| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Off topic: Translation before the internet Thread poster: Nicolas Clochez
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| I was almost there | Jun 13, 2013 |
My translation adventure started in grammar school, and the language was Latin. You can't really teach Latin like a modern language, hence translation all the time after first cramming the grammar. Eventually endep translating without a dictionary week after week for the weekly test, except those texts that were much harder. Let's say Caesar or Nepos would've been okay, but some hardcore Cicero would see the dictionaries back from exile. The second language I translated thus was Ancient Greek, b... See more My translation adventure started in grammar school, and the language was Latin. You can't really teach Latin like a modern language, hence translation all the time after first cramming the grammar. Eventually endep translating without a dictionary week after week for the weekly test, except those texts that were much harder. Let's say Caesar or Nepos would've been okay, but some hardcore Cicero would see the dictionaries back from exile. The second language I translated thus was Ancient Greek, but those were simple texts without particularly fancy grammar (particular fancy for Ancient Greek, that is).
The good thing about classical Latin was that there were dictionaries for everything, and the grammar would eventually yield to analysis. But fooling around with mediaeval Latin requires quite a lot of knowledge. Thankfully, I tend to have it, as it's usually religion, history or law. Heh, you've got no idea how depressing it is to be capable of translating religion and history from Latin (or into it, with some pain) but receive so little of it even in PLEN. I recall a grand total of two history-related jobs in EN-PL, two very short religious ones one each in PL-EN in and EN-PL, and about three historical (genealogical) ones in LA-PL, in all four years of being a translator. There was more such fun when I taught Latin.
Heh, anyway, it was manageable. On the other hand, it would be much harder to survive without the Internet in PLEN. Not the kind of texts there are, not the deadlines there are, and not the rates.
[Edited at 2013-06-13 06:00 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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it was in provincial Russian town. I had a typewriter, and a shelf full with dictionaries. only human contacts, face to face. and a phone, yes.
in 1989 I purchased a CBM 64 machine, which turned to be absolutely useless at the time. later, in 1993, I bought my first PC, and it started. since then, I'm trying to be equipped from head to toes))
and then came the INTERNET. yes, a revolutuion.
and I like it)
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Nicole Schnell wrote:
Quick question: What does "sdfds" mean?
Those are the first few letters that a touch-typer types when they just need to fill in a field but don't feel like putting in a reply (no offence to the Asker intended - I do it too, hence I know how it arises). Derived by randomly moving the ring finger, middle finger and index finger of the left hand like so: sdfasdf (I accidentally involved the little finger, but you get the idea).
With regards to the original question, however - would anyone mind terribly if I gathered material for a blog post from this? All posters would remain anonymous, but I think this information is worth sharing to show to some of the younger translators (one of whom recently reported that he uses Google Translate as a productivity tool and can't imagine working without it - lightly paraphrased).
| | | | Nicole Schnell 
United States
Local time: 13:37
English to German
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In memoriam | Wow, thank you, Sarai! I had no idea. | Jun 13, 2013 |
Sarai Pahla wrote: Nicole Schnell wrote:
Quick question: What does "sdfds" mean? Those are the first few letters that a touch-typer types when they just need to fill in a field but don't feel like putting in a reply (no offence to the Asker intended - I do it too, hence I know how it arises). Derived by randomly moving the ring finger, middle finger and index finger of the left hand like so: sdfasdf (I accidentally involved the little finger, but you get the idea).
I just learned something new.
With regards to the original question, however - would anyone mind terribly if I gathered material for a blog post from this? All posters would remain anonymous, but I think this information is worth sharing to show to some of the younger translators (one of whom recently reported that he uses Google Translate as a productivity tool and can't imagine working without it - lightly paraphrased).
I don't mind.
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Parrot
Spain
Local time: 22:37
Spanish to English
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| Mid-80s as well | Jun 13, 2013 |
... and I was green out of college. While applying for another job, I took a multilingual test for conference assistants at an international convention centre. Jobs were supposed to be periodically available, but paid better than average expectations. I worked my way up from assistantship to administration and then translation and got sent abroad for conference interpreting courses.
