicionar las letras en el lugar apropiado, nos podemos ayudar con la imagen original que hemos dejado de muestra. Ocultamos la capa para localizar y dejamos visible solamente la capa de texto y la imagen original. De esta forma, veremos los textos superpuestos y podremos mover el cuadro de texto de la traducción hasta lograr ubicarlo justo encima del texto en el idioma fuente. Indefectiblemente, el español será más largo por lo que será posible que tengamos que realizar una serie de ajustes.

Tenemos lista la primera parte de nuestra localización. Ahora deberemos repetir los pasos para localizar las dos palabras restantes.

Imagen en proceso de localización: fase II – traducción

Imagen localizada final

Algunos consejos

- Es posible que la letra nos quede demasiado nítida en comparación con la de la imagen original. Existen dos formas posibles de quitar un poco de nitidez a la imagen: a) Desenfocar o b) Añadir ruido. Para ambas opciones deberemos tener la imagen en su versión final en formato JPG. De otra forma, no podremos desenfocar o añadir ruido directamente en la capa de texto. Para desenfocar, simplemente, tendremos que seleccionar el icono con la gota y ajustar el tamaño del pincel, según sea de nuestro agrado. Una vez seleccionado este icono y el tamaño de pincel que queremos utilizar, se trata solamente de pasar el círculo (cursor) sobre la parte que queremos desenfocar. Si queremos añadir ruido, deberemos utilizar el lazo para seleccionar la parte en la que queremos añadir el ruido e ir a Filtro > Ruido > Añadir ruido.

¡Espero que lo hayan encontrado útil!

Fuente: http://blog.palabrasdelplata.com/2011/11/localizacion-de-imagenes-descomplicada.html

Cheat Sheet for Abbreviations Style

2011-11-18T16:56:00.000-08:00

From: http://blog.amamanualofstyle.com/2011/11/04/cheat-sheet-for-abbreviations-style/

Abbreviations are a convenience, a time saver, a space saver, and a way of avoiding the possibility of misspelling words. However, a price can be paid for their use. Abbreviations are sometimes not understood. They can be misread, or are interpreted incorrectly. … The person who uses an abbreviation must take responsibility for making sure that it is properly interpreted.—Neil M. Davis¹

Abbreviations are used widely in medical articles, and great care should be taken to provide expansions that define these abbreviations. The AMA Manual of Style includes a straightforward rule regarding the use of abbreviations: Define abbreviations at first mention by providing the expanded term first, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses, and the abbreviation is used thereafter.

But for every rule, there are exceptions.

Some Exceptions:

• Avoid creating abbreviations for terms that are easy to spell out and do not take up a lot of space. For example, it is not advisable to abbreviate “catheter ablation” as “CA” or “immune response” as “IR.” Also, avoid using too many abbreviations in any one article.

• If a term is better known as an abbreviation, provide the abbreviation first with the definition following in parentheses. “The TUNEL (terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP-biotin nick-end labeling) staining assay was carried out using an apoptosis detection kit.”

• It is inelegant to begin sentences with abbreviations, unless the expansion is so unwieldy that using the abbreviation makes sense. The previous example, TUNEL, also works here. Rather than begin a sentence with the cumbersome expansion, it is acceptable to begin the sentence with the abbreviation TUNEL.

• Abbreviations should not be introduced in headings. If an abbreviation is being used for the first time in a heading, expand the abbreviation in the heading; then, at first mention in the running text after the heading, expand the abbreviation again, with the abbreviation following in parentheses. Use the abbreviation thereafter.

• Some very common abbreviations do not require expanding at first mention, such as AIDS, TNM, UV, and CD-ROM. A complete list of these abbreviations is provided in section 14.11, with those that do not require expansion denoted by an asterisk.

• The efficiency of using an abbreviation is lost if the abbreviation is used only one time, so as a rule of thumb, introduce an abbreviation only if it is used at least 2 or 3 times.

Items of Note:

• Tables, figures, and abstracts are treated as separate items from the text, so abbreviated terms must be reexpanded in each of these items.

• Use the appropriate article (a or an) before an abbreviation according to the sound following the article (eg, a UN resolution, an HMO plan).

• Use a lowercase s (and no apostrophe) when making abbreviations plural (eg, NSAIDs).—Lauren B. Fischer

1. Davis NM. MEDical ABBREViations: 28,000 Conveniences at the Expense of Communication and Safety. 13th ed. Warminster, PA: Neil M Davis Associates; 2007:1.

Let's take life with humor... :)

2011-11-03T14:11:00.001-07:00

Translator scams and how to protect yourself from them

2011-06-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

by Enrique Cavalitto on January 21, 2011

Freelance translators should think of themselves as business people. As such, they should pay serious attention to risk management, including the actions needed to minimize the risk of being the victims of a scam.
Scams are everywhere and they are extremely varied. It is said that one in ten adults have fallen for a scam. Some of the victims are poor and desperate, but others are educated and clever, and believed themselves to be immune to this kind of plot.
Reports from ProZ.com members seem to indicate an increase in translation or translator-specific scams.
There are two broad categories of scammers that should be on a freelance translator’s radar screen: those who want a free translation, and those who want our money.

1 – Scammers who want to steal your translation
This kind of scam involves a “client” who will offer you a real translation assignment but is not planning to pay for it. Legitimate outsourcers who are having a bad time and are late in their payments are a real problem, but they do not fall into this category.
This kind of scam is harder to detect because the scammer is usually well-acquainted with the translation industry and can emulate the “look and feel” of a legitimate outsourcer.
There are two basic categories of translation-stealers:

scammers who make up a fake “agency” that will simply vanish the moment you deliver your job, and
scammers who falsely claim to represent a real and prestigious agency.

Scammers in the first category should be detectable through normal risk management procedures. Those in the second group are more dangerous because superficial risk control could validate that the outsourcer is trustworthy, but miss the fact that the person contacting you does not represent them.
Emails from new potential clients should be carefully scanned. A visit to the “about me” section of the real outsourcer will tell you what their email domain is, say for instance xxxx@good-agency.com. Be wary of agency emails based on a free email provider, for instance name.good-agency@gmail.com (it is OK for freelancers to operate with this kind of email but an agency doing so should trigger your alarms). Be also on the lookout for small variants in the email domains ( for instance xxxx@goodagency.com ) introduced to mimic the real outsourcer.

2 – Scammers who want to steal your money
We’ve all seen or heard of some of the more common, general scams: a notification that we’ve won the Spanish lottery, or an email from a person who requires our help in moving a small fortune outside their country, etc.
There is also a translator-specific kind of predator that is not interested in your translation, but who will offer you a fake job opportunity as a hook to take money from you.
Some classic examples of these which have hit the community more recently are:

a job offer where advance payment is offered, usually in the form of traveler’s or certified bank checks. The amount received by the translator turns out to be much more than the payment agreed upon and they are asked to cash the checks or money order and wire back the difference. The checks or money orders later turn out to be counterfeit or stolen.

a steady flow of work is offered, on the condition that the translator must acquire a certain tool (usually a CAT tool), and the scammer happens to offer that tool at a greatly reduced price. Of course once you pay, you never hear again from the “client” (or receive the tool).

A very convenient in-house position is offered in a different country, and some down payment is requested from the translator in order to temporarily cover a legal immigration requirement or relocation expense. Again, once you have paid you can forget about them.

These schemes usually come from people outside the industry, and there are telltale signs that should ring alarm bells in the head of savvy freelancers:

The language (frequently English) is uneducated and has typos and grammatical errors (note: poor English alone does not mean one is a scammer, of course!)

Real outsourcers tend to deliver straightforward messages (“we look for a translator in {language pair}, expert in {field}, for a job of xxx words to be delivered on {deadline}; please report availability and rate”). Fake outsourcers, on the other hand, tend to add lots of unnecessary details (“I need an interpreter for my wife and two kids who will be visiting your country for a week; they will be basically shopping and will move in a rented car. We will be there because I am senior manager of a Fortune 500 company and will be attending a conference.”)

They are not aware of your expertise, to the point of sometimes asking for “the language pair you are most comfortable working with”. Strange assignment where you can pick that!

Uncommon job descriptions such as widely varied and unrelated areas of expertise (“poetry, nuclear reactors and accounting”) or in-depth details on how the communications will be handled in the project (an important factor, but not at this point of the exchange).

In short, try some old-fashioned common sense: if someone you don’t know contacts you to ask for a payment now in order to get a huge reward tomorrow, hit the “Delete” button.

Basic risk management considerations
Risk-management is a comprehensive discipline that should be present in all your actions; in the case of scams, you should focus on the evaluation of people contacting you for the first time.
The better your risk management process, the less likely you are to find yourself having invested time, effort and money in work where no payment is forthcoming (or worse; in the case of the traveler’s checks scam mentioned above, victims also found themselves in an uncomfortable position legally, having cashed fraudulent or stolen checks).
You should be suspicious of people who contact you and:

offer you something for nothing. If it looks too good to be true, it’s probably a scam.
ask you to pay some expenses or to buy some tool in order to get access to a very convenient opportunity.
try to rush you into a decision

When contacted for the first time by a potential outsourcer who looks truly interested in your services, you should:

Get the full name, address and phone number of the company and name and position of the contact person.

Investigate the IP information in the incoming email (see the ProZ.com Wiki article Risk management: Email) to make sure the email comes from where the company is. Investigate discrepancies.

Find the company’s website, find their email domain and verify if the incoming email fits it.

Call the company at the number found on their web page and ask for the person who contacted you, to verify if the contact was legitimate.

Google for the contact’s and the company’s names. Many scams are reported in forums and this can help warn you.

Look for the company in ProZ.com’s Blue Board and other online risk management resources. Pay special attention to negative comments and to recent ones.

Make sure to get a purchase order before you start working.

The first job you do for a new client should be small. This is reasonable for both sides of the deal, as a new translator is also a risk for the outsourcer.

Don’t be afraid that these normal risk management precautions will offend the outsourcer and make you lose good opportunities. Professional outsourcers will recognize the actions of professional freelancers and are likely to respect you more for doing your homework.
What to do if contacted by a scammer? The best you can do when you detect or suspect a scam is to ignore the messages. Answering the message, even to insult them or try to outsmart them will at the very least let the villain know that your email address is active and all the more valuable for spamming.
Sharing your experiences in dedicated forums and other social media is also a way to help raise awareness among colleagues of this scourge.

Further reading and resources
The ProZ.com Wiki has a few articles which are meant to help out when it comes to detecting scams, and translator risk management in general. These can all be found in the category for risk management in the Wiki.
Be sure you are familiar with this information and incorporate what is useful to you as a professional into your risk management process.
Is there something missing from the risk management articles, a method you have used successfully? Help your colleagues out by adding it! All you have to do is click the “Edit” option for the article or the section of the article you wish to add to, enter the information and hit save.
ProZ.com also has a forum dedicated specifically to allowing translators to discuss and warn each other of new scams: http://www.proz.com/forum/946
Stay safe!

Enrique Cavalitto

Source: Translator T.O. A blog for translators, from the Proz.com site team

You Know You’re an Editor When…

2011-06-06T17:10:00.000-07:00

You visualize in your mind the sentences you hear, that is, literally, you see in writing what you hear: initial capitalization, periods, commas, accents, etc.
After seeing everything in item 1 (a process that takes about as long as it takes to blink), you would be perfectly able to suggest at least two or three changes to your partner so that what he said “sounds more natural.”
In your family, everyone is afraid to speak because they don’t want to listen to you go on and on about “lay” and “lie” and their correct usages.
When viewing a film with subtitles, you identify to perfection where all translation errors (which you have certainly not missed any) and you mention them to any person still willing to watch a movie with you with the consequent result that they then blame you for missing the plot of the film to hear your criticism.
You do not understand how people do not have grammar sites in their RSS feeds.
You have the habit of missing the product of an advertisement because you cannot concentrate due to how horribly the message is expressed.
You see dangling participles and they literally hurt your eyes; your ears are in pain when you hear them.
You regularly lament the loss of the English subjunctive.
As soon as someone comes to tell you something new (an advertisement, a lost child, a story that someone told him, the origin of a word, etc.), the first thing you do is go to the Internet is to search for at least three reliable sources that support the story (with all that that implies: medium, author, publication date, etc.) to finally believe in the veracity of the story.
You are asked to edit a text for, say, Australia, and you take half a day to triple check the agencies of the country as well as any linguistic peculiarities, according to preference and frequency of use that you verify over and over and over…
Food or sleep are secondary. You have to meet deadlines!
You cannot live without your dictionaries of idioms, prepositions and the like. And as if that were not enough, you often find that you have strong arguments against the proposed term.
With a glance at the text to edit, you immediately think of at least three ways of saying the same thing better.
Always, regardless of how well it is done the basic translation, you know you could have left the text to be a candidate for a Pulitzer if not for … there is not enough time (as always) to list that and, of course, this category does not exist yet.

(Versión en español: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/sabes-que-eres-editor-cuando-2011-06-01.html)

Fuente: http://bit.ly/mO7A17

I don't get it: Humor lost in translation

2011-05-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

By Adam Wooten, For the Deseret News

Are you planning to start your next international business presentation with a little joke to break the ice? Well, you might want to reconsider or, at least, share a joke that will not fall flat in the other culture.

The story is told of a businessman who gave a speech in a foreign country through an interpreter. Without warning the interpreter beforehand, he inserted a joke into the presentation. The interpreter knew the joke would not translate and knew of no equivalent to substitute in its place, so she said, "This man just told a joke that he thinks is funny, but it does not translate well, and you will not find it funny at all. So, when I stop talking, everyone please just laugh."

The audience did indeed roar with laughter, but not for the reason the speaker supposed. Unaware of what really invoked such a positive reaction, the businessman was so pleased with the first result that he proceeded to tell another joke.

