Ccaps Blog

The more the time passes, the more I convince myself that people in general know little – or nothing at all – about the type of work a language professional does. In Brazil, translation is undervalued, since the general – and totally mistaken – belief is that “in order to translate, one merely has to know a foreign language and culture.” This is why I have decided to write this small text for our corporative blog. I will try to trace back my steps in Liberal Arts course, pointing out what I consider to be the highlights of what it means to be a language professional – everything I have learned (or not) and what I have brought as life experience. I have tried to condense this in 10 small topics.

A nice image from a Carnegie Report article on Liberal Arts

1- Linguistics is the Math part in a Language Graduate Course

One of the first subjects I had to undertake in college was Linguistics 101. It’s quite an interesting subject, for it opens the student’s eyes to language rationale: how do languages work? Do people with poor education speak in a wrong way? How do we acquire the language faculty? What does it mean to master a language? All these questions, combined with several new, fundamental concepts, helped me understand my field of work from a scientific point of view (the science of language). It also contributed for the elimination of many wrong laymen ideas about the subject, such as “people only speak ‘good Portuguese’ in Europe,” or “people who don’t follow grammar rules are stupid.” I must say, however, that studying all that was tough: I had to master a great amount of content right in the first term.

2- Writing is an art you learn; writing well is a gift you improve

There is no escape. Anyone who attempts to undertake a language course in college has to write tons of texts. And this particular work becomes a lot easier if you are an experienced traveler in the roads of letters. Although I had many subjects that focused on the improvement of writing skills, I could not help but notice that some previous knowledge and master in writing techniques is crucial to make the course easier. It is also half way through when it comes to taking up a career as a translator. Nevertheless, from what I could observe in many of my classmates, writing is something you teach, yeah, I give you that. But writing well, mastering the language… oh, this is something far more difficult; the person must have some sort of innate skills to write. One must have an enhanced linguistic rationale, as if he or she had been born to use language capabilities thoroughly.

3- English: show me what you got

How much English knowledge is needed to undertake a bilingual Liberal Arts course? Roughly speaking, none whatsoever. Most courses have a leveling process, consisting of subjects aimed at teaching the language, something close to an English course. However, to become a translator, or even to do better in the course as a whole, the student should master the language in every possible way (writing, speaking, listening and reading skills). This is extremely important, especially because you will be so occupied in studying new concepts that you will have little or no time to dedicate yourself fully to learn the language. It is better to enter the course being aware of this. The amount of knowledge is also an essential aspect. To be a good translator, the student should start the course knowing how to write good essays, having a decent vocabulary and showing above-average written and oral production. In other words: if you are the type of person who is capable of understanding everything that is said in an American sitcom, without reading the subtitles, or if you can get the lyrics only by hearing the songs by artists like Michae Jackson, you are in the right track.

That’s it for now. On the next post, I intend to discuss things I have learned in translation subjects. See you next time!

My birthday party last Friday here at Ccaps.

Not bad for 37 years old, right? (And don’t you dare say anything to the contrary! )

We never know what tomorrow may bring. Cliché? Perhaps, but in the world of translation, this sentence is perfectly applicable. I have perceived this inconstancy when I worked as a project manager for Ccaps, but it certainly reflects on the translator’s job as well.

The variations in project volumes and deadlines are quite intriguing and sometimes even frightening. It may be that you have no project due today, or some 200 words to translate and to handle within the next two days. And during these two days, you may not receive yet another project. Or you might have five projects happening at the same time, with the most varied characteristics, deadlines, etc.

It’s crazy when you have an urgent translation project that you need to allocate and are looking for suppliers, all of whom are busy. At the same time, you are preparing a second project with some technical problems and discussing a third “pain-in-the-butt” project with a co-worker. At the same time, you could be waiting for feedback from a client while negotiating the deadline of a fourth project because you won’t be able to handle it all, while you examine the fifth project in order to begin the translation process. Meanwhile, other projects are still flooding in!

Two days go by, the projects have all been taken care of… Done! During the next three days, nothing else comes in.

It’s obvious that there are times when things happen sort of smoothly, neither too much work nor too little. This is great! However, this inability to tell what the future holds is an aspect that truly demands a very high sense of organization and willingness in order to effectively manage the projects.

What about you, project managers out there? Do you agree?

Natália Botelho 

Natália Botelho worked as Project Manager at Ccaps and today is a freelance translator. She decided to work from home to be closer to her husband and their dog Mel.

I found a text on Customer Relationship Management (aka CRM), an issue that has been popular lately, and I would like to share it with you. The text can be found here (Portuguese only).

What does having a CRM sector inside our company mean? It means that you can more adequately manage the relationship with the client; i.e. have the client as a main focus and seek to maintain their loyalty by practicing CRM.

Actually, this is an issue that should be of interest to not only those who work in the field, but all the professionals offering their services on a daily basis.

