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It's December already and a nice hot New Zealand Christmas will be here before we know it! I hope your preparations for the New Year are going well and that you have some time to relax and enjoy a few end-of-year events and xmas parties. The Translation Service will be closing for a holiday break – from midday on 24 December through to 2 January. We'll reopen to the public on Friday 3 January.

The New Year will bring some changes for us. In January, we will be moving premises from Lambton Quay to the National Archives building at 10 Mulgrave Street. This location offers a much better front desk for the public as well as placing us closer to the other teams in Internal Affairs. Note that our email, phone numbers and other contact details will stay the same.

This year, we have been grappling with the ever increasing pressure to maintain the high quality of our translations while providing faster and cheaper and better service. We are looking into multiple ways to do this and over the past few months, we have developed a simple but comprehensive system for keeping track of the quality of every translation job you send us as well as a system for selecting the most appropriately skilled translator for each translation. We're also looking at the role of the reviser in the translation process as well as how we can ensure revised translations meet the high level of quality that clients expect. I'd welcome any thoughts you might have about our current process. We will send out some more news on this in the New Year.

For now, this is a time to take a break, celebrate our achievements in 2013 and to look forward to a great year ahead! Merry Christmas and best wishes for a happy and successful year of translation in 2014!

Q.R.

This newsletter is written for you. As such, we want you to tell us what or how we could improve its content. What would you like to read? Give us your feedback.

From left to right: Jessica Kerr, Stefan Grand, Lisa Spence, Alfonso Mannella, Jing Chen, Quintin Ridgeway, Shieva Norusian, Bill Ashwell, Amy Zeng, Patrick Geddes

An overview of what's happening with the staff of The Translation Service this month.

See you soon Shieva!

Our Project Manager, Shieva Norusian, has been seconded to the Digital Engagement team within the Department until March 2014. After that, she will be on annual leave until August 2014, so don’t freak out if you don't hear from her for a while - she'll be back!

African adventure for Lisa

Lisa Spence will be away from 20 December until 22 January for her well deserved honeymoon! (Did you know that she got married in October?) She will be going to Kenya and Tanzania for an exciting African adventure with her husband Aaron. We'll look forward to seeing the pictures!

25 years of excellence for Bill

Our in-house translator, Bill Ashwell, has been recognised by the Department's Chief Executive, Colin MacDonald, for his long service at The Translation Service. Bill first worked for TTS from 1978 until 1985; he then returned in 1988 and has remained with us ever since. With his 40 years experience, Bill is a pioneer of the translation industry in New Zealand and we feel honoured and lucky to have him on board. We held a special morning tea for him on 29 November to celebrate this important event, which was attended by many of his current and previous colleagues.

We all feel safer with Stefan!

But Bill is the not the only one who has received an award this month! Stefan Grand has won the Health and Safety Champion award for his commitment, enthusiasm and involvement in being our H&S representative. Well done!

Bienvenue Adeline

Adeline Langlet joined our team at the beginning of November as a casual receptionist. She works every Tuesday afternoon and whenever Jessica is unavailable.

Adeline comes from France, more specifically from a small village in the lovely region of Brittany and she moved to New Zealand earlier this year with her husband. Another international addition to the TTS team!

Please remember that The Translation Service will be closed from 12:00 pm on Tuesday 24 December and will reopen on Friday 3 January.

A.M.

Bill was born in Wanganui, grew up mostly in Taihape, and did a B.Sc. degree at Victoria University Wellington before spending four years as a meteorologist. After that he moved to Auckland to do a language degree in Russian, Chinese and Japanese, and graduated with an M.A. in Japanese.

Bill spent one year training as a secondary school teacher before landing a job with the Translation Service in 1978, in the days of manual typewriters. He worked alongside a number of translators including Patrick King and John Jamieson, but left in 1985 to work as a Japanese translator for Fujitsu Australia Limited in Sydney.

