A Message from the President
Enjoying my sneak preview of E-Buzz, I reflect with satisfaction once again on how the translation industry wondrously intertwines the power of technology with humans who are fascinating, creative, and gifted as linguists. Bob Donaldson writes about McElroyHUB, a shining example of a technology investment that has dramatically increased process efficiency.
Ashley Benning's case study article dissects the actual translation process in a manner that illuminates how very “human”–touched the translation/localization industry remains, even in the face of workflow automation. And then there is Gail Tosto's profile. It highlights the fascinating, creative, and gifted part of the mosaic.
As Gail concludes, “Once in a while I try to think of a livelihood I would enjoy more than my patchwork of language–related
services, and nothing has ever come to mind.”
Ditto! –Shelly Priebe, President
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Featured Profile
Gail Tosto, Translator
I grew up in a monolingual, English-speaking household. My grandparents were all bilingual, but those were the days when first-generation Americans felt a need to prove their patriotism by speaking only English with the children. As a result, my parents learned only a smattering of Italian and German to pass on to me and my siblings.
In seventh grade I took Spanish because my sister and friends were taking it and I wanted to be part of the crowd. One night my parents came home from a school open house and enthusiastically informed me that my Spanish teacher had called me a “linguist.” I've had a bug to study foreign languages ever since. I continued taking Spanish and dabbled in Mandarin and Italian. I got a job in a Chinese take–out kitchen and learned to yell the most popular orders to the cook in Cantonese. Later I attended the University of Puerto Rico, where I made a point of renting a room in a boardinghouse where nobody spoke English. UPR had no major in “randomly selected languages,” so I opted for a bachelor's degree in General Humanities. The extra electives I got by not declaring a major went toward Italian, French, and German classes, and I sat in on Russian and Haitian Creole.
Read more.
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