Ccaps Blog

You may have already heard that the eight Portuguese-speaking countries signed a new Orthographic Agreement and that Brazil is at the forefront of its implementation, official as of January 1, 2009. We had even mentioned the end of the dieresis here at the Ccaps Blog…

This generated a lot of questions among buyers and vendors of language services as to whether to use the new spelling and how to adapt to the new rules. Reasons given for not using the new orthographic rules range from doubts among academics associated with certain terms to the lack of a reliable spellchecker that can be used with the most widely used word processor, namely Microsoft Word.

Even if you decided to change to the new spelling, how would you deal with legacy material? After all, you have been translating your company material into Brazilian Portuguese for years and probably have it stored in the form of translation memories, content management systems or the like.

Translation memories pose a more difficult question, since you would have to completely review your discounts for fuzzy matches, 100% matches and in-context (a.k.a. XTranslate or ICE) matches. All legacy material would have to be thoroughly reviewed not only to comply with the new orthographic rules, but mostly to avoid mixing new and old spellings in the same document that could leverage previously translated texts.

With this in mind, we decided to create a simple yet highly effective process to avoid such costs and headaches for you: The Ccaps New Brazilian Spelling TM Compliance Tool. This tool was created by the Ccaps language and engineering teams to adapt Brazilian Portuguese words to the new spelling rules in exported translation memory files. New versions of the tool will allow the checker to be used in other document formats (such as .tmx, .tbx, .html, .xml, etc.)

This is a value-added service that will be provided free by Ccaps. Follow this link to download the tool and the user guide explaining how it should be used.

We could not forget to send a special thanks to Renato Beninatto, from Common Sense Advisory, who inspired us to create the tool and who, as usual, started the discussion on this topic ahead of everyone in the industry. He even published a post on the Global Watchtower about our tool. Check it out!

Yet one serious doubt remains: should we change our address to “Rua da Assembleia”? Being a proper name, should it remain as is or should the accent be removed since “assembleia” is a common noun? We are open for discussion…

I have not written a post for the blog for a long time now — the workload is crazy and, despite my having good ideas, I simply cannot stop and write. But there has been a topic on my mind for quite a long time now: work under pressure.

When I had my first job interview for a translation agency (the now gone LMI, Language Management International), I was applying for a position of translator trainee. Then the psychologist asked me, “How do you feel about working under pressure?”

I had never worked for a company and did not have the slightest idea of what she was talking about. Yet I said it was OK, that I would be perfectly fine with the pressure.

Overloaded? It is time to stop!

But we know that such situations can be quite frustrating, and this is why each one uses their own methods to let go of the tension. Here are some of my methods: 

1. As soon as I get to work, check all my deliveries for the day to make sure I will not forget anyone.
2. Color flag all pending emails in Outlook, so as not to lose sight of them.
3. Write down on my notepad all the tasks for the day and tick them as I get them completed;
4. Give myself a break to breathe, drink some water and check out on my colleagues;
5. Ask for help! Team work gives me the confidence and ease to complete tasks that seem to be too hard at first glance;
6. Realize that I cannot do miracles. This is key! It is useless to commit to an impossible deadline as you will get nuts in the end! It is important to negotiate with the client a most realistic turnaround, which will eventually benefit all parties.

A few years ago, there was a professional who could come to Ccaps every week and give us tips on workplace exercises. That was quite awesome! For 15 minutes everybody stopped whatever it was that they were doing to stretch out their muscles and try to relax a little. I will have a talk with the boss to bring the stretch break back…

Let us not allow the pressure of the market to drive us crazy! A mentally healthy employee works much better.