International Translation Day 2009

[alexpgp]

Translators around the world today observed International Translation Day, which by no happenstance coincides with the feast day of St. Jerome, at least in Western Christianity.

Jerome was, by all accounts, an accomplished translator, and largely responsible for producing parts of the Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin. By some other accounts, he was also famously opinionated and argumentative, which are characteristics that some believe further contribute to his qualifications to be the patron of translators.

As an aside, it should be noted that, while Jerome was an early Christian, and September 30 is his feast day, the International Federation of Translators is quick to assure everyone, in its promotional PDF on the subject, that International Translation Day "is resolutely secular and non-denominational."

This sure sounds like "proof by assertion" to me, but hey... your mileage may vary.

I put in some extra work time on Monday and yesterday to leave today free enough to "attend" ProZ.com's First Virtual Conference, which apparently coincided with the translation web site's 10th anniversary.

It was a fine idea, but if my experience was any indicator, the execution fell short. Early on, it was clear the conference web site and my Firefox browser did not get along well. By following conference-related posts on Twitter, it was evident I was not the only particpant experiencing trouble.

One "tweet" suggested using Internet Explorer to visit the conference, but when I loaded my copy and tried the site, I was informed that I'd have to ramp down Internet Explorer's security settings for the application to interact with the conference's server, which was not something I was willing to do.

I returned at noon to sit in on a session devoted to negotiation, but the audio and slides ground to a halt after 18 seconds. Fortunately, the organizers promise to have the sessions available for download after the conference ends (which it probably has, by now).

It's back to the grind, tomorrow, with - I might add - renewed passion, commitment, and rigor for my craft.

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The above is the kickoff post of my new, improved "work" blog. I finally gave up on TikiWiki and, lemming that I am, have gone the WordPress route.

Another day, another learning curve.

Cheers...

Comments

[velvet-granat.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the International Translation Day :)

I managed to get through to that conference this morning (my time). Very pretty interface, but I can't say that I learned anything new, or that conversation in the chat room varied any from the usual gasbagging that goes on in translation forums (rates, clients, complaints, though there was some networking). Russians being suspicious as usual, though it was nice to chat a little with people from other parts of the world or language combinations. If you are interested, I downloaded a handful of podcasts - the ones that weren't plugging one software package or another. I can chuck them into the Dropbox for you, if you are interested. Also, there are some discount offers available through the conference interface if you are interested in buying some CAT tools (30% off mostly).

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

You hit on one aspect of conferencing that I find increasingly annoying, and that's the proliferation of pitches on behalf of, if not one agency or another, then one software package or another. In both cases, I've found the sessions to be glorified informercials, with precious little useful content.

If you find yourself with a few spare minutes, I'd be grateful for any worthwhile conference files you'd care to copy into the Dropbox.

Cheers...

[velvet-granat.livejournal.com]

I've afraid that most of this particular conference was either plugging of products or agencies. Or rehashing same-old-same-old information that one can easily find on Proz or in the forums.

I prefer conferences where you get free loot, even it's all promotional. Michael was recently sent to Microsoft TechEd conference, he is a network engineer, and that was vastly more useful to him. Also, he brought back massive amounts of free gadgets and various useful loot. I particularly like the Plantronics headset - excellent quality, and since I am trying to train voice recognition software, very useful too.

The files are uploading now... not sure if you (or I, for that matter) will find them useful. I'll have a look if there is anything else there that could by ok...

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Computer shows are where all the good swag is collected.

(I still use the brass Cross pen-and-holder desk set given to me at an Intel booth many trade shows ago.)

Cheers...

[velvet-granat.livejournal.com]

Oh, good score! Isn't swag just about the entire point of computer shows? ;-)

My favourite score was a little HB USB hub that I got on some training course. It had 4 ports, glowed pretty colours and lasted about 2 years. Not bad for a freebie.