Each culture has different perceptions of what constitutes humor. What may be hilarious in one culture can be far from funny — or even offensive — in another. For example, while living in Chile, I often attempted to share great jokes from the United States, only to be met with blank stares and questions like, "Oh, is that a joke? Is that funny in your country?" Likewise, Chileans shared their own popular jokes that were not always amusing to me.

Jokes relying on cultural or linguistic references are less translatable than others. Jokes involving wordplay or colloquial expressions almost never have appropriate translations in other languages. Jokes referencing politics, religion, gender and other stereotypes are dangerous even when speaking to a domestic audience and run an even greater risk of flopping in other countries.

Even humor that appears to avoid obvious cultural or linguistic references can fail in another country. Some cultures prefer exaggerated slapstick humor, while others prefer more subtle humor. However, humor is not completely mismatched from country to country, there is indeed some overlap.

Professor Richard Wiseman and The British Association for the Advancement of Science created a project called LaughLab, which aimed to identify the world's funniest joke (not to be confused with what Monty Python's Flying Circus considers "the funniest joke in the world"). The project began in September 2001, and over the course of one year, LaughLab received more than 40,000 jokes and 1.5 million ratings from around the world.

Americans and Canadians preferred jokes where there was a sense of superiority, while people from Ireland, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand strongly preferred word plays. People from some European countries enjoyed surreal jokes or those that involved making light of topics that often make us feel anxious, such as death, illness and marriage.

The following joke won the LaughLab contest and received the highest ratings across cultures:

"Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing, and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, 'My friend is dead! What can I do?' The operator says 'Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.' There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says 'OK, now what?' "

Reader's Digest also holds an annual contest to identify the world's funniest joke. The publication asks readers from each country to select the funniest jokes and then asks readers worldwide to select the best joke from all competing countries. The list of gags in this contest is a great source for humor, which may be appropriate to share in different countries.

If you decide you must share a joke or two in another country, ask the opinion of your interpreter or of a native speaker of the country's language. They may say it is appropriate in that language and culture, in which case you can proceed as originally planned; or they may say the joke may not be appropriate, but your interpreter may know of a culturally appropriate joke that can be substituted and evoke the desired reaction; or the intended humor may be culturally inappropriate and should be avoided entirely.

Whatever resolution is best, you will get your point across more effectively if you are informed about the appropriateness of your planned humor. Otherwise, the joke may be on you.

Source: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705362690/I-dont-get-it-Humor-lost-in-translation.html?pg=2

Neologismos: cómo se construyen las palabras.

2011-05-20T14:37:00.000-07:00

Navegando por la web encontré una gráfiica muy interesante que representa de manera sencilla y práctica el proceso por el cual las palabras son creadas y me pareció que debia compartilo con todos ustedes.

Some Spanish Idioms

2011-04-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

Let us talk about Spanish Idioms.

An idiom is a phrase that is understood to have a meaning different from its literal meaning. For example, in English when we say "it's raining cats and dogs" we mean it's raining heavily, it's a downpour.

Like the cats and dogs example, idioms are fun, colorful expressions and the direct translation of an idiom from one language to another is often hilarious.

Here are some Spanish Idioms commonly used in Mexico :

A otro perro con ese hueso.
Se usa para expresar que no creemos lo que nos dicen.
>Literally means: To another dog with that bone.
>The English equivalent is: You're pulling my leg.

La carne de burro no es transparente.
Lo usamos para decirle a una persona que nos esta obstruyendo lo que queremos ver.
>Literally means: The flesh of the donkey is not transparent.
>The English equivalent is: I can't see through you.

Cada quien tiene su manera de matar pulgas.
Con èsto expresamos que hay varias formas de resolver un problema.
>Literally means: Each has his way to kill fleas.
>The English equivalent is: There's more than one way to skin a cat

Source:

Spanish Idioms?

by Ricardo E. Valenzuela Ruiz

http://spanish.wiziq.com/topic/527-spanish-idioms

The origins of abc - Where does our alphabet come from?

2011-01-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

We see it every day on signs, billboards, packaging, in books and magazines; in fact, you are looking at it now — the Latin or Roman alphabet, the world’s most prolific, most widespread abc. Typography is a relatively recent invention, but to unearth the origins of alphabets, we will need to travel much farther back in time, to an era contemporaneous with the emergence of (agricultural) civilisation itself.

Robert Bringhurst wrote that writing is the solid form of language, the precipitate.[1] But writing is also much more than that, and its origins, its evolution, and the way it is now woven into the fabric of civilisations makes it a truly wonderful story. That story spans some 5,000 years. We’ll travel vast distances, meet an emperor, a clever Yorkshireman, a Phoenician princess by the name of Jezebel, and the ‘purple people’; we’ll march across deserts and fertile plains, and sail across oceans. We will begin where civilisation began, meander through the Middle Ages, race through the Renaissance, and in doing so discover where our alphabet originated, how and why it evolved, and why, for example, an A looks, well, like an A.

SUMER

Cuneiform
The Sumerians began to experiment with writing at the close of the fourth millennium BC, in Mesopotamia between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (roughly modern-day Iraq). Like most writing systems, Cuneiform, initially scratched — later impressed by a stylus — into soft clay, started out as a series of pictograms — pictures representing words. The word for bird, for example, existed at first as a simple pictorial representation of a bird. The figure below demonstrates this process of abstraction or rationalization. In time, the pictures of things came to represent, not only things but, sounds. It is clear that a written language with signs that represent sounds requires fewer characters than a language in which a sign stands for a thing or an idea. We use 26 letters (and the Romans used only 23 to create some of the most outstanding literature the world has ever known) while the Chinese, for example, have to learn thousands of characters to express themselves. Even early cuneiform comprised some 1,500 pictograms. A language in which a picture or grapheme represents a thing or an idea has its advantages: people may speak any language while the written form stays the same. So a Chinese from the Southern provinces can speak a totally different dialect than his compatriot in Beijing, who would not understand him when he speaks, but can read what he writes.

1.1 The pictographic origin of Cuneiform.

Figure 1.2 is an example of Proto-Cuneiform, one of the earliest examples of writing know to us. It’s a form of Cuneiform that exists between the earliest purely pictographic forms and the later more abstract forms. Moreover, as there was no fixed or standard writing direction, the signs were often rotated to conform to the direction of writing employed — a bird is still a bird through 360 degrees of rotation.

1.2 Proto-Cuneiform. Subject: beer rations.

While the Sumerian language ceased to be spoken after about 2000 BC, the influence of its written form (Cuneiform) is still felt today. The Sumerian language was mostly replaced by the language of their Akkadian conquerors who did, however, adopt the Cuneiform signs of the Sumerians. This form of writing was used until the 5th century AD. Figure 1.3, shows the Cyrus Cylinder, recounts the fall of Babylon in 539 BC (Daniel 5 in the Old Testament) to the Persians led by king Cyrus.

1.3 Cyrus Cylinder (Akkadian cuneiform), 6th century BC. On display: Room 55, British Museum.
© Trustees of the British Museum

EGYPT

The writing of the gods
The Egyptians developed a similar system of pictograms, one many of us are familiar with. Hieroglyphic inscriptions (literally sacred carving), like Cuneiform started out as pictograms, but later those same pictures were also used to represent speech sounds. Looking at the different forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs we can better understand how those pictures of things representing words became more and more abstract. While you might be familiar with the form of Egyptian hieroglyphs carved into stone (lapidary inscriptions), they do, however, come in several forms or styles — all influenced by the medium upon which they are written, the purpose for which they are written, and their intended audience.

2.1 Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The Egyptian pictographs evolved into a cursive style called hieratic that was freer, written more rapidly and contained numerous ligatures.

2.2 Hieratic script, 12th Dynasty.

A yet later form is demotic, which represents the most abstract form of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Although written mostly in ink on papyrus, the most famous example is to be found on the granite Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone (196 BC), found by scholars who had travelled to Egypt with Napoleon in 1799, is important because it was the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is written in two languages, and three scripts: two forms of Egyptian (hieroglyphic & demotic), with a Greek translation.

2.3 Demotic script, 3rd century BC.

The story of the alphabet continues in Egypt during the second millennium BC, but the Egyptians are not its authors.

THE FIRST ALPHABETS

Wadi el-Hol
Until the discovery of two inscriptions (graffiti) in Wadi el-Hol, Egypt, in 1999, it was generally held that the beginnings of alphabetic scripts could be traced to around 1600 to 1500 BC, to the Phoenicians, a people of traders who lived on the coast of today’s Lebanon and Israel. However, the 1999 discovery reveals that, rather than the early Semitic alphabet being developed in their homeland of Syria-Palestine, it was instead developed by the Semitic-speaking people then living in Egypt. This strengthens the hypothesis there must have been ties between Egyptian scripts and their influence on those early Semitic or proto-Sinaitic alphabets. Moreover, it pushes back the origin of the alphabet to between 1900 and 1800 BC.
In the photograph of Inscription 1 from Wadi el-Hol below, the sign highlighted in red (hover over to see) is of an Ox head (ʼaleph) — the origins of the Latin A, and a letter with a long history — early Sumerian cuneiform also uses the Ox as a sign.

3.1 Inscription 1 from Wadi el-Hol. Written right to left. Hover over the image to see outlines and highlights.

By about 1600 BC in the region between the two dominant writing systems of the time, Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, we see the emergence of other more systematised alphabets like ugaritic script (14th century BC) that developed in what is today Syria. The ugaritic script employs 30 simplified cuneiform signs. And thus begins the story of the alphabet.

3.2 Abecedary from Ugarit.

PROTO SINAITIC

At the same time as the short-lived ugaritic script was being developed (an alphabet adapted from Cuneiform), another alphabetic system emerged that was influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphs. This proto-Sinaitic alphabet of consonants was pictographic, yet each pictograph represents a sound rather than a thing or idea. It is this proto-Sinaitic alphabet that really marks the starting point, the root of numerous modern-day alphabets, from Arabic and Hebrew to Greek and Latin.

4.1 Proto Sinaitic script, c. 1500 BC.

Note the difference between the signs of Inscription 1 from Wadi el-Hol (figure 3.1), and those of the proto-Sinaitic script (figure 4.1). The latter are just a little more abstract. Note especially A (aleph), which has a simplified ductus (fewer strokes). Note too the simplified stick figure, representing a person at prayer. Cut off the torso and the head, rotate what’s left, and you will see in it the origins of the Latin E:

4.2 The evolution of E (see also figure 4.1 above).

But how and why did this alphabet of pictographs evolve into a series of abstract symbols? Mark-Alain Ouaknin, in Mysteries of the Alphabet suggests that the answer is to be found in the transition from polytheism to monotheism:

The second of the Ten Commandments states: ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in the heavens above or that is in the earth beneath…’ This prohibition on the image forced the Semites, who still wrote their language in a pictographic writing, to rid themselves of images.

I’m not convinced. Both Sumerian Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs evolved from pictographs into more abstract signs. Both civilisations remained polytheistic throughout those transitions. Therefore, Monotheism and the prohibition on graven images cannot, I think, be responsible for the evolution of the proto-Sinaitic pictographic alphabet into proto-Hebraic and proto-Phoenician (or proto-Canaanite). Perhaps, in fact, the reverse is true: that the use of abstract letters may have induced the idea of an abstract God who forbade graven images — but permitted their representation as abstract signs.

THE PHOENICIANS

The Purple People

Jezebel, of Old Testament infamy (1 Kings) was a Phoenician princess.

While the invention of writing itself could never have progressed without a highly structured and even authoritarian state to back it up, the coming of the modern alphabet is a completely different story. Written in Cuneiform we have the wonderful adventures of Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu, but most of the clay-tablets from the agricultural city-states are more mundane: lists, taxation, and commercial transactions.

6.1 Phoenician inscription, late 11th century BC.

The Phoenician alphabet was probably developed for quick and easy to read notes that a merchant would make on his trips along the ports of the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians are now best-known for their terrible god Baal, to whom children were sacrificed in an enormous cast iron stove. But this story is a 19th century invention, as is the sensual image of the Phoenicians in Flaubert’s Salammbô. The Phoenicians were traders who created a loose empire of city-states along the coasts they visited: Africa, Spain and Sicily. Carthage is probably the best known of these Phoenician colonies. They owed their initial rise to a simple snail that can still be found on the coast of Lebanon and that, left rotting in the sun, could be used to make purple dye — thus the Greek-coined Phoenician or purple people, from phoiniki, meaning purple or crimson.

To this day, not all alphabets have letters to represent vowels. Hebrew and Arabic are the best known examples.

This simple and ingenious modern alphabet of consonants from which the last vestiges of pictograms had been erased, is indeed a merchant’s instrument: easy to learn, to write and to adapt. And adapted it was by cultures that we are generally much more familiar with: the Greek and Roman societies that form the base of modern Western civilisation and the lesser-known Tuscans.

6.2 Phoenician alphabet

First, Moloch, horrid King besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears;
Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard that passed through fire
To his grim idol. — from Milton’s Paradise Lost.

GREEK

Enter the vowel
Although the earliest extant Greek inscriptions date back to the 8th century BC — the first Olympic games were held in 776 BC — many scholars think that the Greeks adopted the West Semitic Script (the Phoenician consonant alphabet) three centuries earlier. (note: Naveh, Millard, McCarter, and Cross concur. See Naveh, pp. 185-6). For a long time (at least until the widespread adoption of Ionian script in the fourth century BC), the Greek scripts followed no fixed direction, being written left to right, right to left, and in horizontal boustrophedon. (Braille is set boustrophedonically.)

Boustrophedon from Greek βουστροφηδόν “ox-turning”—that is, turning like oxen in ploughing, is a type of bi-directional text. Rather than going from left to right as in modernEnglish, or right to left as in Hebrew and Arabic, alternate lines must be read in opposite directions.CSS by @simurai. See code.

