ATA SLD

Slavic Languages Division (American Translators Association)

CEU Watch: ATA Webinar on Linguistic Challenges in Palliative Care

Photo by Martha Dominguez de Gouveia on Unsplash

Are there topics that you enjoy working with but can be emotionally draining? For me, palliative care is one example. I love working on translations that can help promote understanding of palliative care among Russian patients and the general public, as well as the development of palliative care in Russia, but it can be hard to look past the suffering and pain behind the text, especially if it is about pediatric palliative care.

I was glad to discover that ATA offers a webinar on this subject. “Linguistic Challenges in Palliative Care” by Jessica Goldhirsch can be found in ATA’s Webinars On Demand. Jessica Goldhirsch, LCSW, MSW, MPH is a licensed clinical social worker with the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Institute’s inpatient adult palliative care consult service. She teaches staff interpreters and clinical staff how to work together effectively, and her background and experience really show.

Ms. Goldhirsch talks about the role of palliative care in the healthcare system and different stages of palliative care (hospice care is just one of them). She breaks down commonly used terminology, lists the most common misconceptions, and describes typical challenges. She stresses that the interpreter/translator must be an integral part of the palliative care team, backs it up with examples, and gives advice on how to become a member of this team. Most importantly, Ms. Goldhirsch explains how crucial it is to understand the patient’s cultural norms, beliefs, and traditions, and encourages interpreters and translators to be cultural meditators and coaches for the palliative care team.

I found this webinar both highly informative and really empowering. It didn’t make palliative care less of a difficult subject, but it helped me understand its scope and purpose, and made it clear what my role is. Armed with tips and useful resources that Ms. Goldhirsch generously shared, I feel better prepared, both mentally and emotionally, to tackle future translations on this subject.

I am grateful that ATA offered this webinar and included it in its Webinars On Demand. Ms. Goldhirsch mentioned other topics that she believes deserve to be addressed in more detail, such as serious illness conversation guides and palliative care family meetings, and I hope that ATA will offer webinars on these topics in the future.

Author Bio

Veronika Demichelis is an ATA-certified English>Russian translator. She holds an MA in Linguistics and an MBA in Human Resources Management. She specializes in corporate communication, HR, and social responsibility, but also enjoys working with health and wellness, in particular patient outreach and education materials. More information can be found on her website, https://veronikademichelis.com/.

SLD Podcast: Episode 16 with the Black Squirrel Collective

In this latest episode of the SLD Podcast, Veronika and Ekaterina talk to the members of Black Squirrel Translator Collective (BSTC)! In 2016, Victoria Chavez-Kruse, Mary McKee, Jamie Hartz, and Elizabeth Nelsen established Black Squirrel Translator Collective, a working group that provides many tangible and intangible benefits. Tune in to learn how they did it, what working together means to them, and how you can partner up with your colleagues to take your business to the next level!

Just one day left to register for the SLD’s webinar on English>Russian editing on July 31! The more people sign up, the more reason there will be for ATA to continue with language-specific “division webinars.” Don’t miss out!

CEU Watch: Medical Translation Course (English–Russian) by Alliance Pro

By Maria Guzenko

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

Introducing the CEU Watch Column

Having up-to-date subject-matter, technology, and business expertise is one of the things that sets the professional translator apart from the amateur. In addition, if you are certified by the American Translators Association (ATA) or another translation/interpreting organization, you need to accrue continuing education credits to maintain your credential. The requirements will vary depending on the organization, and those for the ATA can be found here.

With that in mind, I would like to start a column where we review continuing education opportunities, whether specific to the languages of the SLD, focused on a certain subject area or text type, or promoting any other skill useful for translators. If you have taken a course, watched a webinar, or attended an event in the last year or so and would like to review it for the SLD blog, please get in touch with Maria Guzenko at maria.guzenko@intorussian.net.

Course Information

My American Master’s degree, while incredibly helpful in many ways, did not offer practical English-to-Russian classes. Since I mostly translate into Russian, I wanted to fill that gap and started looking for language-specific classes where I could get some tips, guided practice, and feedback. My search brought me to the website of Alliance Pro («Альянс Про»), a company that offers Russian translation and interpreting classes, either as live webinars or as recordings of past events. I have no financial or business relationship with this course provider, other than paying for their class.

The class I took was called Medical Translation («Медицинский перевод») and “met” via teleconference twice a week for two hours. Four weeks of webinars were followed by a final test, which determined whether the participant would get a certificate of completion. Because the live sessions were held in the evening, Moscow time, I was able to join in the early afternoon on the East Coast. Webinar recordings and PowerPoints were available for later viewing if you had to miss the live session, which was also convenient for the times I had to be away from my desk.

