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Poll: What was your first translation project about?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
Anthony Green
Anthony Green  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 10:20
Italian to English
+ ...
subtitles for an Albanian film to be shown at an Italian film festival Mar 2, 2016

In the early 90s, Albania had just joined the Western world and a film by one of their well-known directors was to be shown at a festival in Bari. We were to translate the script for subtitles (which we were going to project by hitting the spacebar on a computer sitting alongside the projector as the relevant part of the dialogue occurred - quite a technological advance at the time and invented in-house!).
I was sent the script by fax as they had no access to e-mail, but their fax machine
... See more
In the early 90s, Albania had just joined the Western world and a film by one of their well-known directors was to be shown at a festival in Bari. We were to translate the script for subtitles (which we were going to project by hitting the spacebar on a computer sitting alongside the projector as the relevant part of the dialogue occurred - quite a technological advance at the time and invented in-house!).
I was sent the script by fax as they had no access to e-mail, but their fax machine must have been rather ancient as the top and bottom of each page were missing, though intriguingly I sometimes got half letters and tried to second-guess.
The script I received was a rather shaky translation into French of the Albanian script, punctuated with syntactic errors which made my translation into Italian (not my native language of course) increasingly subjective.
Over a crackly phone I agreed to meet the director off the ferry, take him into the studio to finish the subtitles off, and we calculated we had four hours before the showing. But we hadn't reckoned with Italian customs, who were rather suspicious of an Albanian turning up with a case full of big reels and demanded to speak to the festival organiser, all of which took up nearly three of the four hours at our disposal.
Of course I had misinterpreted vast swathes of the film script, not just the missing parts, and the director desperately tried to explain what he meant in his broken version of whatever our lingua franca was. We patched it all up and dashed away to the Film Festival - in any other country I'm sure we would have been had up for speeding, but we got away with it and the fact that this was the first Albanian film to be shown at an Italian film festival as I remember more than made up for the ropiness of the subtitles. Indeed, director and subtitle translator were given a warm round of applause. For me though it was rather excruciating: I sat through the film next to the projector cringing at every mistranslation, trying to time my hitting of the spacebar with the action going on on-screen, without understanding a word of Albanian but being able to read the dreadful French subtitles that were already on-screen, some of which were wildly different from what I had translated, and probably aged five years in the process.

What great memories!
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michareisel (X)
michareisel (X)
Netherlands
Local time: 10:20
English to Norwegian
+ ...
National Geographic Channel Mar 2, 2016

In the beginning of 2006 I started off doing subtitles to Norwegian for the National Geographic Channel.
It was fun, paid poorly and in the end I gave it up for greener pastures, like medical and legal texts.


 
Elena Sheverdinova
Elena Sheverdinova  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 05:20
English to Russian
+ ...
My first translation project Mar 2, 2016

Several selective chapters of a psychology text book. Was it Russian into English or the other way around? I am not quite sure by now, guilty. I was a student of the Kuban State University, Department of Romance and Germanic Philology (Krasnodar, Russia, back then USSR), about twenty years old and daring as ever. The translation was intended for a professor from the Department of Biology, and it was the dean of my department who approached me with the request. I agreed and had fun with the topic... See more
Several selective chapters of a psychology text book. Was it Russian into English or the other way around? I am not quite sure by now, guilty. I was a student of the Kuban State University, Department of Romance and Germanic Philology (Krasnodar, Russia, back then USSR), about twenty years old and daring as ever. The translation was intended for a professor from the Department of Biology, and it was the dean of my department who approached me with the request. I agreed and had fun with the topic of behavioral psychology over the summer months during my vacation time, playing with the words and phrases at the level of my meager but eager abilities. I guess it was not that bad after all, since the dean's office recommended me afterwards for the next summer internship program headed by the State Committee for Foreign Tourism of the USSR (INTOURIST). I enjoyed working for the branch in Sochi and traveling around the country directing the international groups of tourists the following two summers, and I was also employed by this entity upon my graduation. They called us guide-interpreters
I loved my job, it was the most fascinating position for a young and curious interpreter back then, but it is another story.

[Edited at 2016-03-02 23:06 GMT]
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Kurt Hammond
Kurt Hammond  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 02:20
Japanese to English
A scuba diving certification test Mar 2, 2016

My first translation was as a university student - translated from Japanese into English a scuba diving test and test guide. For whatever reason, an English speaker in the US was teaching and testing foreign exchange students in Japan. He was using a Japanese language test and needed to be able to score/grade it. I knew nothing about scuba diving so I had to learn the subject matter and terminology as I went.

My first freelance job was some white papers of companies that were using
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My first translation was as a university student - translated from Japanese into English a scuba diving test and test guide. For whatever reason, an English speaker in the US was teaching and testing foreign exchange students in Japan. He was using a Japanese language test and needed to be able to score/grade it. I knew nothing about scuba diving so I had to learn the subject matter and terminology as I went.

My first freelance job was some white papers of companies that were using Microsoft's of .NET web framework.

[Edited at 2016-03-02 23:07 GMT]
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Edwin Miles
Edwin Miles
Germany
Local time: 10:20
Member (2008)
German to English
Good Bye, Lenin! Mar 2, 2016

I did this back in 2000, when I could still barely read German. We were living in West Hollywood and working in the industry in various small ways. Miramax wanted to have a look at an English version of the script, which had been attracting quite a lot of attention there even in the original language.

The job was actually a team-translation with my wife (who's German), where she would translate roughly and I would rewrite it all, discussing the points that either of us wasn't clear
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I did this back in 2000, when I could still barely read German. We were living in West Hollywood and working in the industry in various small ways. Miramax wanted to have a look at an English version of the script, which had been attracting quite a lot of attention there even in the original language.