Bill rejoined the Translation Service in 1988 and has since completed 25 years' service, during which time the translation industry has changed beyond recognition.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Relaxing peacefully in a motel room looking out over Lake Taupo.

What is your greatest fear?

Environmental disaster (manmade or otherwise).

Which person do you most admire?

The late Sir Peter Blake.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Putting off things I really should get into.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Refusing to see differing points of view.

What is your greatest extravagance?

My next purchase (an iPad when I already have an iPhone and iPod Touch).

On what occasions do you lie?

I sometimes remain silent rather than tell people something they might not want to hear.

What makes you happiest?

Driving roads I've never driven before.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I would be more careful with money.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

I once translated two pages of legislation from Romanian, required urgently. The panel reviser only found one minor grammatical error.

If you died and came back as a person or thing, what would it be?

Perhaps a tui singing on a cabbage tree.

What is your most treasured possession?

My camera.

Who are your heroes in real life?

People who live with conditions such as Parkinson's disease and show incredible courage in their everyday lives.

What is it that you most dislike?

Political posturing.

What is your motto?

If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is probably not for you (not original unfortunately).

We feature a staff member or one of our freelance translators every month. The featured profile includes a picture, a small biography and the person’s answers to a light version of the Proust Questionnaire.

Do you wish to be featured in one of our newsletters? If so, write to Lisa for more details.

As you know, the Translation Service requires that all official translations that you do for us are in portrait format. The reason for this is that these translations are printed on our letterhead, which is itself in portrait format.

This may cause you headaches, as not all original documents are issued in portrait format. In fact, most academic and other certificates are issued with a landscape page orientation. This is not so much of an issue when the amount of text is fairly small. But at times, you will need to reproduce a table with a lot of content (that’s when you might have needed to reach for a box of Panadol until now). TTS does not really have a standard policy for such cases, but you have two options:

• You can either split the table in two or more parts, and clearly mark which columns are which; or
   
• You can reduce the size of the font. From a general perspective, Arial 11 is our preferred font, but we are open to some size flexibility, as long as Arial 11 remains the main font of the translation.

As always, when you are stuck with an issue, feel free to write us an email if you need some advice or clarification.

S.G.

Mox is a young but well educated translator. Two PHDs, six languages… and he hardly earns the minimum wage. Find out more about Mox’s adventures on his blog.

It is always a pleasure to attend an event organised by the Office of Ethnic Affairs. They always show great enthusiasm, have nice venues, bring together people with common interests, and provide fine food and drinks for a lunch break filled with light-hearted conversations and industry rumours.

The recent workshop held on Saturday 16 November was not an exception. Registered attendees were welcomed at a desk in the lobby of the first floor of the TSB Building, with name tags, gift/information packs and coffee all ready. The Language Line team even arranged for a uniformed security guard to stand outside the government building to let people in.

The seminar started at 9:30am. People were split into smaller groups sitting at different tables. Language Line Manager Diana Clark launched the event with a PowerPoint presentation, which briefly introduced the Code of Ethics and Risk Management issues for interpreters.

Keynote speaker Vanisa Dhiru, the CEO of Volunteers New Zealand, then took to the stage. As a promising young leader and inspirational business woman, Vanisa talked about her own story and presented the interpreters with ideas about how to develop their personal brand and market themselves.

Vanisa’s presentation contained some interesting pieces of advice, including:

• Decide who you want to be.
   
• Develop some key messages that you want to share with the world.
   
• Project professionalism and confidence in your image.
   
• Do not underestimate the importance of networking.

Afterwards, attendees were divided into three different groups to discuss interpreting assignment scenarios, which were all related to the Code of Ethics for interpreters. Each group selected one person to report back to the whole group at the end of the session.

A Q&A session followed. The audience was given the opportunity to ask questions to a panel of three: Diana Clark, Vanisa Dhiru and Michelle Hughes from Interpreting Services Ltd based in Palmerston North. A few interpreters asked how to get people to pay for the service when no written agreement was signed beforehand. Others also wanted to find out what the market rate for interpreters was. Unfortunately no answers were provided during the session.