7.1 Greek Papyrus of Artemisia, 3rd century BC. See Thompson, p. 119.

In Greek scripts we witness the jettisoning of pictographic forms in favour of abstract, linear forms. Based on comparisons of late Phoenician alphabets and archaic Greek scripts (and Greek tradition; e.g. Herodotus) it appears that the Greeks simply adopted most of the Phoenician signs but added the vowels that the Phoenicians had left out.

7.2 Greek inscription from Thera, 8th century BC.

ETRUSCAN

The Etruscans came to Italy from western Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). From about 750 BC, the Greeks, as far north as Naples, were settling in Italy. Finley writes about their passionate addiction to everything Greek — except for the Greek’s gloomy take on the afterlife and its dreadful underworld. They were among the first imitators of Greek vases which they often decorated with phoney Greek inscriptions.

One of the last known speakers of the Etruscan language was the learned emperor Claudius who wrote a dictionary now lost. To this day no-one has deciphered the Etruscan language, yet in classical times it was known for its great literature, unfortunately none of which has survived.

Not only did the Etruscans adopt much of the art and religious rites of the Greeks, but, most importantly for our story, they adopted the Greek alphabet. Rome may not have been an Etruscan town but the Roman kings were Etruscans. After the disastrous attack on the oldest Greek colony Cumae (beautifully situated on a high hill on the coast, ten miles north of Naples) in 524 BC, and Rome’s subsequent expulsion of the Etruscan king, Tarquinius Superbus their civilisation slowly waned. Within a few centuries the Roman Republic became the master of Italy and absorbed the Etruscans completely.

8.1 Abecedary from Marsiliana, Etruria, ca. 700 BC.

However, their alphabet survived and prospered as it spread over the world with the expansion of the world’s mistress, the mighty Roman Empire.

LATIN

Musical chairs & the tale of Z
The Latin alphabet that we still use today was created by the Etruscans and the Romans from the Greek. It had only 23 letters: the J, U and W were missing. The J was represented by the I, the U was written as V and there was no need for a W. The story of the Z is particularly interesting.
The new letter G (based on C) was added; Z was borrowed from the Greek, then dropped as Latin had no need for it. G took its place in the line-up, until a little later when the Romans decided they needed the Z (when Greek literature became the vogue and they started to introduce many Greek words), they re-introduced it, but since its spot had be taken by G, it was sent to the back of the alphabet, where it remains to this day.

9.1 Detail from Trajan inscription, ca. 114 AD.

RUSTIC CAPITALS

From the square Roman capitals (preserved on the plinth of Trajan’s Column (114 AD), developed the freer-form and slightly more condensed Rustic capitals.

10.1 Rustic Capitals, ca. 4th century.

Uncial & Half Uncial

The ‘lowercase’ makes its entrance
Most writing was of course done on papyrus and on walls, informal and quick. The cursive was the letter that Martialis read aloud to his friends when he recited his poems at night. This was a letterform that could be jotted down quickly with a reed pen dipped in ink. The ‘old’ cursive is difficult to read but the ‘new’, that evolved from the 4th century onwards resembles our own writing. It spawned the much later Carolingian minuscule letter — the Adam & Eve of all printing types used today. The second great invention, the codex, came at the same time. While the Romans used scrolls made of papyrus, in the fourth century somebody had the idea to cut parchment into oblong pieces and sew them together — thus creating the first random-accessible book. Together with the eminently readable script this must be considered one of the greatest inventions of all time.

11.1 Uncial, France, 7th century.

11.2 Left: Insular, England, 8th century. Right: Visigothic, Spain, France, 9th century.

In France, Merovingian; Visigothic in the Iberian peninsula (figure 11.2); the Beneventan (figure 11.3) in Southern Italy (which shows features of the Half-Uncial, and late Roman Cursive; and in England and Ireland, the Insular forms (figure 11.2).

11.3 Beneventan script, ca. 1100.

Carolingian to Gothic

An Emperor and a Yorkshireman
The anonymous author of Carmen de carolo Magno refers to Charlemagne as ‘the venerable head of Europe’ and ‘the father of Europe.’ Though that’s something of an exaggeration, Charlemagne’s influence was substantial and long-lasting, and he succeeded in uniting most of Western Europe for the first time since the Roman Empire. A man obsessed with bringing order to his expanding kingdom, he sought reform in just about every sphere. For our story his most important reform concerns his efforts to reform writing. Though efforts were already under way, he gave the job to a Yorkshireman, Alcuin of York. Alcuin strove for clarity and uniformity. These efforts, with the backing of Charlemagne and the Church, brought about the Carolingian minuscule (or Carolingian script).
A beautiful, legible book hand; long ascenders and descenders, letting in light between the lines, open and round letters with few ligatures and variant letterforms. The early Carolingian scripts share some features with the Roman Half-Uncial (the club shape ‘head serifs’ on the ascenders of b, d, h, and l, by the 11th century these were replaced by triangular serifs, similar to those we see in numerous roman typefaces of the incunabula (latter half of the 15th century). The early, rounder a was dropped in favour of one similar to that found in early Roman Uncials. In manuscripts penned in this hand, it is not uncommon to see the r with a descender.
With Charlemagne and the Church behind it, the Carolingian script quickly spread across Europe, deposing a multitude of regional scripts on its way. By the second half of the tenth century, Carolingian script had reached England, replacing late forms of the Insular script; in Spain it replaced Visigothic.
That the open forms of the Carolingian script were replaced, from the 12th century, by the darker, more condensed, angular, ligature-ridden, closed forms of the Gothic scripts is, as Delorez writes, one of the mysteries of history.

The causes of the transformation of Carolingian script into Pregothic, or the ‘Gothicizing’ of Carolingian script, have been debated for a long time and the discussion has virtually come to an end without any one explanation gaining general acceptance. — Derolez, p.68

Perhaps a partial explanation is to be found in the new Gothic aesthetic that was sweeping Europe.

12.1 Left: Late Carolingian script, between 1033 & 1053. Centre: Pregothic script, mid-twelfth century. Right: Gothic script (Textualis Formata), between 1304 & 1321.

Of course it was the Gothic script in the form of the formal book hand, Textualis (more precisely, Textualis Formata) that would later become the model for the typeface used to set Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible (ca. 1455).

12.2 Left: Tironian et in this detail from a 14th century manuscript, written in Textualis Formata. The first example in the first line: Arbres et fleurs et ce que orne. Right: Detail from Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible, ca. 1455. Note the tironian et on the last line.

From the beginning of the 12th century the tironian ‘et’ (still used in Irish to this day) began to replace the et ligature, or ampersand. It wouldn’t make a come back until the later Humanist scripts, models for the first roman typefaces.

Roman

Enter typography

The typographical medium could hardly hold more of the Italian Renaissance, the intense admiration for the classical precedent in the capitals, the humanists’ love of clarity and grace in the small letters. — Harry Carter, p.71 (on Jenson’s roman type).

Printing and 15th century humanism are closely related, and since the humanist philosophers and philologists (literally ‘lovers of words’, meaning they loved classical Latin) reintroduced classical Latin as the lingua franca of their class, it is no wonder that the first roman alphabets of the earliest printers only used the 23 letters of the classical era. The J was added later. The first J in print was probably made in Italy, early in the 16th century; the written form was first used in the Middle Ages, in France and the Netherlands. The W is a letter not known to the Latins but used often in the vernacular languages of the west. Well into the 17th century it was set in type as VV, but you will also find two Vs that have been cut down and joined to form a W.

13.1 Left: Early roman of Sweynheim & Pannartz, Rome, 1469. Right: Jenson, Venice, 1472.

We stand in the 17th century, some 5,000 years after the Sumerians set stylus to clay. We now have a dual alphabet of 26 letters, uppercase and lowercase forms. There is hardly a straight line to be seen in the history of the alphabet. No Darwinian progress there, no survival of the fittest. Many of the aforementioned scripts developed side-by-side, some disappeared and reappeared, some can be shown to be the product of the mind of one man like Alcuin of York. And we do not know what would have happened if Hannibal had marched straight to Rome after winning the battle of Cannae instead of loitering.

Putting the pieces together

Writing and alphabets evolve for a number of reasons. We can explain the transition from pictograms to the linear, more abstract forms in terms of rationalization. Moreover, regional and national variations develop, their success, in part at least, owed to political and geo-political factors: A victorious invader brings its culture, including its language, both spoken and written. Context is also an important factor: text cut in stone contemplating the deeds of emperors is something different than an advertisement for a brothel scratched on a wall in Pompeii. The substrate, or writing material (whether clay, stone, wax tablets, wood, metal, papyrus, parchment, or vellum; and the writing implement, a reed, chisel, quill, broad nib pen — they all affect the form the alphabet takes. The speed of the hand is another factor. As an interesting exercise, write the capital alphabet,

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

slowly and deliberately — in your best hand. Now write it again at twice the speed. Finally, write it as quickly as you possibly can. The rapid hand introduces a reduced ductus (fewer strokes), and fewer pen-lifts, with those neat capital letters of the first round turning into something freer, more cursive. You can then further evolve your letterforms by using the most rapidly written alphabet, and begin to rationalise it, adjusting the proportions, altering the shading (contrast), and the result is an entirely a new hand.

14.1. A brief history of A.

I have focused on writing systems that contributed to the later development of the Latin alphabet, but of course the story of the written word is broader and more profound. I have not mentioned writing systems that developed independently (e.g. Chinese and Japanese), and other scripts that do owe a debt to the proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician alphabets, like Hebrew and Arabic. The evolution of writing cannot be fully appreciated (comprehended, even) in isolation. Its stories are woven deep into the fabric of histories and civilisations, its paths steered by politics, religion, economics, and by innumerable other factors. So, the next time you set pen to paper, or tap keys on your keyboard, take a moment to reflect on the origins of these simple signs, signs that furnish us with incredible power — the power to describe all things.

Source: http://bit.ly/9lrj8g

Qué es un buen proyecto de traducción

2010-12-15T20:04:00.000-08:00

Gracias a Trusted Translations por este excelente post. (Fuente: http://on.fb.me/flPPQe)

Como en todo proyecto, son muchos los factores que intervienen durante todo su desarrollo, sean humanos o técnicos, y son los que pueden inclinar la balanza hacia la satisfacción o la frustración.
Y el mundo de la traducción tampoco es ajeno a estos elementos que desempeñan un rol importante en esta entreverada red que conforma un proyecto de traducción.

Desde el punto de vista de un administrador de proyectos, un buen proyecto de traducción es aquel que se entrega en tiempo y forma, es decir, cuando se cumplen los plazos acordados con el cliente y se entrega un buen contenido en el formato también pactado con el cliente antes de confirmar el trabajo.

Un buen proyecto puede ser aquel que no presenta ninguna dificultad, que una vez entregado no despierta comentarios negativos por parte del cliente, no hay nada que corregir después. Todo se hace fluidamente. Pero también un proyecto con desafíos y hasta con dificultades puede resultar en un buen proyecto cuando se saben sortear todos los inconvenientes. Para ellos también hay que anticiparse a los hechos, hay que contemplar posibles imprevistos y saber cómo enfrentarlos en caso surjan y salir ilesos sin que nada de esto afecte en la calidad o en los tiempos de entrega.

Según la mirada de un ejecutivo de cuentas, una etapa muy importante es la etapa de cotización del posible trabajo, ese momento es clave para entender qué es lo que el cliente necesita y así saber responder a esas expectativas una vez iniciado el proyecto. También un valor agregado es cuando el administrador de proyectos puede incluso detectar algo que ni siquiera el mismo cliente notó, podría ser un error en el material fuente, una buena observación acerca de cómo abaratar costos o acelerar los tiempos de entrega.

También, un proyecto exitoso es aquel que se desenvuelve sin pérdidas de ningún tipo y a tiempo. No es sólo aquel que cumple con las expectativas del cliente sino aquel que va más allá y las supera.
Es cuando uno, como empresa de servicios, puede ganarse la confianza del cliente.

Para un cliente, se puede decir que un proyecto de traducción fue excelente cuando verdaderamente cumple con sus expectativas, en términos de calidad y tiempos.

Cuando no hubo ninguna dificultad y todo se desarrolló sin inconvenientes, desde el comienzo hasta el fin. Y, si hubo algún inconveniente, porque principalmente se realiza con recursos humanos, sigue siendo un buen proyecto cuando todos los involucrados demuestran actitudes positivas y capacidades para resolver cualquier situación.
Si bien son miradas distintas, todas tienen mucho en común y podríamos decir que uno de los elementos más determinantes a la hora de alcanzar la máxima satisfacción de un cliente es tratar siempre de mantener una buena comunicación en todas las direcciones, en primer lugar, con el cliente mismo, para saber interpretar qué es lo que está buscando; y a partir de allí, transmitir esa comunicación fluida con todos los integrantes del equipo, en todas las direcciones posibles.

Para mayor información, puede consultar nuestra página Servicios de Traducción.

Crossed Opinion: 20 Reasons You Shouldn’t Be a Freelancer

2010-09-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

We’ve all read countless articles on the reasons you should consider freelancing.
They often make it out like anyone still working in the corporate world is just a schmuck with no ambition. But the truth is, there are plenty of reasons not to start freelancing.
Below are twenty such reasons, all laid out so you can make an informed decision about whether freelancing is really something you want to do in your career.
There’s nothing wrong with staying in a corporate job, just as there’s nothing wrong with setting out on your own. But it’s a choice every designer and developer needs to make for themselves.
One note: when we talk about “corporate jobs”, we’re talking mostly about design firms with multiple employees (whether they’re corporations or not), but most of it also applies to in-house design teams at large companies.