I fell into one of the rare places where everything was rush and done on an assembly line. No time fo... See more ... and I was green out of college. While applying for another job, I took a multilingual test for conference assistants at an international convention centre. Jobs were supposed to be periodically available, but paid better than average expectations. I worked my way up from assistantship to administration and then translation and got sent abroad for conference interpreting courses.
I fell into one of the rare places where everything was rush and done on an assembly line. No time for dinosaurs - we had the latest technology. Half the team availed of computers, some of which had hard drives (the rest ran on two 5 1/2" floppies. The state of the art then was WordStar). Due to occasional equipment shortages, a few still had to use Wang.
Some documents were stencilled out on electric typewriters and simply mimeographed. Translations, once proofed, were "xeroxed" - which was also what they needed conference assisstants for (you had to understand what you were collating). Use was so heavy the machines jammed often and some workmates did graveyard xerox shifts, because the latest you had to come up with working papers was overnight.
Soon after that, WordPerfect came to replace WordStar, but by that time I was a freelancer with several institutional (government) clients. I was the first one in my neighbourhood to have e-mail (paid account), and still the clients didn't trust it. The most modern ones would ask for a diskette instead of hard copy and pay to have it taxied to their offices.
I never used hotmail or yahoo; in that sense, my bank was very supportive. They were a small bank (then) pioneering in internet banking and gave free email accounts with a snappy domain name to clients. It helped make a good impression. (Of course, they collected for me. I think they considered me an investment).
My translation method (pre-2000) consisted of living with the necessary dictionaries, printing out the draft, and spending the day before deadline in the library four blocks away. Doubling as a rare book collection, it was also the most complete library and archive in Spain, but unfortunately only accessible to accredited PhD students at the least - I suppose that kept the client population manageable. Then, a colleague I was working with discovered KudoZ, which was like a back-to-school course in new research methods.
The drawback is, I miss those walks to the library. And I miss the library. ▲ Collapse
| | | | XXXphxxx (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:37
Portuguese to English
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Jeff Whittaker wrote:
You had to be VERY sure it was something you could translate because there was no KudoZ or other internet help (although FLEFO eventually came along). You really had to know what you were doing back then and you had to know your source language(s) well.
Jeff made an important point early on, but we’ve been sidetracked by discussions on technology. Without the internet to rely on, you needed a very sound knowledge of your source languages. You couldn’t just google for unknown terms or fire off a question on Kudoz (in some cases up to about a dozen times a day, every day). Keeping your languages up was also a bit of a challenge. It was not until the late 90s that it became relatively cheap and easy to hop on a flight and spend a few days immersing yourself. In the pre-internet era it took some hard work; foreign newspapers and books were expensive and difficult to find outside large cities; shortwave radio was an alternative. As for specialist terminology, this involved phone calls to the “experts”, anything from the Alzheimer’s Society to a polo club. People loved to share their knowledge and expertise and had time to do so. I do miss those days.
| | | | Claire Cox
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:37
French to English
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I started out as an in-house translator back in 1984; no computers, no Internet, just lots of dictionaries and a huge resource of in-house engineers to consult - and we did! Our translations were dictated onto dictaphones, then sent to the typing pool for transcription and back to us to check - leading to some hilarious gaffes as the work was highly technical. Captions to diagrams and complicated tables hat couldn't be typed up had to be written in by hand or physically cut out on pieces of pape... See more I started out as an in-house translator back in 1984; no computers, no Internet, just lots of dictionaries and a huge resource of in-house engineers to consult - and we did! Our translations were dictated onto dictaphones, then sent to the typing pool for transcription and back to us to check - leading to some hilarious gaffes as the work was highly technical. Captions to diagrams and complicated tables hat couldn't be typed up had to be written in by hand or physically cut out on pieces of paper and pasted over the originals - a hugely time-consuming task that I certainly don't miss!
