Category Archives: Translation industry

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village “Translation removes language barriers and makes stories borderless”, says Chen Jiatong, author of “The White Fox”, recently translated from Chinese to English, in article for Booktrust.org. There is, however, no mention of the translator on the cover of his book, or in the article, for …

“The ongoing debate about how and where to credit the translator’s work”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village An increasing number of translators are, in the words of the author of this article for World Literature Today, “working through a coded world of censorship and trying to bring an island to light”. That island is Cuba, which, she adds, which has, for so …

“Translation and its role in the Cuban people’s “diaspora””

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village High quality translation is vital in order to avoid a widening of social strata between those who can afford language education and those who can’t, says the author of a recent article for the Irish Times. As not all language combinations are easily available, indirect …

“The risk of cultural meaning being diluted when translating translations”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village “Speed” and “cost” are the two factors lessening the importance of “quality” in the translation client’s decision-making, say fellow linguists at BeatBabel in a recent article for TC World. In the current context of exponential and unprecedented growth in content to be translated – the estimated numbers …

“Is the translation industry suffering from “fast food syndrome”?”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village   Charles Perrault is a 17th century French aristocrat whose fairy tales have been translated time and again, so much so that he is widely thought of as “the father of the fairy tale”. But the fairy tale’s mothers lie forgotten, says the author of …

“Translation can be a political act when it is used to silence minority voices”

by Cristina Titone – cApStAn LQC intern Mickey Mouse is the most famous rodent in the world and a true Disney icon. This popular cartoon character made its first public appearance in 1928 in the United States in the animated film “Steamboat Willie”, and has appeared in over 130 films. As of 1930, Mickey also …

“When translation affects the evolution of a language: the example of Mickey Mouse and the so-called ‘Inflektive’”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner Andrea Ferrari, one of the founders of cApStAn Linguistic Quality Control, coined that phrase a decade ago: excellence among friends. At the end of two-day training seminar for verifiers in charge of linguistic quality assurance of multiple language versions of OECD/PIAAC Cycle 2 and OCDE/PISA 2021 instruments, which took …

“Excellence among friends: 85 freelance linguists from 60 countries”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Former Asymptote Journal editor-at-large Tiffany Tsao spent three years translating into English the award-winning “Sergius Seeks Bacchus”, by Indonesian poet Norman Pasaribu. By working so closely together, she says, the labels of “translator” and “author” ring false, because their roles were so “mingled” and “merged.” …

“When author and translator forge a partnership so close that their roles are “mingled” and “merged””

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village At a time when understanding different perspectives seems like our best hope for a kind and sane world, exposing the youngest members of our society to different viewpoints seems like the perfect place to start, says Emma Ramadan, author of this article. She welcomes the …

“Children’s books in translation can foster better understanding of cultural differences”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Slator has been monitoring research related to neural machine translation (NMT) for a number of years. They have recently said that research output has consistently increased since 2014 and more than doubled in 2018 compared to 2017. They base their findings on the number of papers …

“Promising research on machine translation for low-resource languages”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The long list for the International Man Booker Prize, where, since 2016, the £100.000 award is divided equally between author and translator, has just been published. Two interesting novelties: 1) the list includes 8 women out of the 13 works selected 2) the list is …

“Why translated fiction is now selling better than English fiction”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Great panel of speakers and interesting discussions for the webinar organised by TAUS on 11 December on how to “fix” the current translation eco-system, in particular the “knowledge”, “operational” and “data” gaps. The webinar followed up on a TAUS blog entry on the same topic …

“The future of the translation eco-system: should it be “fixed” or reinvented?”