1. You Think It Will Be Easier Than a Corporate Job

A lot of people considering freelancing think it will be easier than their current corporate job. After all, they’ll only have to take on projects they want to take on, they won’t have a boss or coworkers to deal with, and they’ll be able to set their own hours.
But most freelancers, when the first start out at least, aren’t able to be too picky about the work they take on. And while they don’t have coworkers or a boss to deal with, that means they also don’t have anyone to turn to if they get stuck on a project.
There are still clients to deal with, too. And the whole thing about setting your own hours pretty much just means you can choose which sixteen hours in the day you want to work when you’re getting started.

2. You Don’t Have Much Experience

If you’re just getting out of school, you may not have much experience to draw on. And there are a couple of reasons why experience is more important when you’re a freelancer.
First of all, you’ll need a portfolio to show prospective clients if you want them to hire you. While you can always use personal projects, it’s also good if you have at least a few sites in your portfolio that you completed for other people (bonus points if they’re not friends or family). This shows a prospective client that you’re legitimate, and that you’ve had happy clients in the past.
The other reason is that experience proves to both you and the client that you’re capable of finishing projects. If you’ve never done anything but personal projects, there’s no indication that you’ll be able to finish a project.
Freelance designers need to be able to handle client requests and revisions, as there will almost always be things your client wants to change, no matter how great your initial design is. And until you’ve finished a client project, you don’t even have any proof that you have what it takes to work with clients.

3. You Have No Business Sense

When you’re freelancing, you generally don’t have anyone around to handle invoicing, collections, marketing, PR, and the myriad other tasks that corporate design firms handle for you. These are all things you’ll need to deal with yourself when you start freelancing.
Of course, you can always outsource some or all of these functions, but you may find it prohibitively expensive when you’re starting out. It’s better if you know how to do all of them yourself.
Keeping your own books is especially important, as it gives you a clear picture of how much money you have coming and how much is going out (and where it’s going). That’s important if you want to stay in business.

4. You Need Benefits

Some people can’t get by without benefits. If you have existing health problems, you’ll almost certainly need health insurance. And even if you’re healthy, that’s no guarantee you will be in the future. Plus, if you have kids, you’ll likely want health insurance for them, too.
This is one of those issues that’s not going to matter in countries with universal health coverage, but even in those countries there are other benefits you may not want to lose.
If you’re self-employed, you’ll no longer have employer contributions to your retirement plans. You won’t get paid sick days or personal days anymore. All of these things will need to be built into your budget or schedule.

5. You Think the Pay Will Be Better

Many considering switching to freelancing think the pay will be better. After all, they’ll get to keep all the money they’ve billed out, without sharing any of it with an employer. And that’s true. But you’ll also be responsible for paying all of your own taxes (in the U.S., at least, that amounts to an extra 7.5% in payroll taxes that you have to pay that would otherwise be paid by an employer).
You also have all sorts of other business-related expenses you’ll need to pay. Things like office supplies, new equipment, software, and all those other expenses that go along with running a business will all have to be paid by you.
There’s also the difference between hours worked versus billable hours to contend with. Not everything you do will be billable work. Time you spend on administrative tasks aren’t billable.
If you screw up on a project and have to take time to fix it, that’s usually not billable either (at least not ethically). At a corporate job, you generally get paid either for the hours you actually work or on a salaried rate, regardless of how much the client is billed.

6. You Have No Self-Discipline

If you can’t discipline yourself to actually work, then you’re not going to make it as a freelancer. If you find you’re spending hours playing video games or on Facebook instead of working, you’re going to have a very hard time finding enough billable hours to pay your own bills.
When you work in a corporate environment, there’s always the threat of being let go if you goof off too much. When you work from home, you don’t have that same threat lingering. But if you don’t get client work done on time, you’ll have unhappy clients and, eventually, no clients.
If you can’t discipline yourself to work when you need to, you’ll be better off sticking with a corporate gig.

7. You Don’t Love Your Work

So many people who work the usual 9-to-5 don’t really love their jobs. They don’t wake up in the morning looking forward to going to work. But they do it in order to earn a paycheck and put food on the table. Sometimes this is because of the work environment itself, but others times it’s because they don’t really enjoy the work they’re doing.
If you don’t love what you’re doing, you’re probably not going to love it any more once you’re freelancing. Freelancing is hard work, and if you’re already struggling to find the motivation to get your job done, you’ll probably struggle even harder once there’s no boss there to motivate you.

8. You Think the Hours are Better

When you own your own business, you’ll likely end up working twelve- to sixteen-hour days five to seven days a week, at least for the first few years.
Freelancing is like any other business. Sure, once you’re established, you’ll likely be able to reduce your hours and only take on higher-paying projects. But in the interim, you’ll probably have to take on any work you can get to build up your reputation and a stable of regular clients.
It’s also likely that your workflow won’t be as efficient as it could be for your first few months, or even years, in business. You’ll spend time on unnecessary activities. You’ll end up repeating things because you don’t have good methods for keeping track of everything.
And because of this, you’ll spend more time than is necessary on a lot of things. Time and effort will eventually fix these issues, but they’ll still have to be dealt with for a little while.

9. You Have No Space in Your House/Apartment/Bedroom for an Office

You’ll need a dedicated space for working. This doesn’t have to be an entire office, but you should at least have a desk that’s only used for your work. The idea that you can do everything from your kitchen table is likely just going to cause you headaches. As will the idea that you can do all your work from the local coffee shop.
The good news is that most people can find a quiet corner in their house, apartment, or bedroom where they can set up a permanent workspace. If it’s in a room shared with other activities, an armoire-style workstation is often preferable, so you can “close up” for the day and not have to stare at your unfinished work.

10. You Don’t Know Where to Find Clients

You’ll likely need to seek out some clients when you first get started. If you have no idea where to look or how to contact potential clients, you’ll probably have a hard time finding work.
Come up with a plan before you start making the transition to freelancing. Tip: Stealing clients from your previous employer is not the best way to find clients.

11. You Have No Project Management Skills or Experience

Freelancers need to be able to manage a project from start to finish.
When working in a corporate environment, you may have only had to deal with certain aspects of a design project. But if you’re freelancing, you’ll need to be able to manage every aspect of the design and development process. This includes outsourcing specific portions of design or development, finding out what the client needs and wants, working within the client’s budget and timeframe, and managing problems that will inevitably crop up.
If you’ve never managed a design project from start to finish, you’ll likely have plenty of missteps on your first few projects. Either get some experience with project management, or read a lot of books, blogs, and anything else you can get your hands on to learn the ins and outs.

12. You Don’t Want to Deal With People

When you freelance, you’re going to have to deal with clients. And while you often have more control over how those interactions go, you’ll still have plenty of face-time with other people. Don’t freelance in order to escape dealing with people.

13. You Can’t Stand Up for Yourself

You’ll almost certainly end up with difficult clients at some point in your freelancing career.
If you can’t be assertive and stand up for yourself, you’ll end up getting walked all over. You need to have the confidence to stand up to a client who tries to get you to work for free, or who tries to bully you into reducing your price once the work is complete.
You also need to be able to handle clients who don’t pay their bills or make unreasonable demands.

14. You Have No Time-Management Skills

Time management can be one of the most challenging aspects of freelancing. It’s also one of the most important. But most designers find it easy to spend too much time on a certain project or aspect of their business (or personal life) to the detriment of other parts of their business or life.
Time management for freelancers consists of two important things: time you spend on your work versus time you spend on your personal life, and time you spend on one project versus another project. Setting regular working hours helps with the first one, even if all those regular hours consist of is only working until 4pm (and getting up earlier to allow yourself more working hours) or only working 8 hours a day (regardless of which 8 hours).
The second one is a bit trickier. Track how much time you’re spending on each project and be aware of what you quoted to the client. Try to estimate how much time each part of the project will take, and then try to stick to that estimate.

15. You Can’t Self-Motivate

This one is closely related to self-discipline, but takes it a step forward. Discipline is all about doing the things you have to do. Motivation is finding the wherewithall to do things you want to do.
There should be things related to your freelance business that you don’t have to do, but want to do or will make your business stronger or more enjoyable.
If you only ever do the bare minimum, you’re kind of missing the point of freelancing and being your own boss. Self-motivation means you can do things above and beyond what’s required to improve your freelancing business.

16. You Don’t Want to Maintain a Professional Image

When you work for a corporate design firm, you may never have to deal with clients directly. Clients might not even really know who you are. And that’s okay, because usually they’re more interested in the company than the individual designer.
When you’re freelancing, though, it’s your name that gets tied to your work. That means you need to keep a professional image for the best business results.
If a client Googles your name and all they find are drunken photos of you from spring break, it’s going to damage your reputation. You need to be willing to keep your private life private, and to act professionally in public. Hint: use the security settings on social networking sites to limit who sees what.

17. You Want Paid Vacations

As a freelancer, you don’t get paid vacations. You’ll need to either budget accordingly throughout the year to cover your vacation expenses, or make a big push right before a vacation to get everything done. Of course, the longer your vacation, the more advanced planning you’ll need. And in many cases, you might still have to deal with client emergencies while you’re away.
If you’ve become very accustomed to having four weeks of paid vacation each year, that can be a big adjustment to make. The main thing you’ll need to do is to notify your clients well in advance that you’ll be taking a vacation if you’re going to be gone for more than a couple days.

18. You’re a Workaholic

When there’s no one telling you to stop working at the end of the day, it’s easy for some people to just keep working. This can be just as detrimental to many as not working enough, though, as it can quickly lead to burnout.
If you’re not able to limit the hours you work, you’re probably going to have a short-lived freelancing career. Your work will suffer if you’re overworking, as will your family and personal life. It’s important to set limits to the number of hours you work, and to only take on projects that fit within those time constraints.
One possible solution is to let yourself be a workaholic for three or four days a week, but then not working at all on those other days. This can help to satisfy those workaholic tendencies while still allowing you enough time to recharge.

19. You Don’t Want to Keep Regular Hours

The freedom to work when you want to is one of the biggest draws for many freelancers. The idea of not having to work 9-to-5 is a huge plus. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to keep regular working hours.
First of all, most of your clients probably do keep regular 9-to-5 hours. You’ll need to be available when they’re working and want to get in touch with you.
The other issue is that if you don’t have a set work schedule, you’ll probably find you have a hard time getting everything done. Figure out what time of day you work best, whether that’s from 6pm till midnight or from 3am till noon and then work those hours. But make sure you’re available during at least some regular business hours so your clients can get in touch with you when they need to.

20. You Don’t Like Being Alone

Freelancing can be a lonely business. In many cases, you’re not meeting clients in person very often. You don’t have coworkers around. And you’re probably working out of your house. If you don’t like being alone for long stretches of time, you’ll likely find you’re not well-suited to freelancing.
Of course, there are solutions to this. You can work out of your house some days (from a coffee shop or coworking space). You can foster non-work relationships so you’re interacting with people when you’re not working. Or you might want to set a regular lunch-date with other friends who freelance or work from home.

The Bottom Line

Freelancing is not for everyone. And there’s nothing wrong with that. So often in creative fields we feel like if we’re working in a corporate environment that we’re somehow not as creative as those who have set out on their own. But there’s very little truth in that.
Freelancing is a career choice and something that every designer and developer has to decide on in respect to their personal situation.
For some, freelancing is a dream come true. But for others, it’s like a prison sentence. Don’t feel ashamed to stick with your corporate job if that’s where you’re comfortable and it’s fulfilling to you.

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

Source: http://bit.ly/aA99eV

El diccionario para comprender el lenguaje de los SMS

2010-09-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

Por oposición a lo que la mayoría de las personas suelen pensar, aquellos que dedicamos nuestra vida a especializarnos en un idioma extranjero, nos volvemos cada vez más puristas y rigurosos de nuestra propia lengua. Hablar bien un idioma extranjero viene acompañado de un elemento indispensable: conocer y estudiar con mayor rigurosidad el propio.

¿A qué se debe semejante introducción? A que como purista de mi amada lengua española (y Argentina!) es que encuentro al fenomeno de los mensajes de texto como una amenaza a la integridad de nuestros vocablos. Basta tan solo observar un momento para entender como la necesidad de ahorrar caracteres provoca catastróficos horrores de ortografía entre los adolescentes.

Por esto mismo, voy a citar un articulo que me resulta muy interesante, y que presenta, más allá del diccionario de sms, varios puntos de vistas que versan sobre la misma cuestión.

Fuente: http://www.infobae.com/notas/nota5.php?Idx=214721&IdxSeccion=100659

Padres, maestros y académicos, ya pueden encontrar en un sitio de internet el significado del lenguaje que impera entre los mensajes de texto que envían los chicos. Cnzca cmo fncna...

Link al diccionario: http://www.diccionariosms.com/contenidos/

Algunos padres creerían que los están cargando si en su celular reciben un mensaje de texto de sus hijos que dice: Ola cm sts. Mjor t veo n l prq cn mm. Muak. A no desesperar, con una breve consulta al diccionario SMS podrá saber que lo que le están diciendo es: Hola, ¿cómo estás? Mejor te veo en el parque con mamá. Un beso.

El fenómeno de los mensajes de texto no para de crecer. Por eso, un novedoso diccionario sobre el vocabulario de los SMS ya está disponible en la web. Allí, con la colaboración de miles jóvenes que vuelcan los términos que utilizan periódicamente para comunicarse con los mensajes de texto, va tomando forma este diccionario.

La página se ofrece como un "servicio" para acercar el lenguaje de los chicos a los más grandes, que a veces no comprenden esa sucesión de consonantes con la que se comunican los jóvenes de hoy.

La propuesta de diccionarioSMS, que tiene el auspicio de grandes compañías del sector como Movistar y MSN, es unificar en un solo lugar el lenguaje “transgresor, sintético, rebelde y práctico” que se viene imponiendo con el uso cada vez mayor de los mensajes de texto como forma de comunicación.

