jobs in NGOs and aid organisations

Saw a couple of interesting and challenging-looking jobs advertised today: this ad on ReliefWeb, for an English to French translator for SOS Children's Villages in Morocco, and this ad for Serbian translators and interpreters for UNIFEM in Belgrade, on the UNJobs website. (Those of my Theory and Practice 2 students who couldn't see the point in studying gender and translation, please take a moment to read the specs for this second job!). Any of you interested in career opportunities in this field may find this page at the aidworkers.net website useful.

liaison interpreting and its pitfalls (P.S. language identification request!)

Many thanks to Alan for two nice clips that show us in very different ways how not to interpret. From an old episode of Candid Camera, a conversation between two apparently engaged people has to be conducted bilingually in English and Greek via an interpreter, and goes predictably horribly wrong:



The second video is a how-to, how-not-to educational video from a charity interpreting and translation network illustrating the pitfalls of using ad hoc interpreters (in this case a family member) vs. using a qualified and trained interpreter. The video is cut slightly short, and suffers from unfortunately cheesy introductory music, but I thought it was well made and useful.



One thing that I thought was odd in this video was that they never actually mentioned what language was being interpreted - maybe this was a strategic decision, but I am still curious. Brownie points to anyone who can confirm what language the couple and their interpreter are speaking...

plenary talks on translation from the Author-Translator conference

The plenary talks from the conference 'The Author-Translator in the European Literary Tradition' held at the University of Swansea earlier this summer are now online to view. It was a very good conference and it's great to have a second chance to listen to some excellent presentations.

open access translation journals

Since I'm getting around to revamping our website with new resource pages, I thought that a list of open-access translation journals might be of interest to readers. There are other good lists (see below); criteria for this list are that the journals be peer reviewed and all (or nearly all) open access. Suggestions of additional journals are very welcome.

Meta (one of the top journals in the field; recent issues are firewall-protected)

TTR (ditto)

Journal of Specialised Translation (a personal favourite)

New Voices in Translation Studies

TranscUlturAl (new but promising)

Transversal, published by the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policy (some of the most interesting writing about translation on the web).

Quaderns: revista de traducció is a Catalan journal published by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Other Iberian journals include Doletiana, *Trans, *1611: A Journal of Translation History, the *Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas, the *Revista tradumàtica : traducció i tecnologies de la informació i la comunicació and *MonTI (issues online six months after publication).

Italian journals include the irregularly updated Intralinea and the more literary La nota del traduttore - perhaps not strictly speaking a periodical but I like it and it's my list, so hey.

French journals include recent issues of **Palimpsestes at the http://www.revues.org open-access journals site. The sociolinguistics journal **Glottopol sometimes carries useful translation articles.

Portuguese-language journals include Cadernos de Tradução, Scientia Traductionis, Confluências, *Babilónia. Revista Lusófona de Línguas, Culturas e Tradução, *Tradução em Revista  

From Colombia, Mutatis Mutandis; from Australia,*Translation & Interpreting. The international journal of Translation and Interpreting Research (has stolen the honours for longest journal title), from India, Translation Today; from Slovakia the SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation (honourable mention for least intuitively designed website).

More specialist journals include the Journal of Translation on Bible translation. On pedagogy of translation and interpreting, the Revista Electrónica de Didáctica de la Traducción y la Interpretación.

New Voices in Classical Reception Studies does just what it says on the tin.

Nice to see that back issues of New Comparison, the journal of the British Comparative Literature Association, are now downloadable as pdf files here, including some issues on translation.

Mona Baker's site has a useful list which also includes subscription-only journals. Another list here at the EST website or see Intute for more ideas. Comments on broken links are appreciated, as are suggestions of other open-access scholarly journals.

*added on 11 October 2010.
**added on 22 October 2010.

jobs with German and a web link

As if more proof were needed of the usefulness of German in the translation job market, I see that the BdÜ (Bundesverband der Dolmetscher und Übersetzer) has a page on their site listing translation jobs from and into German (look under 'Aktuelles'). For our Canadian students, Alpha Translations in Canada has a number of jobs advertised, also with German.
And I came across a nice translator's website with good-looking glossaries on legal and administrative topics for English and German, which may be of interest.

Translating Russian literature

For our Russianists, some links to some interesting snippets on translating Russian literature. On translating Pushkin, the indefatigable Robert Chandler is interviewed here and quoted here. I liked very much what RC says about the importance of sound when translating. Chandler again, this time on translating Andrei Platonov. And another translator of Russian literature has his spake here.