| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9] > | Poll: What was your first translation project about? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Mario Freitas 
Brazil
Local time: 03:52
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
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| For example... | Feb 11, 2016 |
Gitte Hovedskov, MCIL wrote: Mario Freitas wrote:
It's really amazing how people use the quick polls and other forums... Are you suggesting that we are all fibbing here to make ourselves stand out more favourably?...
This was just ONE example.
[quote]José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
What would you expect, Mario? Something to the tune of...
My first translation PROJECT was when my next-door neighbor received the visit of an aunt from Eastern Slobovia...
Pretty honest, compared to those who got their diploma on a Monday and a management position in a big company on the following Wednesday.
[Edited at 2016-02-11 14:05 GMT]
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| Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member because it was not in line with site rule | | I'm a dinosaur | Mar 2, 2016 |
Yes, I remember the first paid translation that I did. It was in Turin in AD 1972. I was 19 years old and I had just begun to learn Italian as a second language. I had to travel into the centre of the city, which took about an hour, and I did the translation on an old typewriter. How did we manage to use those machines back in those days? I can't remember what the text was about but it was quite short. I was paid something like 450 Lire, which would be about 25 Euro cents! Ancient history.
| | | | JT Hine
United States
Italian to English
| Medical text on blindness | Mar 2, 2016 |
Summer of 1962. The Italian Association of Eye Donors could not afford a professional translation of their 256-page book for a speaking tour by the author, so I got the gig in my 15th summer. They gave me a Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary and a big Underwood typewriter (patent 1896) with a QWERTY keyboard and let me keep both. Oh, and LIT 400/page, the going rate for typing only. After checking the galley proofs, I never got a copy of the book, but the professor at the British Council who rev... See more Summer of 1962. The Italian Association of Eye Donors could not afford a professional translation of their 256-page book for a speaking tour by the author, so I got the gig in my 15th summer. They gave me a Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary and a big Underwood typewriter (patent 1896) with a QWERTY keyboard and let me keep both. Oh, and LIT 400/page, the going rate for typing only. After checking the galley proofs, I never got a copy of the book, but the professor at the British Council who revised it raved about it. As I grew, I learned how many academics (back then) favored literal translation, so I figured it was pretty bad. Exactly 50 years later, I came across a copy of the book at Abe Books in the UK. It was yellowed, even though new (the non-profit went cheap on the paper), but I was surprised that my translation was not as bad as I expected. Only errors were hyphenation mistakes by the typesetters when the client had the book reset after I had approved the proofs. ▲ Collapse
| | | | René VINCHON (X)
France
German to French
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| My first translation | Mar 2, 2016 |
Sorry, I cannot say that in english :
Quand on me demande "comment avez-vous trouvé votre première traduction ?", je réponds : "par hasard, sous une frite".
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| Recipes with prunes | Mar 2, 2016 |
I did not get paid because I did not realise you had to send an invoice
| | | | | A book on Jerusalem | Mar 2, 2016 |
I was so proud of the result, for it was quite a challenge. The English was not written by a native speaker, so it was interesting, to say the least.
Big bummer was that when I finally got the printed book, I saw that they had done the photo texts themselves and oh what a mess that was!
I had been working as a translator, but this was the start of my freelancing career, summer 1995
[Edited at 2016-03-02 17:54 GMT]
| | | | | Excerpts from an Encyclopedia. | Mar 2, 2016 |
I had just finished my working period at the Brazilian Enciclopédia Mirador Internacional, and the editor, Prof. Houaiss asked me to translate excerpts of an Obituary to be included in the Delta-Larousse Encyclopedia Book of the Year 1973, another encyclopedia where he was also the editor.
| | | | | Some dendrochronology for my brother-in-law | Mar 2, 2016 |
My archaeologist brother-in-law's usual translator was not available... My brother-in-law did not have time himself, and said his English sounded too much like German anyway. He did, of course, know all the terminology, so I did my best, and left the Danish word in brackets followed by a space when I got stuck.
(This was all written by hand, so we revised it together for the typist afterwards.)
I think that was my first serious translation project. I did several more for him... See more My archaeologist brother-in-law's usual translator was not available... My brother-in-law did not have time himself, and said his English sounded too much like German anyway. He did, of course, know all the terminology, so I did my best, and left the Danish word in brackets followed by a space when I got stuck.
(This was all written by hand, so we revised it together for the typist afterwards.)
I think that was my first serious translation project. I did several more for him later on.
The next project was the autobiography of a Danish missionary who worked in Bombay, now Mumbai, around the time of Indian Independence - the 1940s and early 50s. I remembered living in Bombay as a small child, and it was really fascinating to read about it from an adult angle!
I was generously paid - I would not complain about the rate now, nearly twenty years later!
With these two projects under my arm, I was able to persuade my later employer that perhaps he could make a translator out of me. ▲ Collapse
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John Speese
United States
Local time: 02:52
German to English
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| What was your first translation project about? | Mar 2, 2016 |
My first translation project was several years before I became a freelance translator, in fact several years before word processing became common place so I wrote it out by hand. It involved several German language articles on the biodynamics of a fly that another entomologist in my workplace (Virginia Tech) was studying. He first asked a German graduate student in the liberal arts school, but she had no knowledge of entomology and therefore couldn't. As a freelancer, my first translation projec... See more My first translation project was several years before I became a freelance translator, in fact several years before word processing became common place so I wrote it out by hand. It involved several German language articles on the biodynamics of a fly that another entomologist in my workplace (Virginia Tech) was studying. He first asked a German graduate student in the liberal arts school, but she had no knowledge of entomology and therefore couldn't. As a freelancer, my first translation project was a back translation of patient information and brochures from Haitian Creole into English. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Denise DeVries
United States
Local time: 02:52
Spanish to English
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| Religious - French to English | Mar 2, 2016 |
My first paid translation was in 1973 for a fellow student's Master's Degree thesis on references to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. I found everything I needed in my big bilingual dictionary and typed it on my manual typewriter.
| | | | | I was 9 years old - in 1965 | Mar 2, 2016 |
It was a Mickey Mouse Comic I translated for my cousin Joan who was vistiting Germany from USA. She had nothing to read in English. My salary was an icecream a day.
[Bearbeitet am 2016-03-02 20:05 GMT]
[Bearbeitet am 2016-03-02 20:06 GMT]
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