Así, busca “recopilar los términos y abreviaturas que utilizan los jóvenes para escribir en sus teléfonos móviles”. Incluso, según indica el propio sitio en su página de inicio, intentan acercar “de abajo hacia arriba” el lenguaje de los jóvenes a los profesores, estudiosos de la lengua española, medios de comunicación, padres y educadores.

SMS en la Argentina

Los datos manejados por la consultora Prince & Cook -que estudió el fenómeno- indican que en la Argentina se envía un promedio de 66 millones de mensajes de texto por día desde 17 millones de líneas de celular y que el segmento que más usa el servicio (Short Message Service, popularizado por su sigla SMS) es el de los menores de 25 años.

Del mismo estudio se desprende que hoy el 81% de los usuarios de celulares envían mensajes de texto.

El efecto de la tendencia se nota sobre todo en las escuelas, donde el timbre del recreo desata la fiebre de los mensajes.

"Basta conque suene el timbre para que los chicos salgan a leer y escribir mensajes. Eso los que tienen celular. Los que no piden uno prestado", dice María de los Angeles Rekofsky, profesora de Lengua, desde una escuela céntrica.

A favor

José Antonio Millán, creador del Centro Virtual del Instituto Cervantes en Internet, relativiza los riesgos de la difusión de este argot.

Millás opina que se trata de un registro diferente de la lengua escrita que puede coexistir sin conflicto con la norma correcta, como alguna vez lo hizo el lenguaje de los telegramas.

Pero eso sólo sucederá, dice el especialista, si los chicos mantienen paralelamente al hábito del SMS, contacto con libros y revistas. De lo contrario el riesgo es que desarrollen una escritura "deforme".

En contra

Los mensajes de texto son una pasión de crecimiento explosivo que viene con polémica, porque la jerga utilizada en los "mensajitos" -que se caracteriza por un afán evidente de ahorrar caracteres, suprimiendo acentos, signos de puntuación y determinadas letras y reduciendo muchas palabras a un manojo impronunciable de consonantes- recibe duras críticas de los defensores de la lengua.

Pedro Luis Barcia, presidente de la Academia Argentina de Letras, cree que el lenguaje SMS representa una "jibarización del idioma" capaz de reducir la capacidad de expresión de los adolescentes y hasta de amenazar el desarrollo de su pensamiento crítico.

Para el especialista se trata de un factor negativo que puede empeorar una situación ya grave: en los últimos cinco años, el número de palabras utilizadas habitualmente por los ingresantes a la universidad se redujo de 800 a 300, de acuerdo con los resultados de estudios que el propio Barcia dirigió en la Facultad de Comunicación de la Universidad Austral.

"Si a esta caída en la riqueza del lenguaje se le suma una reducción morfológica de las palabras se va a potenciar el empobrecimiento del idioma de los jóvenes, que está directamente asociado con el conocimiento. Tener menos herramientas en este tereno es disponer de menos saber y de menos capacidad para pensar", sostiene.

Barcia cree, asimismo, que hay un factor todavía más potencialmente perjudicial en la jerga de los celulares. Y es la destrucción de la sintaxis, el elemento del idioma que favorece el pensamiento lógico y el desarrollo de la capacidad crítica.

Social Media Terms Glossary

2010-09-01T05:43:00.000-07:00

In spite of the outsanding and increasing popularity of Social Media, there many groups of people who are still wondering what is it for, what is the big deal with it, how it works, and more importantly, what does every single word used in social media means?

So, here I leave you with a very nice glossary posted in INFOTECHUSA's Blog [@ http://infotechusa.wordpress.com/ ]

This interesting contribution will not only help those in need of clarification, but also it can give a clue to translators who face the fact that Social Media has its own vocabulary and expressions for which no translation has yet been found (or ever will). So, let's learn together how to adapt these terms to our everyday Eng > Spa translations!

Social Media Terms from A to Z

A: Aggregate – Aggregating content is the act of gathering information from across the web and making it available in one place. Example:

B: Blogoshere – Where all the blogs live on the Internet and where all the conversation happening around them.

BizBuzz – Syracuse Social Network. Social media network’s twitter hash tag ( # ). Type #bizbuzz on Twitter to see the results

C: Crowdsourcing – Pulling together the expertise and enthusiasm of those outside your organization who can voluntarily contribute content, create products, and solve problems for you.

C: Captcha – an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Captcha’s are often used to help separate humans from spam robots when leaving comments on a blog.

D: del.icio.us & Digg – Popular social bookmarking sites that enable users to store, share, and organize their favorite web sites and web pages.

E: Engagement – be an active participant online. Engage with blogs by leaving comments, share information with friends on social sites like Facebook, and tweet and retweet your followers on Twitter.

F: Facebook – a popular social networking site where users can create profiles, add friends, share photos and communicate with a select group of people. Users can become “fans” of organizations, people, and other entities. Users can also join groups and enter networks organized by schools, workplaces, or location.

G: Groundswell – a fast and spontaneous social trend that gathers force and influences public opinion.

H: Hyper-local – news coverage on a smaller, local, community level than is usually provided by regional news outlets. Also known as “narrow-interest” news.

H: Hashtag – Hashtags can be used to organize conversations around a particular event or a popular topic of conversation on Twitter. By organizing tweets around a hashtag, users following and participating in a conversation can find all Tweets about that subject. Ex. #socialmediaa-z

I: Influencer – a person that is recognized in the online community as someone who affects others’ thoughts and opinions. An Influencer is generally sought out for his/her expertise and knowledge in a specific subject area.

J: Join – join conversations and discussions online. Share information and be an active participant in social media sites.

K: Keep it simple – ‘nuff said.

L: LinkedIn – is a social and business networking site used primarily by professionals for organizing and connecting with business contacts.

M: Micro Blogging – a form of blogging that consists of extremely brief updates such as text messages, Tweets, photos, or audio or video clips.

N: Network – a set of connections or a group of people that a user sets up consisting of other people with similar interests.

O: Online Community – a group of individuals who share common interests and use the internet to communicate, network, and share information with each other.

P: Participate – To make the most of social media, you need to participate. Share your ideas and connect with people by participating in conversations online.

Q: Quick – Social media is quick and agile. It doesn’t take a lot of time to get involved.

R: Retweet – rebroadcasting or resending a twitter message that someone else sent.

S: Share – share links, feeds, videos etc… by posting them to your Facebook, Twitter, blog, or other social media site.

T: Twitter – Twitter is a free social media site that gives users a way to engage in “micro-blogging,” with a large online community in short, 140-character-or-less, messages.

U: UGC – User-generated content (UGC) refers to various kinds of media content that is produced by the audience or user and shared publicly. An example of UGC are videos posted to YouTube.

V: Viral Marketing – Viral marketing is when an idea or concept is spread by word-of-mouth instead of traditional paid advertising or marketing avenues. When something goes viral in social media, it is shared repeatedly and spread around by users taking on a life of it’s own.

W: Widgets – portable web code that can be posted, shared, and installed on any HTML-based web site by anyone without requiring any additional sets of programs.

X: XML – is an acronym for “Extensible Markup Language”. XML is a popular set of rules used to electronically code documents so that they can be used for RSS feeds.

Y: YouTube – YouTube is a popular online video community that allows users to easily upload and share videos.

Z: Zip – $0, nada, zero, nil. The monetary cost of using most social media tools. Especially if they come from PBS!

the Blog Day Post

2010-08-31T11:06:00.000-07:00

My 5 recommended blogs to celebrate the 5th Blog Day! [ http://www.blogday.org ]

http://novicetranslators.blogspot.com/

http://www.blog.4rwebsolutions.com/

http://www.atlargeinc.com/blog

http://translators-resource-center.blogspot.com/

http://abduzeedo.com/

I wish a great success to all of them!

IT Terms

2010-08-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

Si bien insisto en especializarme en Traducciones Jurídicas y de nunca apartarlas de mi vida profesional (las pasiones son difíciles de abandonar...), en este momento me encuentro trabajando en el área de la tecnología... esa gloriosa "IT" de la que los traductores con aspiraciones más "humanistas" tanto nos solemos quejar.

Pero finalmente las circunstancias de la vida hicieron que "me amigue con la tecnología", y así es fue que de a poco fui aprendiendo y volviéndome más y más curiosa, al punto de encontrar su magia y llegar a disfrutar de sus particularidades.

Es por eso que quiero compartir algunos links con glosarios de términos tan propios de este mundo. Para mi fueron y serán de mucha ayuda.

1 - Glossary of graphic design and web page design terms:

http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/glossary.html

2 - Tag HTML acronym:

http://www.htmlquick.com/es/reference/tags/acronym.html#tagevents

3 - SEO Glossary:

http://www.seobook.com/glossary/

Enjoy them!! And make a really good use of them ;)

MINIMALISM... Such an Interesting topic for translators!

2010-08-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

Minimalism is the effect of a conscius effort to present written elements with the fewest words neccessary to deliver the maximun readable impact. That is why it is very important to pay special attention to detail at the sentence level and not so to the length of the work itself. Indeed, a minimalist work might range from a paragraph to a complete novel.

This style or technique can be recognized in a variety of genres, Literature is not its only source and examples of it can be found in many written traditions, regardless of culture, contemporary, etc.

Generally, in a minimalist work of fiction, “what’s no reported […] is more important than what actually appears on the page. Frequently the emotional focus of the story is some underlying event that may not be described or even referred to in the story" (Sapp 82-83). The method of presentation suggests that there is more to the story than the scant narrated details. The reader has to infer from what has been given exactly what has been omitted. In this sense, minimalism is closely related to the short story, for both minimalism and the short story are governed by an aesthetic of exclusion.

Another characteristic is that many minimalist narratives seem internally disconnected at first —sentences seemingly detached from one another, open endings, narrative omissions, interplay of surface details etc. This is what we call parataxis. A real challenge for the translator. However, when read closely, the oblique references and dim designs combine into a complex allusion. Minimalist short story writers tell nothing, rather they show —and the showing, often a mere glance, actually reveals all— but the readers must get the point themselves. These fictions are just containers of compressed meaning. Language and event seem trivial, but the degree of triviality strongly suggests an inverse degree of importance. The blunt, uncomplicated prose mirrors empty lives, and the lack of narrator commentary demands extensive reader participation. Minimalism implies interactive reading. For the most part, the characters of minimalist fiction are ordinary people who appear to inhabit the "real world," where doing and/or saying nothing is often easier than the alternative.

In some minimalist short fiction, the action seems totally gratuitous and all emotion swept under the surface of a dispassionate narrative voice and unmodulated dialogue. Since minimalist writers seem to share with postmodernists the conviction that the world is random and contingent rather than defined and governed by some stable set of rules, truths, and laws; many of their characters appear to be in psychic or emotional pain. However, the condensed structure and detached narrative tone of minimalist short stories reflects their unsensitiveness towards that pain.

I should also say that minimalist prose creates not only the illusion of a "storyless story" but also of an "authorless story" and the very suppression of style is a style in itself, it is an aesthetic choice.

Finally, there are basic qualities of minimalist fiction that are worth mentioning (and I will include examples to ilustrate some of them):

- Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs, leading to a very short story:

“This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife’s relatives in Connecticut. He called my wife from his in-laws’. Arrangements were made. He would come by train, a fife-hour trip, and my wife would meet him at the station. […]” (Cathedral)

- Easy vocabulary:

“Madrid is full of boys named Paco, which is the diminutive of the name Francisco, and there is a Madrdid joke about a father…” (The Capital of the World)

- Simple sentence structure:

“[…] She made the first contact after a year or so. She called him up one night from an Air Force in Alabama. She wanted to talk. They talked. He asked her to send him a tape and tell him about her life. She did this. She sent the tape. […]” (Cathedral)

- Little figurative language

- Minimal description of characters and setting

- Minimal background information

- Narrative depicts a painful existence of the characters:

“He came from a village in a part of Extremadura where conditions were incredibly primitive, food scarce, and conforts unknown and he had worked hard ever since he could remember” (The Capital of the World)

- Use of brand names to quickly characterize/describe

- Very little action

- Often written in the present tense

- No resolution (open endings):

“My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.

‘It’s really something’, I said.” (Cathedral)

- Nihilistic tone

- Sentences detached from one another:

“The blind man had another taste of his drink. He lifted his beard, sniffed it, and let it fall. He leaned forward on the sofa. He positiones his ashtray on the coffe table, the put the lighter to his cigarette. He leaned on the sofa and crossed his legs at the ankles.” (Cathedral)

CONCLUSION

Analysing it from a translator’s point of view, minimalist fiction might be considered the most easily translateable piece of literature and at the same time represent the most difficult task.

On one hand, it is quite simple to translate due to its simple sentence structure and easy vocabulary. Besides, there is very little action which means very little use of verbs that are sometimes an obstacle at the moment of translating —owing to the inflexibility of Spanish in opposition to that of English. I must as well mention the short sentences; the lack of figurative language —this makes the task even easier since we may concentrate only on the grammar structure leaving aside the meaning that the figurative language may try to convey. On the other hand, since there is so much left for the reader to interpret, we must pay special attention to what is said in order not to include or make explicit what the author himself didn´t include; if so, we would be saying what is supposed to be deduced by the reader. At the same time we, as translators, have to be aware of the kind of descriptions we may encounter, for although it may seem an easy task to translate something that does not contain many descriptions; the lack of detailed description is sometimes more difficult and we have to be careful not the draw an empty picture. Another element that may constitute an obstacle is the nihilistic tone. We, as people living under a certain set values and principles, may not be able to leave them all aside and achieve the objectivity required by it.

It may well be said that any and every literary work represents a challenge for a translator, no matter the style, technique, culture, etc. in which it was written. However I personally consider minimalism to be specially challenging (though not alone in this category) due to the active role the reader is supposed to have and which is an added effect the translator must achieve.

