notes from a progressing document translator

Cantonese Online Resources

2009-03-16T17:07:00.003-04:00

Hi!

This morning I had a loooong list of Cantonese Online Resources emailed to me from my Cantonese class that includes some cool links. The links that I haven't put up here already are below.

For those of you in NYC, the course is through cantoneseonline.org (Tribute to Cantonese and Toisanese), they are FREE, and offered for beginners and intermediate speakers. I enjoy sitting in on the intermediate because it's great for passive language skills for anyone with a background in Mandarin or another dialect. Basically, I sit, listen, nod, and respond entirely in Mandarin or English (working on it), so I shouldn't make myself sound too studious, regardless, it's a great class!

Cantonese Links:

Learn Cantonese

Article about "-ge" 嘅(的)particle usage

Cantonese Particles

More Phrases

China the Beautiful
Haven't fully looked at all the resources here, but besides links for learning the language there are also links to classical works of Chinese literature online and segments about certain aspects of Chinese culture. Looks like fun, but I still haven't checked it all out yet.

That's all for now! I'm actually going to class tonight, hopefully it'll inspire some canto-commentary tomorrow. Joi gin (再见!)

Spanish Translation Resources/fun

2009-03-13T14:43:00.002-04:00

So, I do translate Spanish too...maybe I should throw something out about that...

My Spanish is not as good as my Chinese, however I do get a lot of Spanish work being in NYC so I have found some cool sites. ProZ.com is infinitely more useful for Spanish than it is for Chinese, and of course Wordreference.com is a very cool online source. Below are some of the other ones I've found that have been pretty helpful:

Sistema de calificiciones de Uruguay
Some of this is self-explanatory, but for a beginner who's never seen a transcript from Uruguay before and has to guess at the abbreviated levels of sobresaliente, bueno, regular, and deficiente, this is a nice guide/explanation for those of you who translate for academic eval. people.

Chilean Slang
Granted, I find this fun, but it's also useful for people who transcribe or subtitle to check out slang websites. This, obviously, is regionally specific.

Slang Dictionary
This site is cool because when you type in a word it'll give various meanings for different regions. I have yet to need either of these sites for anything professionally, but could easily see how they'd apply. If not, then they're just for fun, so enjoy!

Academic Resources

2009-03-13T14:22:00.005-04:00

Part of what I enjoy about translating is the fact that for most of the day my nerdiness is a job requirement. Here are the sites I've found while being a nerd in my free time related to Chinese language/linguistics/translation.

Glossika Taiwanese
As a part of my new obsession with Taiwan, I've been finding more sites with info about Taiwanese. I wish I could say I understand how this site works yet, I really don't, but have been able to get a few lessons working, and there are recordings of some sayings that are useful for those of us trying to understand the Taiwanese Romanization systems.

Taiwanese Dictionary
Mandarin-Taiwanese (well, characters, at any rate). I'll be able to say more about how useful this is once I actually know a little more Taiwanese. At the moment, it looks okay, the interface works with characters, type the character, then a bunch come up with Taiwanese pronunciation.

红楼梦/ Dream of Red Chambers
红楼梦 online. I do not know if this is the best resource for this, but for anyone who's a little too eager for grad school but not there yet, I think it's a good start.

The Sino-Platonic Papers online
Better late than never? I've had this link for a while but am just getting to posting it. There are tons of great academic papers on a variety of topics in contemporary Chinese studies, so definitely check it out!

MIT Open Courseware Chinese Online Resources Page
Chinese libraries, Chinese newspapers, etc - loads of sites of interest for people studying Chinese language and literature.

Sichuan Dialect Website
This is a good website with linguistic information about the differences between Putonghua and Sichuan Dialect.

Okay, that's the extent of my Chinese nerdiness at this point. I might actually have more free time at work to look into new stuff, whoa! To be continued..

More Chinese Translation Resources

2009-03-13T13:44:00.002-04:00

Since we've been busy lately, I've started to really appreciate a few resources online that make my life easier when I forget the things I should clearly have memorized by now and never screw up, but don't, and do...

Short names of Chinese Provinces
Yup, for those of you who are new to Chinese, provinces all have a one character short name. I forget them constantly, but here's a website that has them all listed out for those of us who are too lazy to learn them the hard way (now that I just wrote that I'm definitely going to memorize all of these tonight).

