This month has been an eventful one! Windy storms several weeks back followed by earthquakes that have shaken the capital causing some minor damage and closing our office for a day while the building here was checked. On the brighter side, we are lucky to be able to welcome our new front desk administrator, Jess, who is featured in this month's Proust questionnaire below and Alfonso will be returning from Italy this coming week – this coming week is also Cook Island Maori Language Week so we'd like to say thank you to the Cook Island Maori translators who play such a great role in representing their culture and keeping the language flourishing. Further down in this update, our senior translator Bill will give us an account of the NZSTI conference in Tauranga and there is also some more information about selective translations as well as the next five of the ten golden rules for translation.

Best wishes for a safe and prosperous month ahead!

Quintin Ridgeway
Manager

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

Our latest team member, Jessica joined the Translation Service on 8 July and enthusiastically took over our front desk to support her partner who is currently completing his PhD in neuroscience. She also has her own clothing design business specialising in evening wear for women (so ladies, if you need a cocktail dress, let her know!). It’s a busy life, but when she has time she dreams of the two dogs she’d like to have when living in New York City. While the Big Apple and the dogs aren’t reality yet, she already has the names sorted: Audrey Hepburn and Oscar the Grouch.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Living in New York City with my two puppies

What is your greatest fear?
A large earthquake while at work!

Which person do you most admire?
Anna Wintour

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Never being satisfied with what I have achieved

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Considering themselves better than others

What is your greatest extravagance?
Overseas travel

On what occasions do you lie?
When I have eaten bad food!

What makes you happiest?
Being with my family on Sunday morning brunch

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Not needing as much sleep

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Starting my own company, Jessica Bloom

If you died and came back as a person or thing, what would it be?
A bird, I would love to be able to fly

What is your most treasured possession?
My ring given to me by my parents as a 21st gift

Who are your heroes in real life?
My parents, they have done everything they can for me

What is it that you most dislike?
Brussels sprouts!

What is your motto?
‘Never hire anyone you cannot fire!’

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 Stefan for more details.

Following June’s issue of our newsletter, some of you have asked how one inserts an automatically updated date in the heading of all full translations (if you don’t know what this is about, read our June issue).

The answer? Click ‘Insert’, then ‘Date and Time…’. Make sure that the language is set as English, select the ‘xx August 2013’ format, select the ‘Update automatically’ checkbox, and click ‘OK’.

Feel free to ask us questions if anything is unclear, or share your tips and tricks with other TTS translators.
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.

The 22nd Annual Conference of NZSTI was held in Tauranga over the last weekend in June.  It broke new ground by being organised jointly by the Christchurch and Tauranga members, who all did a great job of working together.

The venue was the Tauranga Yacht and Power Boat Club, which sits at the end of the Tauranga Marina looking out to Mount Maunganui.  The weather was beautifully fine, which made it a pity to be pulling the blinds down at the start of each session.

As well as NZSTI members from throughout New Zealand, people had come from Australia including some speakers.  Two ladies from Oman had come all the way to New Zealand to attend the Conference, and made a great contribution to the proceedings.

A major theme this year was the new Code of Ethics, which is the same as the code adopted by our counterparts in Australia.  There were some excellent speakers including Judy Saba, the Diversity Trainer for the New South Wales Police, who is responsible for training police to work more effectively with interpreters.  Claire Loftus Nelson led a panel discussion for freelance translators on how to work with project managers.

NZSTI holds a conference every year, usually in June.  It is a great opportunity for translators and interpreters to come together and meet colleagues who are dealing with similar issues.  This is especially valuable for translators and interpreters who are working freelance and do not have many chances to meet others working in the same field.  Please think about coming along to the next Conference – you will gain so much from it.

Did you go to the conference too? What did you think? Let us know!

W.A.

