A dangerous agitator starts a new year of trouble

Another typical day in social media....

For those planning to attend the upcoming university event for SDL technology in Lisbon, be aware that the imams and imamas of the bulk market bog have issued a fatwa against it for the dangerous agitation expected among wordworkers in attendance, who may discover better ways to master a leading translation environment tool and free themselves from the local piecework slavelancing conditions. In particular, revelations that one can collaborate with users and abusers of other translation tools and challenge the divine infrastructure of Linguistic Sausage Producers in orgies of interoperability caused considerable controversy in meetings of Board Members Without Boundaries and Transwordling, who have worked hard to spread the needed money and manure in the field to ensure rich corporate yields for years to come. His Hendzelness the First and Only, pope of the Premium Church of Translation, decried this and other heresies, such as calls for professional translators associations freed of the commercial guidance of their betters at the production of linguistic sausage, in his New Year's sermon to an admiring crowd of underage Czech and Bulgarian colleagues. Those who hope to have a real future should boycott events such as the one planned at Universidade Nova de Lisboa on January 22nd and instead do some real good for the world and volunteer free translation of materials to inform the world that Robert Mugabe is the greatest defender of African dignity against colonialist aggression.

It's been two years and two days since my first arrival at The End of the Earth, prodigal Portugal, immersed in the agony of grief over its lost colonies, where the people still stubbornly refuse to understand how worthless an Agrarland is and that the world needs the machines made in small German villages to run at the tempo dictated by the Bundesbank, Siemens et alia, and flawed human hearts still beat in defiance of the better-engineered alternatives implanted in Merkel and her cronies. Since my transplantation to this Unworthy Place of sun, sangria and sex, I have conspired with other unworthies to continue producing the propaganda of futile resistance to the Borg juggernaut of machine pseudo-translation and the undeniable value it offers as evidenced by the breathless exclamation of leading translation technologits that some translators are actually using it.

In the spirit of that tradition, in 2015 Translation Tribulations hopes to expand its range of heresies to include cartoons honoring the Prophet Mohammed, thepigturd, Mantis/Orbe, Lyingbridge and other Great Leaders who show us how life can be if only we would submit. To that end, the office at Quinta Branca is working to acquire two young goats to provide the necessary therapy for those who dispute the power of the pen as opposed to Le Pen.

Comfort for a frustrated artist forbidden to draw people, about to embark on a new career as a wannabe terrorist

Holiday cookies for the Portuguese, Part 2

Feliz natal, everyone. Around this time of year, I think of various friends and family members with their particular repertoires of seasonal cookies and other treats, which are always something I look forward to and tell myself I'll learn to make one day. This year I decided to try my hand at a favorite German cookie, which is a bit like a shortbread with its high butter content and low sugar. There are, of course, a number of recipes available online, but I wanted to try one I've enjoyed intermittently for 24 years now, and when I asked for it, this is what I got:

Heidesand: 250 g Butter schmelzen, etwas bräunen, wieder fest werden lassen. 100g Zucker und etwas Vanillezucker damit verrühren. Ein Ei, zwei gestrichene Teelöffel Backpulver und 400g Mehl hinzugeben, verkneten, kalt stellen. Rollen formen, in Zucker wälzen, in Scheiben schneiden. Ca. 15 Minuten backen bei 180°C.

Heidesand: Melt 250 g butter and brown it a bit, then let it solidify again. Cream in 100 grams of sugar and a bit of vanilla sugar. Then add an egg, two level teaspoons of baking powder and 400 g of flour; knead the dough and chill it. Form the dough into "logs" and roll these in sugar, then cut off rounds of the dough and bake them at 180°C for about 15 minutes.

I was a bit suspicious of that baking time in my oven and reduced it by several minutes, which was still too long. The first successful batch of cookies baked for about 9 minutes and probably would have been better with a bit less time.