Official International University Names
Sometimes institutions go with a translation of their name that a translator wouldn't intuitively arrive at from just looking at the language. Granted, I use this website more for Spanish than for Chinese, because with Chinese it's more than likely that if you just google the Chinese website of the University, the English name will also appear in the Chinese website header, or the abbreviation of the Official English title will be used as the web address. For a lot of Latin American Universities this hasn't always been the case for me, so I use this website my manager recommended to me. It's been a very good tool!

Chinese Traditional ("Uber-Traditional") Numbers （大写）
This one is particularly embarrassing. In my life, I have found the time to make myself equally literate in simplified and traditional characters (at least passively, in terms of writing I'm way more comfortable with simplified). I have yet to find the time to learn how to write the formal numbers (well, I use them enough where I recognize them, but still confuse 6 and 7 and can't actively write all of them from memory). In my defense, these are not commonly used characters, but rather are only used on formal documents to write dates and years, so it's not like I'm a translator who I never learned to write 1-10...it's more like I never learned how to write 1-10 in old school cursive, if that makes sense...which is still horrible. Anyway, this site has them all listed and it's an easy reference, much easier than digging them up on your own, since they're not terribly common they're not the first options that come up when you type in pinyin input systems.

Balance Sheet
Who's had a day of filling out balance sheets? Not the most fun. This site has a lot of the generic terms you'll see on them that don't always come up in online dictionaries. Sometimes it's worth checking even when you're sure what it means, since they're legal documents you want them to be as standard as you can make them.

Accounting Terminology Website
On a related note, when you're dealing with bank statements, etc. you'll find a lot of accounting terms that aren't readily available in the dictionary. Since they tend to be used for legal purposes, you really do want to make sure you're using most commonly applied industry terms. Many of these sites exist, so it's good to look at more than one. These are just the ones I've been smart enough to bookmark.

Taipei Street Names
This may seem a little weird, but if anyone has seen a Taiwan Household Registry handwritten and has never been to Taiwan, they'll understand. Handwritten documents blow, hard, which is why this site rocks. If you're "deciphering" or you want to verify what you think the street name is with actual street names in Taipei, here's the site to do it through!

Accounting Glossary
I haven't checked the blog this was posted to, but someone posted a pretty extensive Chinese - English Accounting Glossary here that's been pretty useful as well.

A related note: Administrative Regions are very well documented on Wikipedia if you search by Province. Especially in the Chinese case, but also with most region write-ups in general, at least for Municipal and Provincial levels, for anything lower sometimes it depends on the Province.

That's all for the Chinese translation resources today. Again, there are loads of these types of glossaries out there, I'm sure. I'm posting the ones that I've seen myself used frequently over the last few months. I'm always looking for new ones too, if anyone has any they'd like to share!

Chinese Translation Resources

2008-11-20T15:43:00.004-05:00

I've been doing a bad job of budgetting my time lately. Work's mostly slow, but when I spend time online here I tend to go from site to site until I'm lost following eight different topics through the web and keeping track of none of them. One of those topics was online forums/tools for Chinese translators.

For people who already have a specialization it might not be necessary, but for people like me who've just started out translating, these following sites are very useful for practicing/studying as well as searching out unfamiliar vocabulary. I haven't fully exhausted any of these yet, but so far they've all been worth checking out.

Dictionaries

There are a ton of online dictionaries. So far I've noticed I tend to stick with nciku and dict.cn, but this week I found some new ones that all look like they could be just as reliable. I've posted the old ones and new ones below, there are some dialect ones too!

Download CEDICT!
I can't believe this exists...I just downloaded one of the hugest online dictionary collaborations while sitting around at work...I can't wait to put it on my computer at home!

iCIBA Mandarin Dictionary

CNKI 翻译助手

nciku

dict.cn

zhongwen.com

Taiwanese Dictionary!
I'm finding that I'm not the only geeky Chinese student who likes to study Mandarin alongside of other Chinese dialects. I'm more focused on improving my Cantonese listening skills because I live in New York, but it's still great to see all these online resources. Maybe this one will inspire me to move to Taiwan?

Cantonese Dictionary
This is also a site that has forums and loads of information useful for anyone who's just beginning to learn Cantonese.