Bibliography:

- Basic Qualities of Minimalist Fiction at http://www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson1007/Qualities.pdf

- Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral”. Paperback (New York) 1989

- Cynthia J. Hallet, “Minimalism and the short story” at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2455/is_n4_v33/ai_20906634

- Deron Bauman, “Minimalism. Toward a Definition” at http://www.elimae.com/essays/bauman/minimalism.html

- Hemingway, Ernest. “The Capital of the World”

Traducciones automáticas vs. traducciones humanas

2010-08-10T10:43:00.000-07:00

Fuente: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com

Con los nuevos desarrollos tecnológicos y el mayor acceso a las herramientas de traducción electrónica para las traducciones automáticas, algunos consideran que esta tecnología eventualmente reemplazará al traductor humano. ¿Los traductores humanos son realmente esenciales para el proceso de traducción, o su labor puede simplificarse y procesarse mediante una máquina?

Durante décadas se han llevado a cabo investigaciones a fin de establecer si los sistemas de computación pueden traducir de un idioma natural a otro. Estos sistemas funcionan esencialmente disgregando los componentes del texto tales como signos de puntuación, frases idiomáticas reconocidas, terminología en pocas palabras y estructuras de oraciones, y luego reconstruyen estos elementos en el idioma meta mediante la aplicación de reglas lingüísticas específicas y el “aprendizaje” de las traducciones ya existentes.

Todo esto suena prometedor, pero nos estamos olvidando de que los idiomas están repletos de ambigüedades y reglas complejas que ni siquiera una computadora puede resolver con éxito. Como saben todos los traductores, el proceso de traducción implica mucho más que simplemente reemplazar palabras del texto fuente por las del idioma meta. Este proceso implica utilizar conocimientos semánticos, sintácticos, culturales y gramaticales a fin de interpretar el verdadero sentido de las oraciones y asegurar que se transmita la idea claramente a los lectores nativos.

Las traducciones automáticas ofrecen un paquete atractivo para los usuarios, porque abrevian los plazos de entrega y ofrecen un enfoque consistente y sistemático en el manejo de las traducciones. No obstante, debemos considerar que mientras el proceso de las traducciones realizadas por traductores humanos es mucho más lento en este sentido, solamente los traductores humanos pueden evaluar si una traducción se ajusta o no a una audiencia en particular y realizar las elecciones lingüísticas y de estilo en base a la experiencia en vez de a una base de datos.

Trusted Translations: Gracias por tan interesante aporte!

What is a Certified Translation? What's Notarisation? Or Legalisation?

2010-08-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

Translations for legal purposes require formalising - something to show they're accurate and can be trusted. Depending on what they're to be used for, authorities may require a Legalised (the weightiest), Notarised or - most commonly - Certified translation. Wolfestone Translation is a certified translation provider accredited by the Association of Translation Companies (Home Office approved). Wolfestone Translation is independently certified with the new British Standard EN 15038. This is an industry-specific standard which covers the unique challenges involved in delivering high quality translation services. We are one of a very few translation companies who are additionally independently certified with ISO 9001:2008 (Quality Management) and ISO 14001:2004. Wolfestone can assist you with all levels of ‘official’ translation.

A certified translation means it has been performed by a professional qualified translator, and accurately reflects the original. For certified translation, each page must be stamped & signed by the translation provider. As we are a Translation Company (not an Agency - important!) - we certify in-house. When we send your certified translation (always by recorded delivery as standard) you'll also receive a Certifying Letter - look after this - it's the translation's legal provenance and may be asked for.
Notarised translation may be needed where more serious legal matters hinge on accurate translation, such as evidence in a civil or criminal case. To notarise a translation the translator must personally attend a Public Notary's offices, where they will swear before the Notary that they are a professionally qualified translator and that the translation is to the best of their knowledge accurate. The Notary will stamp and authorise the translation. You will receive a copy of this that you will need to keep safe as a replacement will have to be re-notarised and therefore the same cost will be involved. Notarised documents incur additional legal costs and are charged per document.
Legalised translation may be required for court or civil cases outside the UK. Bureaucracy can extend significantly lead times for legalised translation, so please allow enough time. Costs vary depending on the country it is for, but we try to minimise these for you. The most common of these processes is apostilling under the Hague Convention.

Source: Wolfestone Translation

http://www.wolfestone.co.uk/faq.php#certified

What is 'Shift of Meaning'? An Attempt at a Linguistic Analysis

2010-08-02T06:56:00.001-07:00

A tricky problem that assessors of translations are often faced with is how to draw the line between serious mistranslations and so called 'shifts of meaning'. For want of safe criteria it is often difficult to determine how serious a shift of meaning is and whether it should rather be regarded as a serious error. I will try here to find some linguistic criteria for such judgements and will begin by discussing some cases of erroneous translations from English into Swedish (the examples are fictitious).

1. The weapon used by the perpetrator was a sawn-off shotgun.
2. Det vapen som användes av förövaren var ett avsågat hagelgevär.(CORRECT)
3. Det vapen som användes av förövaren var ett avsågat gevär.(WRONG)

The translator of 3 has ended up on the wrong hierarchical level, since a shotgun is a special type of gun. In other words gevär is a so called hyperonym or superordinate term and hagelgevär is a hyponym or subordinate term, as shown in Figure 1 below, in which some other hyponyms are also shown:

The designation 'gevär' in Figure 1 indicates that this is a superordinate term that is included in the meanings of all the hyponymous terms. The translation 'gevär' is therefore partially correct, but not precise enough, since the component hagel ('shot') is missing. The two words belong, however, to the same lexical field or domain, which may be defined as "small arms handled by both hands". Should this translation then be judged as a serious error or as a shift of meaning? In my view it should be regarded as a serious error, in particular if it occurs in a legal context where it may be of the utmost importance for all details pertaining to a law case to be correctly rendered. It may for example be of great importance in a case of murder to be given exact information about what kind of weapon was used when searching for and identifying the murderer.

This shows that it is not sufficient - at least not when translating a legal text - to use terms that are too general. It may be concluded that using the wrong term belonging to the same semantic domain as the correct term cannot automatically be judged as a shift of meaning. The next question is whether there may be similar cases in which the faulty translation can nevertheless be judged more leniently. There follows a case that might be taken from a general text:

4. He put a new record on the record player.
5. Han lade på en ny skiva på skivspelaren.(CORRECT)
6. Han lade på en ny skiva på grammofonen.(WRONG)

CED defines record player as "a machine on which you play records" andgramophone as "an old-fashioned type of record player". The Nationalencyk-lopedin ('The National Swedish Encyclopaedia' (NE)) defines skivspelare as "another name for gramophone" and grammofon as "a device for mechanical or mechano-electrical reproduction of sounds by means of a disc-shaped medium". This indicates an interesting difference between the two languages. In English record player is the superordinate term and gramophone the hyponymous 'a kind of record player', while skivspelare and grammofon are synonyms in Swedish, if one is to believe NE (whose definitions are sometimes disputed, however). According to BCL a record player is an "apparatus for playback of gramophone records", and among various types of gramophones are mentioned crank gramophones, electrical record players and CD players. BCL's definition, according to which record player is a hyperonym, is thus more in accord with CEED's. In the Swedish folk lexicon there is also likely to be a lot of confusion in this area, partly due to so called apparent time. Elderly people tend to call all types of record players gramophones, while younger people make a clear distinction between gramophone, 'playback apparatus with a pickup arm', and record player, 'digital playback apparatus'.

Another interesting fact that this case shows is that the source language and the target language may have different hierarchical relations between two terms that seem lexically to be direct equivalents. Such pairs might be regarded as a special type of "false friends".

One conclusion to be drawn from this case is that none of the possible translations can be judged as a serious mistake. Another more general conclusion is that a dubious translation cannot automatically be regarded as a shift of meaning, if it happens to be in the same semantic domain as the correct translation. On the other hand this conclusion cannot be drawn across the board. All translations are very much dependent on factors such as genre, target group, context, level of style, etc. Let us look at some other examples that may lead to other conclusions.

The following example might be taken from a general text:

7. He put the saucepan on the hot plate.
8. Han satte kastrullen på kokplattan.(CORRECT)
9. Han satte kastrullen på spisen ('the stove').(WRONG)

This example resembles no. 1-3, but is nevertheless of a different nature. This is not a case of the wrong choice of translation within a semantic domain. The relation between kokplatta ('hot plate') and spis ('stove') is not hyponymous (hierarchical) but rather a relation between the whole and one of its parts, that is, so called "meronymy". Everybody who knows what a modern stove looks like and how it works also knows that it has a number of hot plates. In this context it is possible to use truth-conditional arguments to determine how much deviant the erroneous translation is. The arguments are presented in 10-11 below:

10. If a stove has at least one hot plate, then 8 above means that the saucepan is normally put on both the hot plate and the stove.

11. Therefore 9 has the same truth-value as 8 in the sense that a saucepan that is put on a stove will in all likelihood also be put on a hot plate, if the action is to have a meaningful function.

In this case of a part-whole relation it would seem reasonable to judge the erro-neous translation as a shift of meaning, as our knowledge of the real world tells us that the effect of the described action should be the same irrespective of whether the referent is described as a stove or a hot plate. But again, this must not be taken to imply that all erroneous translations of this kind may be regarded as shifts of meaning. A somewhat similar case with the opposite effect is pre-sented in 12-14 below:

12. He put the joint in the oven.
13. Han satte steken i ugnen.(CORRECT)
14. Han satte steken på spisen (on the stove).(WRONG)

If a translator for some strange reason should render 12 as 14, then the error is different from the one discussed in 1-3. This is not an erroneous hierarchical description but a description of an event where the whole replaces one of its parts in a way that, due to the assessor's knowledge of the world, s/he cannot but judge as a serious error. While the relation between stove and hot plate may be regarded as a shift of meaning because of the truth relation between the two lexemes, in the oven and on the stove (the choice of preposition is significant here) has no such relation.

Obscure translations may be made for many other reasons, where both the translator's and the assessor's age may cause complications in the choice of translation and the judgement of it. Let us look at two English lexemes and their Swedish equivalents:

15. Lazily she reached out for her bottle of perfume.

To translate lazily in a stylistically acceptable manner proved impossible for a group of students of translation theory. My translation was:

16. Lojt (Lättejefullt) sträckte hon sig efter parfymflaskan.

None of the students (who were all 18 - 23 years old) knew the lexemes lojt andlättjefullt. Instead they suggested slött ('sluggishly'), which corresponds to neither the style nor the content of the text. While lojt and lättjefullt may have positive senses (just as lazily in the English sentence), slött is definitely a word with a negative meaning. This type of mistranslation may however be judged as a shift of meaning, since all the three words contain the meaning component 'unenergetic'.

This may perhaps serve as a tentative definition of what should regarded as shift of meaning, that is, using a word or an expression that has a basic meaning in common with the word that is correct in the context but in addition has a deviant axiological meaning.

References

BCL Lidman, S. et al. (eds) (2001) Bonniers compact lexicon. Stockholm: Bonnier lexicon.
CED Hanks, P. et al. (red) (1986) The Collins English Dictionary. 2nd ed. London, Collins.
Nationalencyklopedin (1989). Höganäs: Bokförlaget Bra Böcker AB.

Emeritus professor of English, translator, interpreter, language reviser

Published by lexicool.com, November 2003.

Avoiding a comedy of errors: How to choose a translator wisely

2010-07-30T06:49:00.000-07:00

Translation clients are often buying blind. They seldom know what they are paying for, especially when buying a translation into a language other than their own. Translations are definitely not all born equal, a fact to which anyone who has experienced the pain, amusement or confusion of reading a bad one will attest.

Bad translations may take many forms and vary in the degree of injury. From the high comedy of the Alta Vista Babel Fish machine translation (Menu items: "Nice little bits of pig, drunken" and "Pens at the countrywoman") to those done by an overzealous, non-native speaker abusing a dictionary ("We are second-rate hotel situated in bowels of greenery..."), or those not bothering with a dictionary at all ("The product must be delivered tempestuously!"), to technically correct, but clunky translations ("Hence, for example, the realization of the modular products as per above corresponds to the functional needs expressed..."), they all send the same message - buyer beware.

What can you do to avoid unintentional comedy, or just making a bad impression?

Look for accreditation.

Many professional translator associations, such as the ATA (North America) or the AITI (Italy), attempt to set a standard of quality and accuracy by administering difficult, peer-evaluated tests in specific language combinations. Experienced, accredited translators evaluate the test to award certification.

Look at samples.

Find a native speaker of the target language (the language into which the document is translated) who can read samples of the translator's work. It's even better if your evaluator also knows the source language (the language from which the document is translated). This little bit of research can tell you a lot about a translator's skill. Good, smooth writing is a challenge in itself; writing well and conveying meaning into another language adds an entirely new dimension of challenge. Don't assume that just because someone is a native speaker of a language, they translate well.

Match the document to the translator.

Not all documents are created alike and no translator can translate all documents well. Look at the translator's specialization and experience. If a translator does not have legal experience, don't give that translator your sticky legal document. If you want some snazzy marketing text, an expert in legalese may not always be the best choice.

The most common misconception about translation is that it is a mechanical matter, the mere trading of words from one language for the words of another. If you understand the complex ways in which languages and cultures differ from one another, as well as the inherent challenges of writing, you can begin to choose a translator without making the dreaded brutta figura (literal: "ugly figure"; non-literal: "bad impression").

Freelance translator (Italian > English)

Published by lexicool.com, November 2003.