Content and Instructor

The course was taught by Olga Gilyarevskaya (Ольга Гиляревская), the chief editor of a Moscow-based translation agency and a former pharmaceutical representative. It appeared that the curriculum largely reflected the types of documents and subjects Ms. Gilyarevskaya regularly saw in her work, such as clinical study protocols and disease descriptions. Each week covered a different area; by the end of the course, we had looked at clinical trials, evidence-based medicine, oncology, cardiology, pharmaceutical companies, and ophthalmology.

Each webinar started with the instructor going over the homework from the previous class, and she would either comment on our cohort’s proposed solutions or discuss typical errors for the homework passage. Next, the instructor would present new material. Beware, a typical PowerPoint had more than 100 slides, which can definitely be a lot of information, especially if you are trying to take notes! Fortunately, the PowerPoints were available to the course participants online so you could always go over them later.

On the positive side, Ms. Gilyarevskaya did not only lecture and share information; she made sure to keep the group engaged by asking us for possible translations and giving us feedback. Clinical studies can be intimidating for a newcomer, and the teacher put the group at ease with her down-to-earth attitude and not being hard on those giving incorrect answers.

Workload and Homework

At the end of each class, the instructor would assign homework for the following class. There were two differently priced “access tiers” for this course, so some participants turned in homework and had it corrected, while others simply audited the class. We would normally get a choice of two texts, one more advanced than the other. A typical passage would be some 3-4 paragraphs long, and we would usually get about 2 days to upload our translation. Between going over the new material and doing your homework, you would probably need a minimum of two hours after each session, so I do not recommend taking this class if you are overloaded with work or family responsibilities!

A lot of homework passages came from clinical trial documentation, and I appreciated that we worked on real-life texts. On the other hand, the homework would regularly include concepts we had not discussed in the previous lecture. It could be a bit discouraging when some things in the passage were not clear even after you went over your class notes. I suppose that reflects real-world working conditions, where we often have to research things as we go along.

Takeaways

Any review is bound to be subjective, so what I say here reflects my professional goals and preferences. If you come to this class expecting a comprehensive overview of medicine and different text types in various specialties, you are likely to be disappointed. For instance, the text types I translate most often—patient education materials and descriptions of health benefits—were not represented. Neither were such areas as mental health or diagnostic imaging. That makes perfect sense, though—no single month-long class can cover all possible text types you come across in the medical field.

Personally, I am happy I took this class. I now have a better understanding of clinical trials, statistics, immune therapy, and the cellular mechanisms underlying cancer, even though I still have a lot more to learn. I also enjoyed the easygoing teacher and the “can-do” attitude she encouraged in her students. I would recommend this class to English-Russian translators who are interested in clinical studies and are willing to put in several hours of study and homework every week.

Author Bio

Maria Guzenko is an ATA-certified English<>Russian translator and a certified medical interpreter (CMI-Russian). She holds an MA in translation from Kent State University and specializes in healthcare and marketing content. Maria has also worked as a project manager and has taught college Russian and writing classes. More information can be found on Maria’s website at https://intorussian.net.

ATA Law Seminar in Jersey City

Happy New Year! If one of your professional New Year’s resolutions was to do more continuing education in the coming year and you are a legal translator or interpreter, the ATA has just the opportunity for you. It will be hosting a full-day law seminar in Jersey City on February 16, with morning and afternoon sessions divided between translation and interpreting. ATA-certified attendees can earn 7 CEPs!

The schedule, session descriptions, and hotel and registration information can be found here: https://www.atanet.org/events/law_jerseycity.php.

ATA59 Review: Strategies for Avoiding Language Interference and Coping with Opinionated Clients

Photo by Romain Vignes on Unsplash

Review by Eugenia Tietz-Sokolskaya

Topic: Dutch, Independent Contractors, Translation

Speaker: Joy Burrough-Boenisch

Haven’t we all, at some point or another, had to deal with a client best described as “opinionated”? Or noticed that our language skills needed a bit of brushing up? So it should come as no surprise that Joy Burrough-Boenisch’s unambiguously titled session was packed, including by plenty of people who didn’t know Dutch.

Joy, a British expat permanently residing in the Netherlands, set the stage with some important context: the Dutch have some of the highest English proficiency levels in the world among non-native speakers. Translators working in this environment find themselves constantly having to justify their translation choices—or discovering after the fact that their translations were subjected to “disimprovement” without their knowledge by clients overconfident in their own English skills.

