Translation Tribulations

An exploration of language technologies, translation education, practice and politics, ethical market strategies, workflow optimization, resource reviews, controversies, coffee and other topics of possible interest to the language services community and those who associate with it. Service hours: Thursdays, GMT 09:00 to 13:00.

▼

Showing posts with label agencies. Show all posts

Showing posts with label agencies. Show all posts

May 20, 2023

Taking the trash out of trashlation in translation

Let’s be real, people. We need to start using the word trashlation to describe what too often passes for professional activity in the langu...

Mar 4, 2019

What evil lurks in the results from your language service provider?

Let me start by disclosing that although I have a registered limited company through which I provide translation, training and technical con...

Oct 4, 2014

Drunken monkey needs German to English translator to translate from medieval Czech!

You can always count on ProZ.com, The Translators' Workhouse, for a good laugh. Here is yet another #FAIL by staff to screen job po...

Jul 8, 2014

Time-saving tip: the DELETE key!

As one who clings stubbornly to the notion of value in a "personal touch" for business communication, I found this colleague...

Jan 9, 2014

Games agencies play, part 3: blind commitments

Many of us know this late-afternoon scenario: Dear Mr. Lossner, We have a translation request for 3 PDF documents with a total of 2500 wo...

Oct 13, 2013

Games agencies play, part 2: "word counts"

Last week a colleague called me up, very worried because her count of a rather tricky and somewhat long chemical text differed from the tran...

Aug 24, 2013

Games agencies play, Part 1: "basic information" for Google searches

The other day a fellow freelancer called me up, irate to learn that a translation agency owner in her country had appropriated one of her id...

Oct 15, 2012

Would you certify sewage?

Good afternoon, Mr. Lossner, We have received the attached document from a patent attorney. An English translation of it has already be...

Sep 29, 2012

We are the wind beneath their wings

I've been translating now for some 35 years, though the first two decades and a bit more I did so to support my personal interests and r...

Apr 22, 2012

Spamalot: desperate translation agencies

Soon after I started this blog in 2008 I found it necessary to take various measures to protect against spam comments. In the early days,...

Jan 30, 2012

Put on de Red Pee fo da agency

When I received a message from a colleague that ProZ had begun " certifying " translation agencies with the dreaded red P lob , ...

Jan 17, 2012

Are professional organizations worth the bother?

There are two broad categories of professional organizations potentially of interest to language professionals such as interpreters and tran...

Dec 10, 2011

Heads in the Cloud? Or somewhere else?

As noted in my last post, concerns are growing over the trend toward "Cloud-based" translation management solutions and the p...

Jun 13, 2011

How not to seduce good translators

Last Saturday I received the following missive from a translation agency located in a town near Düsseldorf, Germany: Sehr geehrter Herr Lo...

Mar 19, 2011

Who's afraid of the big, bad MT post-editing job?

Still somewhat groggy without my third double espresso eggnog latté of the morning, I was woken up quickly by an interesting tweet from And...

Nov 27, 2010

Subprime

One of the links in my blogroll - Patenttranslator's Blog - is becoming a favorite for its strangeness and irreverent insights. I don...

Jul 22, 2010

The end of agencies?

I had an interesting conversation with an agency owner tonight. He described how representatives of various agencies in a certain non-Europe...

View web version

Powered by Blogger.