Ministerios Nacionales: Traducción de sus denominaciones

2009-07-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

Ministerio de Defensa: Ministry of Defence

Ministerio de Desarrollo Social: Ministry of Social Development

Ministerio de Economía y Producción: Ministry of Economy and Public Finance

Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología: Ministry of Education; Science, Technology and Productive Innovation

Ministerio del Interior: Ministry of the Interior

Ministerio de Justicia, Seguridad y Derechos Humanos: Ministry of Justice, Security and Human Rights

Ministerio de Planificación Federal, Inversión Pública y Servicios: Ministry of Federal Planning, Public Investment and Services

Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Comercio Internacional y Culto: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship

Ministerio de Salud: Ministry of Health

Ministerio de Trabajo, Empleo y Seguridad Social: Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security

Traducción de Certificados

2009-07-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

El primer punto a tener en cuenta es que al traducir un certificado, o cualquier documento público que requiera legalización, debemos incluir toda la información que figure en la página del documento original. Es sumamente importante indicar si existen sellos, timbres, firmas, escudos, logos, etc. y el lugar en el que se encuentran. Para lograr este propósito, podemos modificar el formato del texto y obtener un documento más organizado. Por otro lado, no debemos, bajo ningún concepto, agregar elementos que no figuren en el documento original.

Al finalizar la traducción debemos incluir una leyenda en la que certificamos que lo que antecede es traducción fiel del documento original, ya que, como traductores, somos legalmente responsables de la calidad y veracidad de nuestras traducciones. Tampoco debemos olvidarnos de firmar y sellar inmediatamente después de nuestra propia certificación (de lo contrario la misma carecería de valor).

Si bien, en toda traducción uno debe constatar varias veces la falta de errores, en las traducciones legales dicha verificación es de suma importancia y debemos ser extremadamente cuidadosos, ya que un simple error de tipeo puede representar un gran problema.

Otro punto importante que debemos tener en cuenta es la traducción de la Apostilla. La misma consiste en certificar que la firma y el sello de un documento público fueron puestos por una autoridad en uso de sus facultades. La apostilla, al igual que la legalización, únicamente certifica que la firma o sello que muestra el documento fue emitido por un funcionario público en ejercicio de sus funciones, pero no certifica la validez del contenido del mismo. Dicha certificación tiene un formato determinado y traducirla no representa mayores dificultades. Sin embargo es necesario recordar que el documento contiene determinadas expresiones en francés que no deben ser traducidas, se mantienen en su idioma original, independientemente del idioma hacia el cual estemos traduciendo.

Ejemplo de Apostilla en ambos idiomas:

APOSTILLE

Convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961

1. Country:

This public document

2. has being signed by

3. acting in the capacity of

4. bears the seal/stamp of

5. at 6. the

7. by

8. No.

9. Seal/Stamp 10. Signature

APOSTILLA

Convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961

1. País:

Este documento público

2. ha sido firmado por

3. en capacidad de

4. lleva el sello/timbre de

5. en 6. a los

7. por

8. Nº

9. Sello/Timbre 10. Firma

Tongues-twisting: Spanglish, Slanglish, Ingleñol -whatever you call it, we talk the talk y somos lo que hablamos. It’s fun y, además, very creativo

2009-05-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

Something that always called my attention as a translator —and before that, as a language student— was code-switching. That is it why, I would like to share with you a summary of what became my final thesis and a glossary of Spanglish terms.

SPANGLISH AND CODE-SWITCHING

Growing phenomena

The mixture of cultures in the United States of America gave birth to two linguistic phenomena widely spread in certain places due to the Hispanic origin of many of its inhabitants. There is, in that country, not only social but also individual bilingualism. Therefore, we can speak of diglossia, i.e. two languages, Spanish and English, the former consigned to informal situations —domestic communication in particular—, while the latter is the official language used for business, teaching, etc.

Code-switching is one of the most frequent phenomenon in bilingual communities. The term means that there are two languages used alternately in the same utterance. This has been studied by many researchers who stated that —contrary to the general thinking that this is the result of an illiterate group of people corrupting the language— code-switching is ruled by functional and pragmatic requirements.

As regards Spanglish, this dialect started as colloquial in the rough parts of towns on the border with Mexico. But it was after the sixties’ civil rights movement when this hybrid language gained full acceptance. Although nowadays many linguists look down on Spanglish, this is widely used by those people who are exposed to both Spanish and English. This phenomenon is a product of close border contacts or large bilingual communities. In any case, Spanglish is not an arbitrary invention. It seems to follow a linguistic pattern. It mainly affects the lexis and there are different kinds of naturalization in Spanglish, among them: phonological loanwords (whether with or without morphological derivations from Spanish); borrowings forming new patterns; borrowing without naturalization, etc.

Diccionario de Spanglish

Spanglish/Español/Ingles

Fuente: http://members.tripod.com/~nelson_g/spanglish.html

A

Aseguranza/seguro/insurance

Miguel tiene que obtener una aseguranza para su automovil

Appointment/cita/appointment

Maria tiene que ir al doctor, pues tiene un appoinment a las 3:00

Apodar/podar/prune

Se usa mucho entre los trabajadores del campo: yo trabajo apodando los arboles de manzana

Atras/regresar/back

Se usa en casi toda ocasion en que la oracion inglesa lleva la palabra back: I need to give back the book to the library = Tengo que dar para atras el libro a la biblioteca.

B

Biurro/guardaropa

Babysit/cuidar niños/babysit

Maria tiene que babysit a su hermanita en la noche.

Break/dezcanso/break

Estoy muy canzado de trabajar, hay que tomar un break, no?

Brekas/frenos/brakes

Jose tiene que arreglar las brekas de su carro

Blokes/cuadra/block

La marketa esta como a unos cinco blokes de aqui

Brief/modelo de trabajo

Maria me brifeo por nota el trabajo pendiente

Bill/cobro/bill

Maria va a pagar todos los biles de la renta, etc.

Baby/bebe/baby

Maria recientemente tuvo un baby, y esta bien cute!.

Ben/arcon/bin

Jose tiene que llenar cuatro benes de manzanas en el field

Bombe/tope/bump

Cuidado con ese bompe en la calle!!

C

Carpeta/alfombra/carpet

Tengo que limpiar la carpeta con la aspiradora

Cuquear/cocinar/cook

Honey, apurate a cuquear la comida que ya tengo hambre.

Chequear/examinar/check

Maria va a chequear al baby que va a babysit por la noche.

Cora/cuarto/quarter

Quarter se refiere a un cuarto del dólar: no tienes unas coras para llamar por telefono?

Cherry/cereza/cherry

Todos los veranos trabajo sorteando cherries en una empacadora.

Cash/dinero en efectivo/cash

Mi boss me pago con cash por haber trabajado overtime.

Cheeseburger/hamburgesa de queso/cheeseburger

Quiero una cheeseburger, fries y una soda por favor!.

Clikear/oprimir/click

Haz click aqui para visitar mi website

Cada otro dia/cada tercer dia/every other day

Yo voy al gym cada otro dia para pumpear mis musculos

D

Dealer/distribuidor/dealer

Ayer fui al dealer de carros para comprarme un carro nuevo.

Deal/trato/deal

Cuando fui a comprar un carro en el dealer, el salesman me ofrecio un deal muy bueno.

Dime/10 centavos/dime

Hey, ese no tienes un dime que me prestes?

E

E-mail/mensaje/e-mail

Si conoces otra palabra spanglish mandame un e-mail.

Eskipear/salarsela o faltar a clase/skip

Maria se eskipea de la High School cada semana para irse con su novio

F

Field/campo/field

Jose trabaja en el field de manzanas cada año

Freezer/congelador/freezer

El lonche esta almacenado en el freezer.

G

Gasoline/gasolina/gasoline

Voy a llenar el tanque de mi carro con gasoline

Glasso/vaso/glass

Todas las noches, mi baby toma un glasso de leche

Groceria/alimentos/grocery

Tengo que ir a la marketa a comprar grocerias

Ganga/pandilla/gang

Maria perteneze a la ganga de sur de L.A.

H

Honey/querida/honey

Hey, honey, ya tienes la cena lista?

I

Income tax/impuesto sobre ingreso/income tax

Ya me canse del gobierno, estoy pagando mucho income tax!

J

Jeans/pantalones (de dril)/jeans

Compre un par de jeans en la mall, estan bien cool!

L

Likear/gotear/leak

La llave del agua estaba likeando toda la noche!

Libreria/library/biblioteca

Voy a ir a la libreria a estudiar un poco mas de spanglish.

Locker/cacillero/locker

Esperame, Maria!! Tengo que ir a mi locker a tomar unos libros!

Lonche/lunch

Tiene dos significados:

Almuerzo: voy a comprar una cheeseburger para mi lonche

Comestibles: Mi mama tiene que ir a la marketa para comprar el lonche

Luz/semaforo/traffic light

El policia me dio un ticket for pasarme una luz roja!

M

Mailear/enviar correo/mail

Tengo que mailear una carta a mi novia por e-mail.

Manager/gerente/manager

El manager de mi trabajo es una persona negrera

Money order/giro posta/money order

Ayer le mande un money order a mi madre a Mexico

Mopear/trapear/to mop

Mi vieja tiene que mopear toda la casa para que pueda watchar las novelas

Movies/pelicula/movie

Anoche fui a watchar las movies con mi novia.

Marketa/mercado/market

Mi mama fue a la marketa para comprar el lonche de la semana

O

Overtime/tiempo extra/overtime

Jose trabajo overtime la semana pasada

P

Ponchar/perforar/punch

Necesito ponchar la tarjeta de horario del trabajo todos los dias

Parkear/estacionar/park

Hey, jose; donde parkeaste tu carro que no lo encuentro!.

Party/fiesta/party

Jose y maria van esta invidados a un party

Puchar/empujar/push

Jose, ayudame a puchar el carro pa'delante!.

Pompear/bombear/pump

Tengo que pompear la llanta del carro, pues se poncho

Parkeaderos/estacionamientos/parking lot

Estaciona tu troca en otro lado por que el parkeadero esta lleno

Q

Quitear/dejar/quit

Ya me canze de mi trabajo!!, voy a quitear mañana mismo!!

R

Ride, raytear/ride/abenton

Hey man, puedes darme un raite a mi casa?

Ruffo/techo/roof

Oh! mira, el gato esta en el ruffo!

Ranger/guardabosques/ranger

Cuando vamos de cazeria, tenemos que cuidarnos del ranger

S

Spelear/deletrear/spell

Es que no se como espelearle mi nombre

Sale/venta/sale

Mañana vamos ir shopping, pues hay un sale en el mall

Sink/fregadero/sink

Jose, pon los platos en el sink!

Sign/letrero/sign

Cuando vayas por la calle, busca el sign que dice "Taco Bell"

Startear/prender/start

Honey, podrias startear el carro please?

Signear/firmar/sign

Boss, si puede signear mi check

Security/seguridad/security

Llamen a un security si tienen algun problema

Safety/seguridad/safety

La marketa deberia tener mas safeties; pues fue robada ayer

Soda/refresco/soda

Que calor! vamos a comprar una soda

Show/espectaculo/show

El show de Jim Carrey estuvo chingon!

Sortear/clasificar o escoger/sort

Socketines/calcenites/socks

Tuve que lavar mis socketines por que no tenia ni uno limpio

Cada verano, trabajo sorteando cherries en una empacadora

Shopping/compras/shopping

A las chicas les encanta ir shopping a la mall

T

Ticket/boleto o infraccion/ticket

Tengo un ticket para las movies.... la chota me dio un ticket por manejar muy recio

Training/entrenar/training

Jose tiene que estar bien trainiado para su try-out

Troca/camioneta/troca

Me acabo de comprar una troca bien chingona

Transcript/constancia de estudios/transcript

Obtuve un transcript cuando me gradue de High School

Taxes/impuestos/taxes

La troca cuesta $15000 mas taxes

Tray/bandeja/tray

Trabajo en una empacadora, llenando trays de manzana

Taipear/escribir a maquina/type

Maria sabe taipear mas de 60 palabras por minuto!.

V

Vacunar/aspirar/vacuum

Mi honey tiene que vacunar la carpeta por que esta muy cochina

Vcr/videocasetera/vcr

Jose esta viendo una movie con su vcr

W

Washateria/lavanderia/laundry

Voy a la washateria a lavar la ropa

Watchar/observar/watch

Hey, jose, watcha por donde caminas, ya mero te caes!

Y

Yarda/patio, o solar/yard

Vieja! manda a los ninos a jugar a la yarda!

Yonque/deshuesadero/junkyard

En el yonque puedo comprar partes usadas para mi troca

Yardsale/venta de garage/yardsale

Jose va todos los fines de semana a las yardsales, para comprar cosas baratas

Z

Zip code/codigo postal/zip code

Asegurate de poner el zip code en la carta.

Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful. —Yevgeny Yevtushenko —

2009-05-14T14:28:00.000-07:00

Poetry translation is a major challenge to all translators. This is so because we have to bear in mind elements such as meter, cadence, and rhythm, which are really difficult to translate. That is the reason why I quoted Yevgeny Yevtushenko. When it comes to this kind of translations, we can almost say that we are actually re-writing them completely. We are writing a bright new poem, despite of what we may think about being faithful to the original.

Therefore, every translator dealing with this kind of writing should pay special attention to “sense” rather than “words”. Words may change, but if we focus on sense, the message is kept intact.

Let me show you an example of this. The following are poems I translated for a client of mine (who wishes to remain anonymous until the publication of the book).

Original version: Spanish

A pesar de todo

Escribo una nueva página

en mi libro interminable,

y es que me encuentro inconsolable

al no poderte tener

La distancia ya me abruma

y me hace pensar demasiado

a tal punto me siento sola

que busco refugio en otros brazos

No significa gran cosa

el confesar que te he engañado

pero tendrías que haberlo previsto

aunque sin dudarlo te has marchado

Hoy estoy sentada sola

sin lamentar lo pasado

porque me sirvió para darme cuenta

de que a pesar de todo te amo

Despite

I’m starting a bright new page

in my infinite cage

not able to find consolation

since you left me in isolation.

Distance overwhelms me

and makes me think a lot

such loneliness I feel

I’m not able to heal.

It’s not the worst of all

confessing I’ve been a fraud

but you should have foreseen it

before you ever think of leaving.