Based on her own experiences and reactions she’s seen from her colleagues, Joy offered a few suggestions for reacting to disimprovement (whether suggested or already irreversible):

  • At the far timid end of the spectrum, you can follow the “client is always right” mantra and let it go, especially if your name is not explicitly associated with the translation.
  • At the other extreme, if a client is being particularly intransigent, drop them! One of Joy’s colleagues blacklisted an entire Dutch government ministry as a client for some particularly egregious edits and accompanying disrespectful treatment.
  • There is, of course, a middle ground, mostly centered around tactfully voicing your objections, whether during the editing process or after the fact, respected authorities in hand to justify your objections. View the time spent justifying your version as an investment in your professional reputation.
  • Speaking of professionalism, take a moment to step back and ask yourself if maybe the client is actually right. Do your research and be willing to admit it if you were wrong.
  • Reiterate your advice against the changes in every communication, and if changes are made without your knowledge or against your advice, get it in writing that it was not your responsibility. In matters of law, it becomes particularly important to request a written statement that unauthorized changes were made.

When it came to resources to cite, Joy came out as a strong proponent of corpora, such as COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). In addition to researching the frequency of certain collocations across the language as a whole, they can be used to determine the register of a particular word or phrase.

Corpora also featured prominently in the first section of the talk, which covered language attrition, a particularly salient problem for expats like Joy, who work in a country where they are surrounded by a foreign language (and often by a lot of foreign-inflected English). Over time, this exposure begins to interfere with their native-speaker intuition for how English should sound. The first signs of trouble will show up in mixed-up prepositions and false friends, but language interference is at its most insidious where it affects style and rhetoric. Different languages prefer sentences of different lengths and different argumentation styles (do you state your conclusion first, then support it, or do you lead the reader gradually to your main point?), and these standards are so ingrained that we can barely articulate them, let alone notice when they start to slip.

Joy’s recommended treatment for language attrition is reading up on contrastive grammar and—you guessed it—making good use of corpora to check yourself on prepositions, word frequencies, and appropriateness for the specific text type. I would add that these approaches are also worthwhile for those of us not living abroad: if I spend long enough staring at a Russian source text, or worse, editing non-native translations from Russian, eventually I notice language interference rearing its ugly head as well. Listening to Joy’s engaging talk inspired me and gave me the tools to fight off language interference and remain professional in the face of client feedback.

Eugenia Tietz-Sokolskaya is an ATA-certified Russian to English translator specializing in legal and financial texts. She has a Master’s in Translation from Kent State (2016) and has been working freelance since graduating. She can be found at eugenia@sokolskayatranslations.com and www.sokolskayatranslations.com.

ATA59 Review: Publishing Literature in Translation

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Review by Evgeny Terekhin

Topic: Literary, T&I Industry

Speaker: Gabriella Page-Fort

 

As a literary translator, I couldn’t help but gravitate towards literary sessions. When I read the title of this one, “Publishing Literature in Translation: How Translators Help AmazonCrossing Bring Stories to New Readers by Page-Fort Gabriella,” I scratched by head – what is AmazonCrossing? I didn’t bother to look it up but went straight to the room.

It took me a while to start making sense of Gabriella’s multiple references to book sales statistics, but after a while I got the hang of it. AmazonCrossing is actively searching for great international reads for a global English-speaking audience.

Basically, if you know of a book in a language other than English and feel it would really appeal to the English-speaking world, you go to the AmazonCrossing website, https://translation.amazon.com/submissions, and propose it. They are constantly looking for interesting titles, and their list of translated books is very diverse.

Gabriella shared several intriguing stories of how they hunted for books to translate, including an example of how they got connected with an elderly Uzbek author who wrote a wonderful story but couldn’t even use email. She emphasized that as an editorial director she can never tell which story will grab her attention. They are looking for stories regardless of the source language and genre – the main idea is for it to be appealing.

Turns out AmazonCrossing is the biggest producer of translated literature in the US market. Gabriella’s talk was very inspiring, so I immediately had several titles pop up in my head, and I proposed one. We’ll see.

I didn’t realize you could actually go to their website and register as a literary translator. You could also upload your resume, and if they have a matching job, they will contact you. If you are interested in the field, it’s a great opportunity to get your foot in the door.

Much of the session was devoted to the discussion of what makes for a good story. One may find a story fascinating, but when it’s published it doesn’t necessarily get traction. In Gabriella’s words, you don’t really know. You pick a book based on your gut instinct, but who knows if the readers’ gut will have the same instinct? Though it’s often hit and miss, the success of the endeavor is obvious, with 62 new titles translated just in 2017.

Even though, according to Gabriella, Americans don’t read translations very much – for whatever reason – AmazonCrossing stands out from among the other 13 imprints of Amazon Publishing, translating into English from a wide variety of languages: Danish, Hebrew, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Indonesian, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, French, Chinese, Spanish, and German.

