Category Archives: News

From Louboutin to lawyer-linguists?

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A recent article in the magazine The Economist has highlighted a need for legal translators and linguists to work in ‘discovery’ (reviewing large quantities of documents and data to see which are relevant for a case). Indeed the article goes so far as to say at the end that some aspiring lawyers could do well to redirect their careers towards language-based positions.

Using some recent high-profile cases such as those involving the French couture houses Christian Louboutin and Yves Saint-Laurent, and Samsung v. Apple, the article points to a growing market for “cultural and linguistic experts”.

You can read the whole article here.

What do you think? Could this raise the profile of legal translation and linguistic/intercultural input?

You might also be interested in this guest post about translating during the document review process – When we are asked to translate useless materials…

Article about forensic speech analysis & new magazine

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A new language and linguistics magazine has just been launched that might interest you. The quarterly is called “Babel” and this is the editors’ description:

“Whilst Babel is written in English, it will address issues relating to many different human languages, including those under threat of disappearing as well as the world’s major languages. There will be regular features, such as biographies of influential thinkers on language (‘Lives in Language’) and explanations of technical terms (‘A Linguistic Lexicon’) and there will also be feature articles on topics of general interest as well as regular quizzes and competitions.”

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Free talk at Europe House, London, on IT at the Commission

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There will be a talk on the IT tools used by European Commission translators at 14.30 on Wednesday 28 November at the EC Representation in the UK (Europe House, 32 Smith Square, London, SW1P 3 EU). Please find below more information on the presentation and details of how to register for the presentation.

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Stop press – EU translation memories updated *again*!

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Following my post in April, I would like to let you know that the translation memories made available by the Directorate-General for Translation at the European Commission Joint Research Centre have been updated for the second time this year.

In the April 2012 release, documents up to 2010 were included. Now, 2011 data has been added – a further 6 million translation units. Somewhat confusingly, the new update is called “DGT-TM-2012” even though the data is from 2011.

New features of DGT-TM-2012 are:

  • Small amounts of Irish data are now included for the first time;
  • Significantly more data for the Bulgarian, Maltese and Romanian languages;
  • Mostly about 285K new translation units per language.

The translation memories are parallel texts of the entire body of European legislation, comprising all the treaties, regulations and directives adopted by the European Union (EU), in 23 languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, German, Greek, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish.

You can download them from this page. Scroll down to “DGT-TM-release 2012” for the 2011 data. Information on how to produce bilingual extractions appears on the same page.

Stop press – Official forum to collect evidence on UK court interpreting scandal

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The ongoing scandal in the UK relating to the outsourcing of court interpreting services to Applied Language Solutions/Capita (see this post) reached the Parliamentary select committee last week, which can watched online at: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=11582

The Justice Committee has launched a call for evidence as an online forum (kudos for being so up-to-date!) but it will close in two days, on 2 November 2012.

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Japanese court interpreters under pressure

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I recently saw an article in the online newspaper The Japan Times that I thought might interest you. Prosecutors in Japan have started video-recording interrogations. Those readers that have done recorded depositions (for example for American lawyers) will be familiar with the added stress, but in this case, due to camera directions, there is also a possibility that the interpreter’s face will appear in the video.

The article discusses how the interpreters are having sleeping problems and are obviously even more concerned than usual about any possible inaccuracies. The move to record interrogations followed a cover-up in Osaka and an evidence-tampering scandal. The recordings are not yet used in every case, but are common for special investigations and cases leading to a lay judge trial (see this post for details about Professor Okawara and Professor Hotta’s projects involving the new lay judge system).

Court interpreters, have you ever been recorded? Lawyers, if you have been involved in a recorded session with an interpreter, how did you handle it?

By the way, WordPress had a funny moment this morning. It published half of a post on the Brussels Translation Days which is due out tomorrow. Sorry if you were sent it by mistake.

Financial crisis terminology workshop in London

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An interesting upcoming event, to be held on Thursday 15 November 2012 at 6.30 pm, organized by the London Regional Group of the UK’s Institute of Translation & Interpreting (ITI).

Workshop leader: Alex Brummer, City Editor of the Daily Mail.
A journalist with wide experience and a prolific author – for example he is the author of “Britain for Sale” (Published by Random House).

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NAJIT conference 2013 – Call for papers

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The National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT) in the USA invites proposals for its 34th Annual Conference to be held in St. Louis, Missouri from 17 to 19 May 2013. Papers on all topics relevant to the profession are welcome. Submissions are to be made electronically, and the proposal form can be accessed here. The final proposal deadline is October 17, 2012.

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Two webinars on Brazilian law

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These webinars, to be held on the Proz translators’ platform on November 14 & 28, are being run by Ana Luiza Iaria, who is highly experienced in the field. They will be in Portuguese and I have copied the description for you below. The target audience is legal translators and those with an interest in legal issues; translators who translate to and from Brazilian Portuguese. Price for the two webinars, USD 25.

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