Polyglot blog

A new international association for translators and interpreters was born on September 30 in Argentina: the International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI), or in Spanish: Asociación Internacional de Profesionales de la Traducción y la Interpretación (AIPTI).

Its objective is to actively promote the ethical practice of translation and interpretation. Translators are facing several problems today in their profession: crowdsourcing, emphasis on price instead of quality, flooding of the translation market with non-professional translators, limitations on the extent to which they can discuss rates and the need for a strong online presence where new translators can be guided by experts that have translators’ interests in mind, among other concerns. This new scenario calls for new players to fill an existing gap by tackling these issues, and the association aims to build up an international network to achieve this.
The strategy to address these issues includes workshops, lectures, courses, a mentorship forum on the association’s website and several other forums for discussion of the above issues.

Some of the benefits offered to the members are:
• Online profiles on the website of an international organization, which will give them worldwide visibility. They will also have an e-mail address with the same domain linked to that profile, e.g. name.lastname@aipti.org.
• Listing in IAPTI’s Member Directory.
• Access to a large network of professional translators and interpreters and the ability to form teams with trusted colleagues who share the values and beliefs of the members of the association and who -like them- support the ethical practice of our profession.
• An exclusive forum for IAPTI members where they can exchange information about the state of translation and interpretation today, discuss language issues, give and receive advice. http://www.aipti.org/ourforum
• Through a translation news service, the members will receive the latest news in translation and interpretation, both in English and in Spanish.
• Access to a huge database of updated lists of resources such as glossaries, reference material, translation groups, portals, etc.
• Last but not least, the association’s own translation magazine with articles written for members and by members.

The founding members of the association are all trusted colleagues with a passion for translation and language and a huge drive to help achieve IAPTI’s goals for the good of everyone in this industry.
Its board is headed by Aurora Matilde Humarán (President), Lorena Vicente (Vice President), and María Corinaldesi (Secretary General) and its Ethics Committee is made up of Ralf Lemster, Dan Newland, Santiago Murias, Maria Karra, Marcela Losavio, Atenea Acevedo, and Giuliana Buscaglione.
The founding members and officers come from the United States, Germany, France, Greece, Argentina, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Latvia, Luxembourg, Egypt, Turkey, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela. You can find their names at
http://www.aipti.org/autoridades/ and http://www.aipti.org/miembros_fundadores/.

The above information can be found in detail on the association’s website at http://www.aipti.org/eng/

Mr. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former Foreign Minister of Germany, assiduously promoted the use of languages in international discourse. In the opening ceremony of the 2009 AIIC Assembly in Nice (France), he became the first recipient of the AIIC Malintzin Prize in recognition of his advocacy of the right to speak the tongue we all speak best – our own.

By Luigi LUCCARELLI, Phil SMITH

AIIC created the Malintzin Prize in 2005 as an award to be given every three years to honor prominent individuals who have actively promoted the profession of conference interpreting. It is named after Malintzin – also known as Doña Marina – a Nahau woman who became the interpreter of Hernán Cortés after the Conquistadors arrived in Mexico. Malintzin was the first interpreter recorded in history and consequently AIIC has chosen her as a symbol of the transformation of this age-old activity into an internationally recognized profession.

Read the full article on AIIC’s website.

SDL Trados will release it’s new translation memory software SDL Trados Studio 2009 in June.

Some of the new features include:
- new integrated translation environment (translation will not be done in Word or Tag Editor any more)
- one integrated application for all tasks (translation + terminology management + project management)
- no more tags, quick formatting
- automatic suggestions as you type
- support for PDF files (I definitely look forward to that one!)
- context matches
- real-time preview
- multiple TM lookup
…

More information on the Translationzone website.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Medical translation course starts in May

By MARIKO KATO
Staff writer

Japan’s first full-scale medical translation course will start in May at translation colleges run by Inter Group Co. to produce trained interpreters for hospitals.

Yearlong courses in medical translation between Japanese and English will be held at five branches of Inter Group, known as Inter Schools, for a total of 104 students in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Hiroshima and Fukuoka.

The courses will be supervised by Rinku General Medical Center in Osaka, which opened an international clinic in 2006 where foreign patients can request medical consultations in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

Read the full article in the Japan Times

PERFILES | En profundidad
Ioannis Ikonomou: El traductor griego que habla 32 lenguas
Albert Segura | Bruselas
Actualizado miércoles 18/03/2009 19:47 horas

¿Mi mayor locura? ¡Intenté aprender euskera en Pekín!’ Ioannis Ikonomou (Iraklio, Grecia, 1964) es uno de los 1.750 traductores que emplea la Comisión Europea, pero el único capaz de hablar 32 idiomas diferentes.[...]
Inglés, francés, alemán, español, holandés, portugués, sueco, italiano, danés, polaco, húngaro, turco, checo y eslovaco son sus 14 lenguas de trabajo y el griego su idioma materno.
Pero también se siente “cómodo” hablando en ruso, búlgaro, turco, árabe, hebreo, chino, kurdo, armenio, persa, serbocroata, hindi/urdu, rumano, noruego, lituano o finlandés.

Leer el artículo completo en www.elmundo.es

Implementation of New National Translation Program for Book Publishing: The Government Delivers on Its Commitments to Linguistic Duality and Canadian Culture

OTTAWA, March 3, 2009 – The Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, today announced the implementation of the new National Translation Program for Book Publishing, designed to increase the availability of Canadian books in both official languages. Through this program, the Government is delivering on the commitment it made when it announced the Roadmap for Canada’s Linguistic Duality last June.
[...]
Starting April 1, 2009, the Government will invest $5 million over four years in this program, which will help publishers in Canada translate Canadian-authored books into English and French.

Read the full press release on the Canadian Heritage website

Friday, 27th February 2009
Gaps still exist in Maltese interpretation service
Ivan Camilleri, Brussels

Despite almost five years of EU membership, Maltese interpretation is still not always readily available during EU meetings.

Although the situation has improved since the first years of accession, the provision of a steady Maltese language interpretation service is still not possible and the service continues to have the worst record of the 23 official languages at the EU.

The main problem is lack of qualified Maltese interpreters, even though a freelance Maltese interpreter can earn more than €300 a day for spending a few hours in a Maltese interpretation booth.

According to statistics issued by the Commission for 2008, the directorate responsible for interpretation services could only offer the Maltese language service in 71.3 per cent of requests.

Read the full article in the Times of Malta