After the session, I had lots of questions for Gabriella, but, unfortunately, there was a line of people vying for her attention. The main question I had was: what are some of the characteristics of the kind of literature that would be equally appealing across cultures? For instance, “The Karamazov Brothers” is appealing to all cultures, but I know other great Russian titles which do not have the same international appeal.

It would be an engaging project in itself to analyze what kind of books have found their way into the hearts of the global community while retaining features of their home culture. Obviously, the Lord of the Rings is a distinctly British book, but it captivates audiences all around the world. Why? Having those essential characteristics down would greatly facilitate the process of finding potential “winners.”

Well, maybe I will ask my question next year. As it is, Gabriella focuses on “a good story” over a specific category, like “fantasy,” or “romance.” They are looking for the stories that make people feel more similar than different. “Things that make it so you can connect and see directly into the eyes of whatever today’s ‘other’ looks like.”

So, do you know a title that you think would be interesting for the English readership? Let Gabriella know.

 

Evgeny Terekhin is an En-Ru and Ru-En translator with a master’s degree in English and German. Born and raised in Omsk, Russia, he and his family moved to the US in 2016. In the course of his 25-year career, he’s translated and edited over 150 books, brochures and tracts across a wide range of subjects like children’s literature, marketing, psychology, spirituality, health-care, business, and legal. He lives in Friendswood, TX and can be reached at terekhin11@gmail.com Website: www.russiantranslators.org

ATA59 Review: Patent Translation for Liberal Arts Majors

Complex computer parts and circuitry

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Review by Karen Yesowich Schmucker

Topic: Science and Technology

Presented in English with Chinese examples

Speakers: Evelyn Garland and Aaron Hebenstreit

I wanted to review this session because I have a liberal arts background and have translated a few patents myself.  While I have some knowledge of engineering and manufacturing terminology from previous work, I found patent translation daunting and I hoped to come away from this presentation with a few helpful resources.

The presentation was based on the premise that liberal arts majors, while not a natural fit for translation of scientific work, can still become good patent translators. The speakers discussed their experiences working with translators educated in liberal arts and how they helped them to deliver high quality patent translations. They also pointed out that sometimes a translator’s lack of scientific training actually helped because it meant they did not have preconceived notions about the subject matter and were able to look at the matter objectively.  Since patents are produced for new ideas, someone without hardened ideas about subjects can be a valuable asset.

In addition, the speakers stressed that translators with a liberal arts background were well-suited to paying close attention to the language used in patents and to clearly telling what they called the “story” of the patent. They encouraged new translators unfamiliar with the idiosyncracies of patent language to look at other patents in the same field and the same jurisdiction to gain an understanding of how particular terms and turns of phrase are used and get a sense of what is considered normal in patent style.

The examples given in the session were in Chinese, but I did come away from the session with a few resources that would be useful for anyone interested in translating patents. Since the speakers had worked for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the resources they mentioned were related to WIPO:

 If you want to learn more about translating patents, the speakers suggested starting with the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

Finally, because patents must be translated, they are a good source of work for translators. One of the speakers mentioned that Russian was one of the languages where there was always a need for linguists.

Karen Yesowich Schmucker is a certified Russian into English Translator in Bellevue, WA. Karen holds both an MA in Russian Language and Literature from the University of Toronto and a BFA in Graphic Design from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. You can reach her at karen@kysdesigns.com (www.kysdesigns.com).

Feedback in Translation (Part 2): Responding to Feedback Constructively

Sign with directional arrows to "awesome" and "less awesome"

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

This is the second part of the Feedback in Translation series. You can find Part 1, “What to Expect,” here.

By Anna Livermore

 

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

– Henry Ford

When was the last time you received feedback on your work? Were you happy with it? Did it sting a little? Did you learn anything from it?

Receiving feedback from clients is important by all accounts, especially as detailed review of one’s work can be hard to come by. The fact that an agency or a direct client takes time to provide feedback (that is more than just a numerical value on an arbitrary scale) is a great sign: it means that they value the work you do and are willing to invest in making the relationship more productive[i].

However, receiving feedback is just the beginning. What really matters is how we respond to it and what we learn from it.

Being able to respond to feedback constructively is a key skill for building trust and rapport with clients[ii] and coworkers, if you hold an in-house position.  If they know they can count on your cooperation in achieving the quality of translation that they require, you are more likely to receive repeat business and referrals.

