“la parole exportée”

Good Morning Faithful Readers,

Do not expect to see me at the computer this weekend, this blog is taking a -short- holiday, and its owner too.

Mother’s Day is this Sunday in France, and coincides with my elder child’s birthday, as it has quite a few times in the past 24 years

I cannot afford to let everyone down on this occasion! I will of course be checking a few things, like I did recently too. And I’ll be back on Sunday evening.

What about you? Are there occasions when you feel you need to ‘close shop’ for events that you consider too important to miss?

A friend of mine -not a translator- was accurately commenting about my previous post, that few people really know how to use spreadsheets.

So why should professional translators be savvier than the rest of the population?

Professionals, be they translators or other, do not get much of a say in this. When your client determines that it’s more productive or cost-effective for them to use spreadsheets instead of word processing files for their copy, if you want to retain that client, there isn’t much you can do, but to learn to use a spreadsheet. Hence my surprise, and the post. The good news is that you don’t even have to learn the rich features of the spreadsheet, since you are using the tool to do something that it isn’t even meant for: word processing.

One of the downsides with that policy is that a spreadsheet has none of the comfort of a word processor. When other factors allow it, I export columns and translate them in a word processor, then re-export the translated copy. This is still quicker than applying my translation memory procedures to the original spreadsheet file.

Another major problem I see is that by cutting up copy such as a marketing pitch, into cell-size bits (one or two sentences long), you run the risk of breaking the flow of ideas and end up translating in a very mechanical way, losing sight of the forest (the overall pitch) for the trees (each separate cell). That entails even more post-editing, since you want to adapt your client’s content to the feel of the foreign language and market.

In this case, the client is a translation agency, the only one I work for. Our relationship is the result of a special situation; I don’t work for agencies as a rule.

So this is part of the brief that came with a translation project:

Please translate all text from column A – and ensure that your translation is also divided into separate cells, as per the source.

My (friendly, yet slightly hurt) reply, when delivering the project:

Do you really think that I don’t know how to use an Excel file? )))

Client’s reply:

you’d be surprised how technophobic some translators are!!

Seriously!

I’m a member of the baby boomer generation, albeit from the second half… and very soon, you’ll read about how I began my career, with a pencil and a rubber…

But technology has been with us in the form of computers and software for most of my working life, in many diverse forms (using software, translating it, translating its documentation in various forms). I have used spreadsheets for literally ages. I keep track of projects, accounts, even Christmas menus in Excel (I must admit, though, that I strongly object to the use of spreadsheets for translations, hum hum, that will be our secret).

Anyhow I would assume that since their inception sometime back in the… let me see… 80’s, the standard professional translator would be able to use if not to create files using the Holy Trinity of office tools: word, spreadsheet and presentation software.

And in 2008, you’re giving me instructions on how to use Excel?

I want to cry…