Keep in mind that you should devote yourself and have a good relationship with your clients. They could become a fan of yours later on. =)

Localization engineering work is often quite repetitive. Simple and repetitive tasks performed manually are not only boring but also unproductive.

Having said that, the engineer needs to be admittedly lazy. We have to think what processes can be automated and transformed into scripts or macros, which could later be performed automatically. What is the benefit of that? When a task is performed automatically, it takes little time, and allows the engineer to dedicate his time to do exactly what he is supposed to do: solve new and unexpected problems, create and develop new scripts to automate everyday tasks, etc.

It goes without saying that not every task can be automated (even those tasks that are seemingly repetitive). A deeper analysis of the workflow of a certain task would show it can be transformed into a logical reasoning with procedures to be followed. The next step is to look for an automation tool (there are many out there, such as the MS Office package Macros and VBA, the QuickKeys application or even the DOS BAT files), develop a function prototype and finally, start testing it. You should also remember that a function must show the mistakes, deficiencies and problems at this stage, for when it enters the translating process, you might not have time to fix all resulting bugs. And the last thing you want is to redo the task manually.

Let us be admittedly lazy then. Let us concentrate on the automation of repetitive and everyday tasks to have more time to think about and work on the tasks that demand wit and logical reasoning.

In the 1990s, the boom of the DotCom enterprises gave rise to a large number of translation companies. Influenced by the high market price of its clients, these companies could charge absurdly high rates for their services. As time went on, the bubble burst and the scenario began to change drastically.Translation companies were forced to find a way to lower costs and so they started to push the translators to lower their prices. While this happened, there was a good cushioning for this price reduction for agencies and freelance translators alike due to the unfavorable parity of the Brazilian Real in relation to stronger currencies (the British pound and US Dollar, and later, the Euro).

Once again, time went by and the Brazilian currency grew stronger. When we renegotiated our translation fees, we were dealing with a 5:1 Brazilian Real to GBP ratio. Today, this ratio has dropped to 3:1 and the scenario is not expected to change in the near future…

The problem does not stop there! Clients keep pushing us to lower our prices even further, whether by lowering them permanently or demanding more tasks at a lower fare. Fixed costs like rent, electricity, telephone and salaries have risen. The only option is to increase the work volume to counterbalance all of these losses.

This brings us to a riddle that not even in 1001 nights Sherazade dreamt of asking the Sultan. How will it be possible to produce more in less time while paying our vendors less without risking quality?

 No English translation for this post. This is not the Mrs. Hart you know…

Such a classic: when opening a window, most people automatically click the button to maximize the window. This bad habit, which at first seems to be a healthy one, usually causes more problems than benefits for the user. Especially when working with localization, when the translator often needs to have opened the file to be translated, Trados and at least a glossary, all at the same time.

The sense of space given by the maximized window is what most contributes for this. Everything becomes larger, but this is exactly the problem – it is far too large! On the other hand, I don;t even have to say that if you use a 800×600 resolution, you will be obliged to maximize all the windows. If that is the case, I strongly recommend you to buy a 21″ or larger screen!

Maximized windows means loss of space. Take a look at the toolbar of your browser. How much unused space you see there? Plenty, huh? Now take a look at this blog post and check out the great deal of unused space on the left and on the right of the text. Why would you not use it?

How many “Windows” fit in your Mac?

Resizing a window to the minimum necessary size helps you view more than one program at the same time. This means having Trados, the translated file and the glossary visible, without having to go from one window to the other in search of something.

And this tip is not useful only for translators. Managers, engineers, salespeople and any other professional may benefit from it. Think of the possibilities! Information about the project on the bottom right corner, some program to convert timetables on the upper right corner, an opened spreadsheet at the center of the window, or the remaining space shared with a list of files… While I write this post, I am checking the progress of a process on the window next to this one. By doing this, I don’t need to use the (usually useful) Alt + Tab shortcut to find out whether the process is over or to check whether there is a problem that needs my decision.

Needless to say, every rule has its exception. Even I sometimes need to use a maximized window. However, all in all, the larger the resolution and the more I can display the windows, the more information I have in front of me at the same time. And this certainly makes my life a lot easier.

Sailing through still uncharted seas, I found myself reading a chronicle by Luiz Fernando Veríssimo that had been published by Jornal do Brasil in November 1997 entitled “Insolência” (Insolence). Just like everything he writes, it was wonderful. It talks about word processing software, automatic translators and the sorrows of those obliged to deal with them. I highly recommend this text.

The chronicle was found on the opening page of a thesis about machine translation written by Carolina Alfaro. And to make it more interesting, she placed a “translated” version by Altavista Translation Service below the chronicle. I have not read the entire thesis, but it looks interesting and provides a general overview of the available translation tools.

It’s a shame that I didn’t have this chronicle with me over the weekend when someone asked whether we used automatic translators here at the office. This text would have been much more effective than the explanation I gave… =)