Today I’m sitting alone

without regretting our love

because it helped me realize

in spite of all you are mine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dudo

Dudo de todo,

incluso de la vida,

dudo que aún existan

la fe y el porvenir.

Dudo de tus ojos

que tan lejos de los míos,

intentan acercarse

sin siquiera sonreír.

Dudo de la paz

y también de la guerra,

dudo del planeta

y de mi inseguridad.

Dudo que algún día

puedas llegar a amarme

y cumplir tus promesas

o hablar con sinceridad

Doubt

Of everything I doubt

even of my own life.

I doubt whether still

there exist faith and good will.

I doubt your eyes,

when distant as they are

try to reach mines

without holding a smile.

I doubt peace

and also war,

I doubt the earth

and my unsteadiness.

I doubt some day

you fall in love

and keep your word

or lie to me no more.

Glosario de siglas (Derecho impositivo) / Abbreviations Glossary (Tax Law)

2008-10-13T22:09:00.000-07:00

Cmd. (Command): disposición (d.)

E.C. (European Community): Comunidad Europea (C.E.)

ECJ (European Court of Justice): Corte Suprema de Justicia Europea (ECJ)

ED (Exposure Draft): publicación del anteproyecto (ED)

ESCs (extra-statutory concesions): concesiones extra-estatutarias (ESCs)

E.U. (European Union): Unión Europea (U.E.)

GAAR (General Anti-Avoidance Rule): regla contra la elusión

HL (House of Lords): cámara de los Lores (HL)

IR (Inland Revenue): administración tributaria

M.Ps (Members of Parliament): miembros del Parlamento

NI Contributions (National Insurance Contributions): Contribuciones para la seguridad social (Contribuciones NI)

OECD: organización para la cooperación y el desarrollo económico (OECD)

PAYE (Pay As You Earn): sistema de recaudación de impuestos por medio de retención sobre el salario

SPs (Statements of practice): Declaraciones sobre la práctica (SPs)

VADT (VAT and Duties Tribunal): Tribunal de IVA e impuestos internos

VAT (Value Added Tax): Impuesto al valor agregado (IVA)

Glosario de términos de derecho impositivo (propio) / Tax Law Terms Glossary (own)

2008-10-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

Ability-to-pay: capacidad contributiva

Adjudicator: juez

Administrative Court: corte administrativa

Allowance: exención tributaria

Annuity: anualidad

Appeal tribunals: tribunales de apelación

Appeals: (recurso de) apelación

Approach: enfoque

Assessed taxes: impuestos de valuación

Average rate of tax: porcentaje de tarifa impositiva

Barnacles: percebe

Barrister: abogado (habilitado para alegar ante un tribunal superior)

Bench: judicatura

Bill of rights: carta de derechos

Black economy: economía en negro

Bodies corporate: unión de empresas

Brain-power: capacidad intelectual

Breach: violar, incumplir

Budget: presupuesto

Bunk: tontería

Business rate: impuesto sobre locales comerciales

Cap: limitar

Capital Allowances Act: ley de exención de capitales

Capital gains tax: impuesto sobre la plusvalía

Capital Transfer Tax: impuesto a las transferencias

Case law: jurisprudencia

Cash-flow: flujo de efectivo

Channel Isles: islas del canal de la Mancha

Chartered accountant: contador público

Chartered Institute of Taxation: instituto colegiado de impuestos

Clerk: secretario

Climate Change Levy: tributos medioambientales

Codification Committee: comité de codificación

Coding notice: notificación del código fiscal que recibe anualmente el

contribuyente

Commendable: encomiable

Community Customs Code: código de la comunidad aduanera

Company and agency law: ley de sociedades comerciales

Complainant: actor

Compliance costs: costos de cumplimiento

Comprehensive Taxes: impuestos globales

Compulsory levy: gravamen obligatorio

Consolidation: reforma; publicación

Consolidation Act: ley de consolidación

Consolidation measure: medidas de consolidación

Consumers Association: asociación de defensa al consumidor

Contraband: alijo

Contract law: derecho contractual

Corporation tax: impuesto a la renta de las personas jurídicas

Council tax: contribuciones urbanas

Court of appeal: Corte de apelaciones

Court service: servicio de cortes de su majestad

Courts: la Corte

Cross-appeal: apelación interpuesta por ambas partes

Customs and Excise: Servicios de aduana

Customs and Excise Managemente Act: ley de administración de servicios de aduana

Customs duty: derechos de aduana

Delegated legislation: ley delegada

Deputy Special Commissioners: comisionado especial suplente

Disincentive: falta de incentivo

Dismiss: desestimar

Distribution: reparto

Double taxation: doble tributación

Draftsman: persona que redacta el proyecto de ley

E.C. Treaty: tratado de la Comunidad Europea

Effective incidence: incidencia efectiva

Emoluments: emolumentos

Enactment: promulgación

Enforce: imponer

Enforcement: obligación, cumplimiento

Estate: caudal sucesorio

Estate duty: impuesto sucesorio

European Convention of Human Rights: convención europea de los derechos humanos

European Economic Area: área económica europea

European Union Treaty: Tratado de la Unión Europea

Evasion: evasión

Exact: exigir

Excise duties: impuestos internos

Executive: el poder ejecutivo

Expenditure tax: impuesto al consumo

Exposure Draft: publicación del anteproyecto

Extant: existente

Face value: valor nominal

Finance Act: ley financiera

Finance Bill: ley de presupuestos

Financial agreement: convenios financieros

Flat rate: tasa de interés fija

Formal incidence: incidencia formal

Fossil fuel levy: gravamen al combustible fósil

General Commissioner: Comisionados generales

Hallow: consagrado

Happy medium: término medio

Heavens tax: paraísos fiscales

Horizontal equity: equidad horizontal

House of Commons: Cámara de los Comunes

House of Lords: cámara de los Lores

In force: en vigencia

Incidence: incidencia

Income and Corporation Tax Act: ley del impuesto a las ganancias y las rentas de las personas jurídicas

Income tax: impuesto a las ganancias

Inheritance tax: impuesto a las sucesiones

Inheritance Tax Act: ley de impuesto a las sucesiones

Inland Revenue: administración tributaria

Inland Revenue Regulation Act 1980: ley de regulación de la administración impositiva, de 1980

Institute of Chartered Accountants: Instituto de contadores públicos

Insurance Premium tax: impuesto sobre la prima del seguro

International Fiscal Association: asociación fiscal internacional

Issuing price: precio original

Julian calendar: calendario juliano

Land tax: impuesto territorial

Landfield tax: impuesto para el entierro de residuos

Law-abiding: respetuoso de la ley

Law Society: colegio de abogados

Legal profession: los abogados

Levy (n): gravamen, tributo, impuesto, tarifa

Levy (v): recaudar

Limited partner: socio con responsabilidad limitada

Lord Chancellor: Lord Canciller

Lull: período de calma

Marginal rate of tax: alícuota mínima

Master print: libreto de película

Meet the costs: cubrir los gastos

Moonlighting: pluriempleos

National and Provincial Building Society: Sociedad nacional y provincial de crédito hipotecario

Nacional Insurance Contribution: contribución para la seguridad social

National lottery levy: gravamen a la lotería nacional

Non-recourse: que no se puede recurrir

Obnoxious: detestable

Offset: compensación

Oil Taxation Act: ley de impuestos del petróleo

Ombudsman: Defensor del pueblo

Partner: socio

Partnership: sociedad

Partnership agreement: contrato social

Patent royalties: patente de derecho de autor

Petroleum revenue tax: impuesto a los ingresos provenientes del petróleo

Plain English campaing: campaña de términos sencillos

Poll Tax: impuesto comunitario de capitación

Pollution tax: impuesto a la contaminación

Pomp and circumstances: la pompa y solemnidad

Ports levy: gravamen a los puertos

Powers: facultades

Precedent system: sistema legal basado en jurisprudencia

Premium: prima

Press releases: comunicados de prensa

Primary legislation: ley primaria

Proceeds: recaudación

Profits Tax: impuesto a las ganancias

Property law: derecho real

Provision: disposición

Quarters: distrito

Raise: recaudar

Rate: tarifa, alícuota, monto

Receipts: ingresos

Redress: resarcimiento

Relief: desgravación

Repeal: revocar

Retinue: comitiva, séquito

Retrospectively: de manera retroactiva

Return (Tax Return): declaración de impuestos, retorno

Revenue: rentas públicas, Hacienda, administración impositiva, ingreso/entrada

Revenue adjudicator: juez de la administración impositiva

Revenue Law Committee: comité de ley tributaria

Royal Commission on Income Tax: comisión Real sobre impuesto a las ganancias

Royalties: derecho de autor / regalías

Sales Tax: impuesto a las ventas

Schedule: pliego de cargos, anexo

Schedular taxes: Impuestos programados

Scrap: abolir

Section: artículo

Securities: títulos, valores

Self-assessment: autovaluación

Self-employed: autónomos

Setoff: deducción

Sieve: cernir

Social security Act: Ley de seguridad social

Social security benefits: subsidios de seguridad social

Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act: Contribuciones para la seguridad social y beneficios sociales

Special Commissioner: Comisionados especiales

Stamp duty: timbrados

Statute: derecho escrito

Statutory: legal, establecido por ley

Statutory instruments: instrumentos legales

Stuart Kings: los reyes Estuardo

Sugar levy: gravamen al azúcar

Supply of goods and services: provisión de bienes y servicios

Sweeper clause: cláusula extensiva

Takings: recaudación

Tax advisor: asesor fiscal

Tax authorities: autoridades fiscales, fisco

Tax avoidance: elusión de un impuesto

Tax base: base imponible

Tax burden: carga fiscal

Tax expenditure: reducción de impuestos

Tax Faculty: facultad tributaria

Tax holidays: período de exención del pago del impuesto

Tax Inspector: inspector fiscal

Tax Law Rewrite Project: proyecto de reescritura de la ley tributaria

Tax liability: pasivo exigible en concepto de impuestos

Tax on earnings: impuesto sobre los ingresos

Tax payers: contribuyentes

Tax plan: planificación fiscal

Tax policy: políticas tributarias

Tax system: régimen fiscal

Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act: ley de impuestos a cobrarse sobre la plusvalía

Taxes Management Act: ley de administración de impuestos

Tonnaje tax: impuesto sobre el tonelaje

Trade taxes: impuestos al comercio

Transfer Pricing: fijación de los precios de transferencia

Transfer tax: impuesto a las transferencias

Treasury: el fisco, la hacienda pública, el tesoro (público)

Trust: fideicomiso

Trust law: ley de fideicomiso

Value added tax: impuesto al valor agregado

Value added tax Act: ley de impuesto al valor agregado

Vehicle excise duty: impuesto automotor

Vertical equity: equidad vertical

Witholding taxes: impuestos de retención

Yield: beneficio, rendimiento, renta, rentabilidad, rédito

Yield note: tasa de rendimiento o retorno

Ejemplo de traducción / Translation Sample (Legal)

2008-10-09T18:20:00.000-07:00

Original / Source

Interpreting the law
This should be the easy bit. It is not. Consider the following provisions:
“Interest means both annual and yearly interest and interest other than annual or yearly interest.”
“Interest includes dividends and any other return (however described) except a return consisting of an amount by which the amount payable on a security’s redemption exceeds its issuing price.”
“Interest and dividends do not include any interest or dividend which is a contribution.”
“Distribution… means… any dividend payable by a company…”
“Trade includes any trade, manufacture, adventure or concern in the nature of trade.”
“Trade includes vocation and also includes an office or employment”
“Profits means income and chargeable gains”
“Profits or gains shall not include references to chargeable gains”
“Income includes any amount on which a charge to tax is authorized to be made under any of the provisions of this Act”
Rule number one of interpreting legislation should be to note the meanings given to the language by parliament. In tax law, as the above illustrations (all drawn from the Tax Acts) show, this has to be modified by two reflections. The first is that the definitions may themselves add no extra meaning. The second is that words change their meaning from one part to another of the tax legislation. Or, as T.S. Eliot observed, “words strain, crack and sometimes break, under the burden”. The job of the lawyer is to ensure that any words that do suffer in this way are patched back up again.

Traducción / Target

Interpretación de la ley
Ésta debería ser la parte fácil, pero no lo es. Tenga en cuenta las siguientes disposiciones:
“Interés significa tanto interés anual y por año, como también interés que no sea anual o por año”.
“Interés incluye los dividendos y cualquier otro rédito (sea descrito en la forma que fuere) excepto aquel que consista en una suma por la cual el monto a pagar por la cancelación de seguridad, exceda el precio original”.
“Los intereses y dividendos no incluyen ningún interés o dividendo que represente un reparto”.
“Reparto… significa…cualquier dividendo a pagar por una compañía…”
“Comercio incluye cualquier comercio, manufactura, aventura o preocupación en la naturaleza del comercio”.
“Comercio incluye la vocación y también incluye una oficina y un trabajo”
“Ganancias significa ingreso y plusvalía gravable”
“Ganancias o plusvalía no deben incluir referencias a la plusvalía gravable”
“Ingreso incluye casi cualquier monto sobre el cual se autoriza el cobro de un impuesto bajo cualquiera de las disposiciones de esta ley”
La regla número uno al momento de interpretar la ley es no confiarse en los significados que el Parlamento le otorga al lenguaje. En la ley impositiva, como se demostró más arriba (todas tomadas de la ley de impuestos), esto debe ser modificado en base a dos observaciones. La primera es que las definiciones en sí mismas pueden no estar agregando ningún significado. La segunda es que las palabras van teniendo significados diferentes en una u otra parte de la ley impositiva. O, en palabras de T.S. Eliot, “las palabras se dañan, se agrietan y a veces se rompen bajo tanta carga”. Es trabajo del abogado asegurarse de que cualquier palabra que sufra de esta manera, sea remendada.