A few years later it was decreed from on high that we would move over to IBM Displaywrite computers and type our own translations - causing much consternation in the ranks! I for one, had never learned to type properly; I did try and go to night school to learn when I was 15, but my grammar school deputy head, a real martinet of a woman, found out (they were held at the local secondary modern school and obviously shared notes) and summoned me and the two girlfriends I had gone with and forbade us to go on the basis that clever girls don't need to know how to type! How short-sighted was that....? We were duly sent on a course and of course took to them like ducks to water. Urgent translations came via telex, but deadlines of weeks were more the norm. Surplus work was either sent out to a panel of company staff with language skills or to a vetted panel of freelancers - involving hours spent on the phone smoothing the wheels!
I remember going to an Aslib conference in London in the late 80's on Translating and the Computer and people talking about the possibility of something called "e-mail" - it sounded likes something from a sci-fi novel, not something we could ever imagine....
I left at the end of 1988 to have my first baby and carried on working freelance from home, initially on an Amstrad and daisy-wheel printer using reams of paper with holes down the side. Work arrived via phone calls and I had to invest in an avant-garde answer machine to make sure I didn't miss work calls. In 1994 we moved to Scotland and soon after invested in my first multi-media computer, a Compaq. We had to go over to Edinburgh to get it as there was nowhere in Glasgow that had one and paid over £1000 - a fortune at the time! My first taste of electronic transfers came via slow modem transfers where you could "chat" with the recipient and then transfer the document - at snail's pace, as others have said, with the risk of losing connection and having to start all over again. I'd bought my first fax a few years earlier, which was a huge boon - amazing how quickly these have changed from must-have freelance accessory to obsolete! My longest connection involved the transfer of a glossary from a big UK direct client. It took so long that it would definitely have been cheaper to have it couriered from the South of England to Scotland - as it was, I had to ask them to pay the cost of the phone call; which they duly did, I'm pleased to say!
Since then, there seem to have been so many developments such as the fabled e-mail and of course Internet; hard to believe how we managed, but clients' expectations regarding formatting were less and there just wasn't the access to information, especially in the cutting-edge field I worked in, so you did your best with the resources you had. I was lucky to have worked in-house on a site with other technology companies close at hand and a comprehensive technical library, so we frequently trotted over to the library for queries and to consult the librarian (and chief translator). My (now) ex-husband was also an engineer in my field, so I had a handy immediate reference source too.
Would I go back? Well, longer deadlines and less emphasis on perfect formatting (especially of ever-prevalent pdf files) would be nice, but, on balance, no. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Early days in France | Jun 13, 2013 |
When I first started translation in Paris in about 1985 there was a lot more personal contact. Quite often you were asked to take translations back to the agency personally or even to the agency directors homes in the evening so you rapidly became friends. The translator's job has obviously been revolutionised since then by all the technical innovations and it was the translator who used to reap all the financial benefits of these transformations. There were many golden years for successful tran... See more When I first started translation in Paris in about 1985 there was a lot more personal contact. Quite often you were asked to take translations back to the agency personally or even to the agency directors homes in the evening so you rapidly became friends. The translator's job has obviously been revolutionised since then by all the technical innovations and it was the translator who used to reap all the financial benefits of these transformations. There were many golden years for successful translators specialising (in France) in fields such as telecommunications, aerospace and the pharmaceutical industry who were the first to used word processors/computers and then the internet and TM. The very big downside, apart from the nightmare of manually correcting documents with Tipp-Ex, was that you quite often had to return translations about which you were not quite sure even after hours searching though books in the library or medical (in my case) bookshops. Incidentally, 1984 was the last year of the Paris pneumatic post service. Before then translations used to be bundled into cylinders and sent around Paris in Pneumatic tubes for rapid delivery.
[Edited at 2013-06-13 10:32 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:37
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Although the Internet and the web already existed, when I started as a freelancer in 1995 my means of communicating with customers and even finding new customers was a service called Compuserve. Access to it was dial-up with a modem, at the amazing speed of 33K baud (bit per second), which is 0,033 mbits (compare with today's minimum speeds of one mbit).