As the royal family celebrates the birth of the third-in-line to the throne, let’s look back to one of George’s predecessors, the infamous King George III who lost both the American colonies and his mind. Now, his birth certificate isn’t readily available, as you can imagine. Some of our clients face the same issue: they may not have an official birth certificate in their possession for various reasons. Sometimes they will provide a letter from a chief of village confirming their birth details, a hospital record, or even a school certificate. It is up to the Citizenship and Immigration authorities to decide whether the document provided is acceptable or not. Our job is to extract the relevant details, fill out our template, and clearly state what the original document is.

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: Members of the royal family do not need to lodge an immigration application to come to New Zealand, especially when they have passed away a long time ago.

Follow this link, or click on the image above, to find out about the art of selective translations.

6. Tell us straight away if you notice an error

You don’t necessarily know all of us personally, but we’re generally a nice bunch. And as humans do, we sometimes make mistakes… so if you notice any error in an email or assignment – for example, the amount we should pay you is wrong, the number of words is implausible, or even the document we sent isn’t the one you expected (i.e. we sent you’re a divorce certificate instead of a birth certificate, or the birth certificate we sent is for a person whose name is very different to the one we gave you as preferred spellings), do let us know as soon as possible, i.e. before returning the translation as it is hard for us to do anything then.

7. Follow instructions

Some jobs are quite straight forward, others not so much. If anything is out of the ordinary, the project manager will specify this in the email that is sent to you and may also call you to make sure you understand what is expected from you. So please make sure that you carefully read our emails. And if you have any doubt, call us or send us an email.

For selective translations, your first port of call should be our Guidelines for Selective Translations. For full translations and revisions, we will update our guidelines, and provide some training.

8. Meet deadlines

It’s a no-brainer, really, but sometimes it’s worth reiterating. Our clients expect to receive their translations at a certain date – our reputation and business relationships may be hurt by our inability to meet their expectations. That is why meeting your deadline is key.

When we send you an assignment, we do our best to give you enough time to complete it. If for any given reason you can’t meet the deadline, or you think you would need more time to provide a high-quality service, let us know: we may be able to push the deadline; if we aren’t, we’ll need to assign the job to another linguist.

9. Follow our file naming conventions

We’ve already mentioned this in a previous issue of the newsletter, and some – alas not all – of you now follow our file naming conventions. Here’s a quick reminder: the name of a file should be made up of 3 parts:

• the job number (0001, 0002_2 and so on);
• followed by a space and the language other than English (Spanish, Hindi, Tagalog etc.);
• followed by a space and the letter that corresponds to the stage the translation is at (T for translation, R for revised, and PF for panel final).

This is what your file names should look like: 0123_4 Urdu T.doc.

10. Take feedback into account

The reason why we send you feedback is to help you have a better understanding of our expectations, improve the quality of your work, and ultimately minimise the time we need to spend to bring your translations up to our standards. While we take the time to send you feedback, we expect from you that you will read our comments and take our recommendations onboard. We wouldn’t bother if we didn’t think it was worth it!

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The ten golden rules are here to help us build and maintain a good working relationship. Make sure to follow them and you will inadvertently abide by the most important unwritten rule of all: keep your clients happy.

Because ultimately, happy clients and project managers are more likely to send you work.

S.G.

Do you have one or several golden rules that you always follow? Tell us and we’ll include them in our next issue.

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 howlers found in translation, taken from the Engrish website and real life. We hope you enjoy them.

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

1. Of nuts and bolts
Kirkcaldie and Stain’s regularly organises facials for a famous New Zealand-made cosmetic brand. The products are all natural, if not certified organic. As an international brand, the package has translations into French and Italian. One surprising ingredient is “huile d’écrou”, or nut oil of the mechanical sort.

2. Violent food
A restaurant in China serves dishes with rather violent names. These include: the ‘Slip away the chicken slice’, the ‘Temple explodes the chicken cube’, and the ‘Black mushrooms rape’. I would be nervous just sitting at a table there.

3. Bathroom inspectors
The bathroom door of a Chinese restaurant in Sydney reads: ‘Strictly hung restaurant customer use only – For your safety obtain the key at the counter’. You better not have a weak bladder!