The seminar ended at about 2:00pm with an informal finger-food and networking lunch.

A.Z.

From now on, our newsletter will contain a review of translation and language news from around the world, along with the links to the relevant content. Let us know if you come across interesting online content!

A recent study jointly conducted by the University of Edinburgh and Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences in India suggests that people who speak two or more languages are less prone to Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia and fronto-temporal dementia.

Professor of language at the University of California Berkeley Leanne Hinton gives tips and tricks on how to bring an endangered language home and save it.

Claire Armitstead of the Guardian interviews Anthea Bell, who has translated 35 adventures of Asterix and Obelix into English. Her secret for successful translation is invisibility.

Taipei local authorities now offer language and cultural services to new immigrants and Taiwanese individuals as international marriages between Southeast Asian women and Taiwanese men increase.

Peter Hilton of the Freelancers Union gives some helpful advice to freelancers dealing with isolation.

S.G.

The Internet is a treasure trove of historical documents, which give us insight into the lives and worries of the past. While those of Anglo-Saxon culture might now object to having national identity cards, the United Kingdom introduced compulsory national registration and national identity cards in 1939 as an emergency measure at the start of World War II. Our selective translation of the month tackles one of these cards issued in 1949, and uses the Citizenship Document template to do so. As you will see, the translation of identity cards is not always straightforward, but hopefully this will give you some insight as to best practice when filling out our templates. Beware however that identity documents such as this one may be used to fill out the Citizenship Document template, as well as the Birth Details template if that is what Immigration or Citizenship needs. They may wish to use the document to verify the applicant’s citizenship or his/her birth details (the latter being a lot more common). In case of doubt, ask us! Click the image to find out more.

The sample selective translations of this series are here to illustrate our guidelines and help you improve your selective translations. We hope you enjoy these mock translations as much as we enjoy doing them. Feel free to send your comments and questions.

S.G.

Disclaimer: This mock selective translation wasn’t requested by Immigration NZ or Citizenship.

All translations are not equal. A good translation is one that conveys the same meaning as the source text and sounds natural in the target language (if that is the desired outcome of the translation). Some do just the opposite. Here are some of the greatest blunders found in translation, taken from a book titled Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World, published by Perigee Trade. We hope you enjoy them.

If you come across funny mistranslations, feel free to share them with us.

1. Chocolate Bonanza
   
   In the 1950s, chocolate companies started encouraging Japanese men and women to celebrate Valentine’s Day. A mistranslation by one of those companies gave people the idea that women were meant to give chocolate to men on 14 February, and that’s what they do to this day! Every Valentine’s Day, the women of Japan shower their men with various chocolates, and the men return the favour one month later. Now that’s a successful marketing campaign!
    
2. An Expensive ‘Do’
   
   Mistranslations can be rather costly. Ask HSBC what they think! In 2009, the bank launched a US$10 million rebranding campaign to repair the damage done when its slogan ‘Assume Nothing’ was translated as ‘Do Nothing’ in several countries.
    
3. Trouble in Waitangi
   
   Closer to home, a famous mistranslation has had far-reaching consequences for New Zealand and Māori-Pakeha relations. In 1840, the British government made a deal with the Māori chiefs of the time. The Māori wanted protection from marauding convicts, sailors, and traders, while the British wanted to expand their colonial holdings. The Treaty of Waitangi was drawn up, but both sides signed different documents. The English version states that the Māori ceded ‘to Her Majesty the Queen of England absolutely and without reservation all the rights and powers of Sovereignty’. In the Māori translation, carried out by a British missionary, they didn’t give up sovereignty, but governance, thereby keeping their right to rule themselves. Things turned out quite differently, and issues around the meaning of this treaty are still being worked out.

S.G.