After that came proper Internet with a proper email server, also accessed via a dial-up connection, still with the modem, and after that a nice but costly ISDN connection.
The first time I saw a DSL line operating, at a customer agency in California, was in 1998 I think. Its 500 kbits/s were simply breathtaking. I could not stop stearing at the throughput when my customer downloaded files.
So indeed things were really slow back then. Things are a lot easier today.
Tomás - you've just reminded me of an elderly lady (R.I.P.)I used to know back in the 1990s, who thought that a fax machine rolled the paper into a really tight pencil-like cylinder which was then physically pushed down the phone line and came out at the other end.
| | | | Jeff Whittaker
United States
Local time: 16:37
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
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| Translation before the interent | Jun 13, 2013 |
I think it would be a great idea (please post link in this thread).
Also, although the process of translation may seem like a slow process with plenty of time (like the advertising agency in the show MadMen) at the time we still felt rushed because access to information took more time and energy.
There is now a whole generation of people who have never known life without the internet. Do they consider the past frightening? Most of us do not remember life before electri... See more I think it would be a great idea (please post link in this thread).
Also, although the process of translation may seem like a slow process with plenty of time (like the advertising agency in the show MadMen) at the time we still felt rushed because access to information took more time and energy.
There is now a whole generation of people who have never known life without the internet. Do they consider the past frightening? Most of us do not remember life before electricity or television, but somehow life without them doesn't seem as scary as life without access to information.
However, having lived a quarter of a century or more prior to the Internet makes you appreciate it so much more.
Sarai Pahla wrote:
...would anyone mind terribly if I gathered material for a blog post from this? All posters would remain anonymous, but I think this information is worth sharing to show to some of the younger translators (one of whom recently reported that he uses Google Translate as a productivity tool and can't imagine working without it - lightly paraphrased).
[Edited at 2013-06-13 14:14 GMT]
[Edited at 2013-06-13 14:15 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Nicole Schnell wrote:
Before there were fax machines and email, the secretary at our advertising agency used a mysterious and monstrous machine to correspond with clients: Teletex.
If you mean the machine with the perforated yellow paper band, wasn't it a "telex"? We had one in the office in my first job (back in 1984, was not a translation job), and I corresponded with our Swiss headquarters, suppliers, and customers with it. Quite a mesmerising device. Toc-toc-toc-toc-toc... toc-toc-toc...
[Edited at 2013-06-13 15:39 GMT]
| | | | XXXphxxx (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:37
Portuguese to English
+ ...
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote: If you mean the machine with the perforated yellow paper band, wasn't it a "telex"? We had one in the office in my first job (back in 1984, was not a translation job), and I corresponded with our Swiss headquarters, suppliers, and customers with it. Quite a mesmerising device. Toc-toc-toc-toc-toc... toc-toc-toc... [Edited at 2013-06-13 15:39 GMT]
Telexes were the only way we had to correspond with the then Soviet Union. They were great because you could get a connection that you couldn't hope to get on the 'phone, so you could have live chat. There was a whole language (a bit like text-speak these days) associated with it and symbols such as "+", which meant "over".
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Nicole Schnell
United States
Local time: 13:37
English to German
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In memoriam | Teletex was the name of the technology | Jun 13, 2013 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote: If you mean the machine with the perforated yellow paper band, wasn't it a "telex"? We had one in the office in my first job (back in 1984, was not a translation job), and I corresponded with our Swiss headquarters, suppliers, and customers with it. Quite a mesmerising device. Toc-toc-toc-toc-toc... toc-toc-toc... [Edited at 2013-06-13 15:39 GMT]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletex
And yes, it made funny noises.
| | | | Jack Doughty
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:37
Russian to English
+ ...
In memoriam | Poetic musings on the subject | Jun 13, 2013 |
THE WINDOWS OF CHANGE
(Poem first installed in 2000, subsequently upgraded in 2004, 2007, 2008 and 2013.)
Long, long ago, in ancient times, in 1991,
I bought my first computer and was pleased with what I'd done.