One of the main difficulties with processing feedback is the fact that in translation it usually entails finding faults in the target text and informing the translator of those faults. One look at the ProZ[iii] contest supports that: the number of mistakes (dislikes) fellow translators highlight in translations submitted to the competition by far exceeds the number of merit points (likes) those entries receive. There is a reason for that: our job demands perfectionism. And although research proves that receiving negative feedback is critical to improving one’s performance, it also suggests that dealing with negative feedback can be difficult, because initially people tend to feel defensive[iv].

It does take some effort not to take it personally but to remember that feedback is not an attack on your skills. It is worth remembering that the intention of any editor is (or should be) to improve the target text, to work on its readability and style, iron out mistakes that slipped through your net and to identify any localization issues.

It is therefore important not to rush your response, but to read everything carefully and consider the nature of the corrections and why an editor would make them. Some corrections will be obvious (grammar, style, register, word choice), others might contradict what you thought was the right solution, and then, of course, there is the grey area of preferential corrections that do not improve the quality of a target text but “sound better” to the reviewer.

Responding to feedback constructively does not mean agreeing to everything that a client says and corrects. A lot of the time feedback from agency and direct client reviewers will be valid: they might insist on using specific terminology that conveys their market expertise, or they might feel that a change of register would better suit their brand identity. But there will be times when you should defend your choices. Some inexperienced direct clients might question the target text from a position of translation and localization ignorance: for instance, insisting that every word in a title is capitalized in a Russian target text, which is not the norm, or making corrections to a translation based on the logic “but I saw it on other photographers’ websites written this way (albeit completely ungrammatical).” Cases like this are a great opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in what you do and provide valuable advice to your clients.

If you do challenge any corrections made to your translation, make sure you can back everything up with reputable sources (corpora, references to style guides and grammar manuals etc.). Personally, I also try to keep it simple: when discussing feedback with direct clients who wouldn’t know their gerund from their participle, I aim to uncomplicate the information for them and put it in terms that they can relate to. Doing so can be challenging sometimes, but will certainly earn you some extra points with clients.

And of course, don’t forget that the process of deconstructing feedback and analyzing it for the purpose of responding to a client will benefit you in other ways too:

  • The most obvious reason is that the analysis enables us to perfect our translation skills. It is equivalent to satisfaction surveys other service providers send out to try and understand how well they are doing in addressing their customers’ needs. Here is a little trick I developed after I took my first ATA Certification practice test: I would analyze feedback from every test translation and project I completed and categorize every mistake according to the ATA Certification exam rubric[v]. This gave me an insight into areas I could improve, allowing me to focus my efforts.
  • Other reasons include understanding the tone of voice, style and terminology different clients prefer and expect in future assignments to ensure the consistency of how their brand is presented. We do not have a crystal ball, and even the most thorough project brief won’t always cover everything.
  • And finally, the type of feedback received speaks volumes about the client, where translation fits into their business and how much they value it—information that can be useful when analyzing your client database.

 

Anna Livermore is an English>Russian and German>Russian translator and former marketing specialist. With a linguistics degree from the Oxford Brookes University and a Professional Diploma in marketing, she came to specialize in translating marketing materials, corporate communications, website content and various components of SEM. She is a member of the Slavic Languages Division’s Social Media team. Contact: livermore.translations@gmail.com

[i] Source: https://www.technolex-translations.com/ru/articles/the-human-factor-in-translation-agencies-why-being-a-good-translator-is-not-enough.html accessed 10/8/18

[ii] Source: http://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2014/03/17/five-reasons-feedback-may-important-skill/) accessed 10/15/18

[iii] Source: https://www.proz.com/translation-contests/pair/2834 accessed 10/20/18

[iv] Source: https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-right-way-to-respond-to-negative-feedback accessed 10/20/18

[v] http://atanet.org/certification/aboutexams_error.php

SLD Podcast: Episode 7 with Evgeniy Bartov

In this episode of the SLD Podcast, Veronika and Ekaterina interview Evgeniy Bartov, successful translator, agency owner, and translation school founder. Evgeniy discusses the state of the translation market, issues with translation quality, and the nuances of translator training.

Be sure to subscribe to the ATA podcast on iTunes and Google Play so you never miss an episode!

SLD Podcast: Episode 4 with Elena Bogdanovich-Werner

Check out the new episode of the SLD podcast, in which Elena Bogdanovich-Werner, a translator of 30 years, discusses how the language services industry has changed over time, what makes a great translator, and what areas of professional development are most important for translators and interpreters.

Good news! The SLD podcast is now available on iTunes and Google Play! Just search “ATA SLD” and be sure to subscribe. Note that it takes 12-24 hours for the newest episode to appear. The latest episodes are always available on the ATA SLD SoundCloud channel.

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