Simplification

When you have hundreds of pages of text to be translated, please take a moment to reconsider. Is it actually necessary to translate all of the pages, or would it be possible to translate an abbreviated version? A quick consultation with your contributors to decide what information is indispensable is always a good idea. A little effort at an early stage may save considerable expenses later on. Elaborate descriptions and bombastic statements on internal affairs can often improve a text by being deleted. Internal trade terminology should always be used sparingly unless you are 100% certain who your target readership is.

Last year a large technical company sent a 500-page user’s manual to Translogic, asking to have it simplified and finalized. The result was a reduction of some 230 pages before the translating itself had started, and the outsourcer was surprised to find that the manual turned out to be an even better product following the trimming.

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Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.

Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

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Machine translation – Computer Assisted Translation

Some customers of http://www.translogic.no/ ask for software that can translate the text directly on their PC. In case you need to translate a segment of text solely for your own use, machine translation may be of some assistance. It is quick and inexpensive; some services are even free of charge, like http://www.freetranslation.com or http://babelfish.altavista.com These are not suitable for serious translation – the result will make you appear to be inarticulate or just plain stupid. For an amusing trial run, you might try to have your PC translate some text from English into a foreign language, then to a third language, and then back into English. Having seen the result, I can guarantee that you will not want use such text to address your customers. That said, the latest addition, Google translate, is actually quite good for personal use.

Careful editing of a machine translated text by a skilled linguist is an alternative, but it will not save you any expenses overall. Most linguists will tell you that a machine translated text is so bad that it would be quicker and less expensive to do the job over again manually.

Several software companies, of which Trados, Déjà Vu and WordFast, are the best known, have developed software to assist translation agencies and translators in their work. Such software can be valuable time-savers when translating repetitive texts. The greatest advantage though, is that the software makes it easier to ensure consistency throughout the translation, i.e. repeated terms or expressions will be translated the same way in all documents. This is called CAT (Computer Assisted Translation)

BackUp

We have a simple routine for backup copying. It is quick, efficient, inexpensive and safe.

At about 12:00 noon (lunchtime) and again about 16:00 (end of workday), we take an incremental backup (meaning a backup of all files that have been changed since the previous total backup).

Once a week (typically on Friday afternoon), we take a total backup.

Once a month we save the total backup in the safe-deposit box.

We copy these files onto a DVD disk (you can use a CD disk if you have a minor amount of data to be stored). You get 2-3 DVD disks for one dollar, and we have space for 3-5 backups per disk (1 for a total backup). This means that each backup costs us one fifth of a dollar and takes us two-three minutes (we start the backup process when we leave for lunch and it is completed when we return to work).

A good and free program for the backup process is Cobian BackUp

As a standard, the program is always available in the system status field; if one only wants to start it manually, the command cobian–m can be used.

You might say that the Cobian program works in the same way that Windows' own built-in backup program should work.

Translation into Norwegian

TransLogic translate, write and proofread technical documents, financial publications, legal papers and medical articles.

Bad food at a restaurant.

What do you do when you are dissatisfied with the food at a restaurant? Do you send it back to the kitchen along with your comment that it was cold, too hot, burnt, had bad ingredients or whatever else might be wrong with the fare? If so, then you are doing something foolish. If you are lucky, the cook will simply correct the error and then spit in your food; if you are unlucky, he may add other bodily secretions to the food he sends back to you. Cooks and waiters have countless opportunities to take silent revenge on complaining customers – whether the complaint is justified or not.

A better way to handle the situation is to eat the food without complaining and then never go to the restaurant again. There are many other fine dining establishments you can choose. If the food is so bad that it is inedible, you should refuse to pay and then leave the restaurant. Later you can warn friends and acquaintances about the place, and if you have a social conscience you should review the restaurant on one of the many rating sites that can be found on the Internet. There are also a number of restaurant guidebooks; authors of these will appreciate getting your ratings of restaurants you have frequented.

But I would never dare to eat any food that comes back from the kitchen after making a complaint.