My Amstrad 1640 now enabled me to start
"Word processing", which up to then had been an unknown art.
Corrections could be made on screen before I printed out,
And paragraphs within my work could now be moved about.
Word proce... See more THE WINDOWS OF CHANGE
(Poem first installed in 2000, subsequently upgraded in 2004, 2007, 2008 and 2013.)
Long, long ago, in ancient times, in 1991,
I bought my first computer and was pleased with what I'd done.
My Amstrad 1640 now enabled me to start
"Word processing", which up to then had been an unknown art.
Corrections could be made on screen before I printed out,
And paragraphs within my work could now be moved about.
Word processing went on from there and reached another stage,
When "What You See is What You Get" showed how it looked on page.
My Amstrad wasn't brilliant with Word Perfect Five Point One.
It coped, but now it seemed a chore, where once it had been fun.
And so I got a Three-Eight-Six to put affairs to rights.
Its hard disc memory contained two hundred Megabytes,
Which was enough to get me into Microsoft's new heaven,
Where icons could be clicked upon in Windows Three-Eleven.
And then there came the Internet, another dawning age.
It took me twenty minutes just to load a single page!
My next one was a Pentium, my fortunes to revive.
This one was good enough to cope with Windows Ninety-Five.
It was a great improvement, the neatest version yet,
And now at last I had my chance to reach the Internet.
To do that more efficiently, and at a faster rate,
I thought I would upgrade once more, to Windows Ninety-Eight.
The Pentium could handle this, it served for quite a while,
But programs still increased in size, to give more class and style.
I added Word 2000, and Uninstaller Six,
Of great size and complexity, they did fantastic tricks -
But did them sluggishly, because the Pentium was slow.
It was well past its sell-by date, and so it had to go.
The next one was more powerful, with massive memory.
Its Windows was Millennium, known better as M-E.
It handled all my programs and could cope with many more.
I loved it - for about three years, or was it maybe four?
And then it crashed and crashed again, a dozen times a day.
My Word files got corrupted or just simply went away.
It wouldn't let me load things, it drove me round the bend.
I felt I must replace it, and did so in the end.
My desktop (still in use) works well with XP Home Edition,
Which took some getting used to, but I got to the position
Of feeling I could cope with it without too much ado.
I really came to like it, and I still want nothing new.
But then I got a laptop. Windows Vista was installed.
I didn’t take to it at all, in fact I was appalled.
I managed in the end to replace Vista with XP.
And that’s what I am using now, and it seems fine to me.
And so I’m sticking to XP, with that I still can cope,
And shall do for a few more years, at least, that’s what I hope.
Now my computer has two screens, a good idea, I reckoned.
I put the job on one screen and translate it on the second.
Some customers require that I use Word Two Thousand Seven:
To give me what he thinks I want is Bill Gates' dream of heaven,
And so it takes more steps to find what I require myself.
I'd rather use 2000 and leave this one on the shelf.
And yet as time goes by, there’s always one more generation.
The next was Windows Seven, which has quite a reputation.
But now there’s Windows Eight. Your keyboard can be thrown away.
You have to use your fingers. Why? I really couldn’t say.
Except that there is little doubt that Eight won’t last forever.
What? Halt the march of progress and complexity? No, never!
We’ll always know that round the corner something new awaits.
For Microsoft must still increase the fortune of Bill Gates
By making us upgrade again, and so it will proceed,
From kilobytes to Megabytes to meet our growing need,
Then Megabytes have Gigabytes upon their backs to bite 'em,
And Gigabytes have Terabytes, and so ad infinitum!
(Sarai, you are welcome to this and my previous post for your blog if you want them.)
[Edited at 2013-06-13 20:58 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jeff Whittaker
United States
Local time: 16:37
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
+ ...
The history of the translation process before the invention of a specific technology is considered off topic in the translation practice forum??????????????????????????????????
I guess everyone who has been translating for over 15 years is off topic and irrelevant.
[Edited at 2013-06-13 21:10 GMT]
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