The job was actually a team-translation with my wife (who's German), where she would translate roughly and I would rewrite it all, discussing the points that either of us wasn't clear on.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301357/
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ANA IVETTE DE BURGOS
ANA IVETTE DE BURGOS
El Salvador
Local time: 03:20
English to Spanish
+ ...
Patent on a portable typewriter Mar 2, 2016

A patent of a chemical product, I had to photocopy the figures and then paste them on the paper after typewriting the translation, then I had to go back to the photocopy place and photocopy the clean document. It was 25 pages and it took me a week to make! I had to send by fax the original for review and then turn in the final document. That was some 30 years ago... by the way, that law firm is still one of my clients.

 
Mariusz Kuklinski
Mariusz Kuklinski  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:20
Member
English to Polish
+ ...
Far back in the previous millennium Mar 3, 2016

I did my first translation when I was 15. I attended then a secondary school in Warsaw and I devoured literature on psychology (and everything else). I translated American psychological tests for the National Mental Health Centre in Warsaw where my mother took me to check my IQ. It all started as a joke but, surprisingly enough, they have been used by them for testing their patients afterwards.

My first paid translation was a textbook of an ancient computer programing language, used
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I did my first translation when I was 15. I attended then a secondary school in Warsaw and I devoured literature on psychology (and everything else). I translated American psychological tests for the National Mental Health Centre in Warsaw where my mother took me to check my IQ. It all started as a joke but, surprisingly enough, they have been used by them for testing their patients afterwards.

My first paid translation was a textbook of an ancient computer programing language, used when the computers were as large as a family house. The client was the IT Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences. By that time I was the first year student of Sociology at The University of Warsaw. I dabbled in translations of some, again, American literature which I did as freebies for our seminars. To be frank, I had no clue then about computers and their programming languages but I needed the money to be able to invite my girlfriend to lunch at the nearby posh hotel restaurants, not to mention buying shoes for myself. The textbook had 100 print pages. I did the first 20 pages slavishly following a dictionary (not that there were then any English-Polish IT dictionaries), almost crying from the effort and frustration. The next 20 pages, however, went easier, because I have already accumulated some vocabulary, and so on. I tested the final result on a friend of mine who studied Mathematics. Having done the first revision with my friend, I went later to one of the four people in Poland who really knew the subject. He was merciful enough to go, in my presence, through the entire book, inserting corrections. Actually, to some degree it was in his self-interest as he worked at this IT Centre.

I was paid the equivalent of £600 wich was a princely sum then for a first year student and I decided that it might be a way to make a living. Two years later I saw in a bookstore in Warsaw a book with the title similar to that I had translated. One of the most famous professors of the Warsaw Technical University added a chapter to 12 chapters of my translation and published it as his own. I was in no position tu sue or even to confront him, so I put it to experience.
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Adamandia Stiacoyiannaki
Adamandia Stiacoyiannaki  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:20
German to Greek
+ ...
Small manual for a tool Mar 3, 2016

Hello All,

I used to do the translations of textile machinery in the safe environment of my father's office, but my first paid translation was this small manual for a tool, I was really excited and happy to get this job. That was 15 years ago. Since then I have been working continuously on this kind of texts.


 
Bartosz Bachurski
Bartosz Bachurski
Poland
Local time: 10:20
English to Polish
+ ...
City surveillance case study Mar 3, 2016

I remember it well - it was my first day as an in-house translator in a small, family LSP, and I had a terrible head ache this day.

 
Rick Withers
Rick Withers  Identity Verified
Local time: 10:20
Czech to English
A paper flocculation manual Mar 3, 2016

Dull as it sounds, from English to Czech (not my usual combination), took hours and hours and in the end they insisted on printing it in Finland, where they discovered they didn't have the right fonts for Czech texts. They didn't pay me, the rotters.

 
Thierry Baillet
Thierry Baillet
Belgium
Local time: 10:20
French to Dutch
An article on logopaedics Mar 3, 2016

I landed my very first remunerated translation job back in 1989 while a sophomore at KU Leuven: an 8-page article on logopaedics from Italian into Dutch for my then girlfriend's mom. I got paid two nice spaghetti bowls which I was very happy with at the time, and which I still use regularly today

 
Martha Schwan
Martha Schwan  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 06:20
Member
English to Portuguese
+ ...
School transcript Mar 3, 2016

That was my very first translation job and I had to worse time of my life because I was not familiar with a lot of formatting, table and stuff like that.

I had to ask my sister to prepare a template for me to fill in the translation.

Everything is very OK now.


 
Igor Popov
Igor Popov
Russian Federation
Local time: 12:20
English to Russian
+ ...
I started translating in 1984 Mar 3, 2016

I was five and she was six
We rode on horses made of sticks
He wore black and I wore white
He would always win the fight

Bang bang, he shot me down
Bang bang, I hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
Bang bang, my baby shot me down


 
Gabor Nemet
Gabor Nemet  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 09:20
English to Hungarian
+ ...
A letter Mar 3, 2016

From English to Hungarian.

 
Luis Antonio de Larrauri
Luis Antonio de Larrauri  Identity Verified
Local time: 10:20
English to Spanish
+ ...
Fibreglass Mar 3, 2016

A letter patent on fibre glass composition.
I was son of the translation agency manager... and still I am!

One must have connections everywhere.
Later I got the clients on my own, but that first push was a great help.
Thank you dad!


 
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Poll: What was your first translation project about?






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