Adjusted for US measurement units, the recipe would be

Heidesand
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
½ cup sugar
1 packet vanilla sugar or 1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
2 level teaspoons baking powder
3 cups white wheat flour

Melt and brown the butter somewhat, then let it cool and cream it together with the sugar, add the vanilla flavoring and egg. Then add the flour, sifting it in with the baking powder, and form the crumbly dough into rolls, which can be rolled in sugar if desired (or sugar can be sprinkled on the cut cookies before baking). Wrap these in parchment paper or other suitable material and chill the rolls in the refrigerator or freeze them. Cut off slices from the rolls and bake these at 350°F (180°C) for about 8 or 9 minutes, depending on the conditions in your oven.

I used self-rising flour for a little "boost" and carmelized the sugar, though not completely to a liquid state (throwing in a teaspoon of ground cinnamon in the process), so after it cooled I had to crush and grind it in a mortar. This resulted in cookies with an interesting speckled appearance. I also didn't bother adding extra sugar in most cases, as I prefer these cookies less sweet. They are a little dry, and crumble like sand into one's mouth when bitten.

No matter how much leavening agent is added to the mix, these cookies will not rise much due to all the butter and can be spaced closely together on the tray. This recipe is not very sweet, with about half the amount of sugar found in other versions, so those with more of a sweet tooth could adjust the sugar content accordingly.

SDL Trados Studio in Lisbon – January 22, 2015 – possibilities, experience and expectations

SDL TRADOS - PAST EXPERIENCES,

PRESENT POSSIBILITIES AND FUTURE EXPECTATIONS

Thursday 22 January 2015, Auditório 2, piso 3, Torre B, FCSH

The Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New University of Lisbon is pleased to invite you to a day of talks on SDL Trados, with special guest speaker Paul Filkin, Director of Client Communities for SDL Language Solutions.

Event schedule (subject to updates)

10:00 Welcome 

10:15 – 11:30 “SDL Open Exchange” with Paul Filkin 

11:30 – 13:00 “Voice Recognition (Portuguese and English) and CAT Tools for translation and PEMT” with David Hardisty, Isabel Rocha and Joana Bernardo. This session will show how to use voice recognition to post-edit machine translation, how voice recognition is available in Portuguese, and how it can be used to cope with physical disability (such as cerebral palsy). 

LUNCH !!!

14:00 – 15:40 “SDL Trados Clinic” with Paul Filkin. In this session Paul will invite the audience to raise common issues they have with Trados, and cover other common issues and solutions. 

16:00 – 17:00 “SDL Trados and Interoperability with other CAT Tools” with Kevin Lossner. This session will present various ways to use SDL Trados to work successfully with those who have other translation environment tools such as memoQ, OmegaT, etc.

Presenters

Paul Filkin has worked for SDL Language Solutions since 2006. His main focus is evangelizing and helping users of SDL technology get the most out of their investment and is often found on social media providing advice wherever needed.  His blog “Multifarious” describes some of the practical challenges for translators and translation companies and how to resolve these with SDL technology in the mix.

Kevin Lossner has a healthy skepticism of translation technologies where it is not clear if they serve their users or the other way around. His blog “Translation Tribulations” discusses SDL Trados Studio, memoQ and more and is the ultimate authority on chocolate chip cookies in Évora, Portugal.

David Hardisty has taught Translation Tools at FCSH/UNL to undergraduate and postgraduate students since the inception of the Translation Programmes at FCSH. He has also worked with Technology in the teaching of ELT and in the last 25 years has co-authored five books published by Oxford University Press.

Isabel Rocha is a Spanish to Portuguese translator with thirty years of experience. She has completed the curriculum component of the Masters in Translation at Lisbon University and preparing to write her thesis.

Joana Bernardo is a Masters Student at FCSH/UNL. She has also studied Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the same university. She became interested in Translation after a summer internship at a subtitling company.

All professionals and students with an interest in modern translation technologies and working methods are welcome to attend this free event. For more information, please contact: David Hardisty [david1610.dh (at) gmail.com] – or just surprise us with your smiling face at the door.

Where the heck is this?

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