Hakka Dictionary
I don't speak Hakka, so I have no idea how to gauge the quality of this, but if you were wondering one day, "Do Hakka dictionaries exist?" I found the answer for you (your welcome).

Shanghainese Dictionary
If you asked the same question above but switched Hakka with Shanghainese, then I found the answer for you, too (you're also welcome).

Forums

Chinese-Forums

chineselanguage.org

The two above forums are really great. I've been reading a lot about dialect and Chinese translation, but the threads are very diverse and I'd imagine anyone studying the language will find something of interest in either.

nciku.com also allows users to register for free and post online, I've had more than one of my questions answered there before, so definitely give it a try!

Learn Cantonese forum site.

Glossaries/Vocabulary Resources

Not all of these are organized glossaries or lists exactly, but if anything else are written in English and Chinese so that they provide you with the standard translation of some more legal/admin orientated terms.

HK Law Glossary
I am big enough of a dork that I actually sat scrawling out word after word of the first five or so pages before I found better uses of my time...This is actually a glossary in the way you'd expect ( a list of chinese words and their corresponding english definitions).

Bilingual Household Registry Terms/ Taiwan

This is more like a bilingual explanation of classifications/laws relating to Household Registries. If anyone's had the pleasure of translating a Taiwanese Household Register before, I suggest checking this out.

More Household Registry Legal Terms!

List of Military Terms
I found this when I was translating a discharge order a few days ago, it was really useful. The titles are the only bilingual part, but even that is a help, and regardless sometimes it's great just to have any context whatsoever behind the purpose of all the information you're translating. I've never been to Taiwan, hardly know anything about Taiwan, barely taught myself to read traditional characters, so I was less than thrilled with the assignment at the start. But, it was about army stuff and I'm a boy, so obviously it was cool in the end. And, that along with the other three Taiwan assignments I've had this week have given me an excuse to sit online reading up on Taiwan's current events!

Also, don't forget to check out 正方翻译 as well, the glossaries available there are extensive. Last one I found was on Electrical Engineering and around 70 pages or so (I'm gonna leave that one on the backburner for a little while).

Okay, that's all for now. If anyone does start reading this feel free to add to the list via comments!

Translation links and freelancing woes

2008-11-13T14:06:00.002-05:00

I am convinced, absolutely convinced that somewhere out there is a person who wants to pay me for translating from my home. I know it's out there!

After an hour of whoring myself out online for translation assignments, I'm ready for a break. Work's been slow, finally, this week, so I've had loads of time to focus on the blogosphere as well as some time to revisit job hunting in all it's glory. Looking at my resume, it was difficult to think that three months ago I was rapid-firing it out to anyone in the world, I hardly remembered it. I actually edited it, which goes to show how what seems perfect at the time can always use improvement.

For anyone who's newer to this than I am (that can't be a large number of people), some good websites for all sorts of resources for freelance translators are:

ProZ
Translator's Cafe (not Translatorscage.com as I mistakenly type every single time)
Translator Pub (for those of us who'd rather get translation depressants rather than stimulants, I'd imagine...)

Outside of these, of course, all networking applies. So, for those of us who want the world to email us everything, that means Craigslist, monster, and all those other job hunting websites are fair game and worth checking out to find assignments for the long term or just temporary.

Anyway, after all that chat about how I've had all this time to be up-to-date I've decided to post links I've been sitting on for anywhere from two days to up to a week. They're still good!

This is a post from a corporate blog I found earlier this morning. It's just the basic guidelines that both sides look for when people are looking to get a translation, more directed at the consumer but valuable for anyone who's looking to understand where these prices and terms come from. My favorite is how they emphasize how we need to see the assignment. I get at least a phone call a day from someone who says "How much does it cost to get a document translated to English," without an ounce of more information. Seeing how that document could be anything from a birth certificate to a contract, that question, as basic as it seems, actually doesn't have a real answer until you know what the content of the document is.

From Transubstantion we get the Myths of Translation, Part I and Part II

From The GITS Blog,
an indepth look into the development of machine translation.

Here is a post with links about an upcoming conference in Europe that will feature discussions on translation and it's relationship with multilingualism/multiculturalism in the EU.

And, from Thoughts on Translation, a post dedicated to the socially awkward among translators ( all of us?). It's good guide to networking to those of us who never know what to say to start a conversation with a person we've just met, and a way to route the awkwardness out of networking.