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A cause that is particularly close to our hearts…continued"The Shelter is a place of safety, stability and hope for children who come from tumultuous situations. It is sad that the demand in today's society for places such as this is so great," said Gary Farmer, chair of the Capital Campaign Committee. "Thanks to generous donors, this new campus will be built and allow ACS to provide a positive and nurturing environment for so many children who are at risk." Of the five cottages, two are emergency shelters for school-aged children—one for boys and one for girls. The third emergency shelter is a specialized cottage equipped for infants and toddlers on one side, while offering flexibility to care for teen parents with young children on the other side. Two more cottages, called Therapeutic Living Centers (TLC), give ACS the opportunity to care for youth in middle and high school who need longer—term care in a residential treatment care facility. In addition to the five cottages, three support buildings are planned. The general services building meets three primary functions: meal preparation, laundry and maintenance for the facilities and vehicles. The program services building will house the medical facilities and administrative offices. This building will also provide space for family-based services—a new avenue for the shelter. The final building is the education and recreational services building which will include an on-site school, computer lab, library, a gym and space for arts and crafts. For more information about the Austin Children's Shelter expansion or how to make a donation, visit their website at www.austinchildrenshelter.org or call Steve Anderson at (512) 236-2507. The Three CinderellasBy Clay Browne Once upon a time there were three Cinderellas, and each had the chance to dress up like a princess, ride in a carriage to the ball, dance with a prince, and be whisked off to a rosy future when the slipper fit her foot like a glove. And despite the fact that six-year-old Ariana, seven-year-old Estrella, and eight-year-old Jara had to share the beautiful gown, and their carriage was a well-worn, but sturdy baby stroller, and the ball was held on the back porch of the Austin Children’s Shelter, it was still a special moment for each of the three girls. It was about five minutes until seven, and just about the end of my shift, but Ariana and Estrella had been huddled together with Susan (their staff) for the last hour, supposedly practicing, although more giggling than practicing from what I could see, and they were finally ready to lift the curtain on their rendition of Cinderella; so I had to stay for the performance. The audience, including kids from Shelters I and II as well as a few staff and volunteers, assembled on the back porch of Shelter I. Susan introduced the girls with a short reading from the book, but Ariana and Estrella, like most six- or seven-year-olds giving their performance, were more than a little unsure of their lines and blocking, and ended up giggling in each other’s arms as they walked out the side door onto the “stage.” At that point it became clear to me that the girls could use a little help, so once Susan got Estrella (playing the mean stepsister) to start scolding Ariana (playing Cinderella) to wash the dishes and scrub the floors while she was off at the ball, I jumped in saying, “Madam, your carriage to the ball awaits,” and grabbed a nearby baby stroller I was pretty sure could handle her weight. Estrella flashed me a grateful smile as she flopped into her carriage in a huff, and I pushed her to the far end of the porch, announcing, “We have arrived at the ball, Madam.” After Estrella debarked, I reversed course back toward Ariana, who was thanking her Fairy Godmother (Susan) for the beautiful gown, and look, the pumpkin had become a handsome carriage pulled by four white steeds. I gestured toward the baby stroller, and Ariana slipped in gracefully. I pushed her down to the other end of the porch to join Estrella, who was waltzing with Linda (another staff who stepped in to play a nobleman at the ball). I parked the stroller off to the side and returned to the dance floor to take a few spins with Ariana until Susan started tolling the midnight bells. Snagging the baby stroller again, I hustled Ariana aboard and we were off willy-nilly, tossing a slipper beside us as we sped away. David (a new volunteer who stepped up to play the prince come-a-knocking at Cinderella’s door) tried the slipper on Estrella first, who played the role to the hilt, jamming the slipper on her foot and insisting loudly it fit. A moment later everyone applauded enthusiastically when the slipper slid perfectly onto Ariana’s foot. The girls huddled with Susan for a moment after the show, who then announced there was going to be a second performance starring Estrella as Cinderella. So, after a deep breath, we ran through all three scenes again, everyone a little more polished this time, with Estrella playing a much less demure, verging on saucy Cinderella. The audience and cast scattered to their various responsibilities after the second performance, and I carried a few remaining dinner dishes from the porch into the kitchen. I was just going to take two minutes to wash up these few things and be on my way, but as I was drying off my hands, Susan, Ariana, and Estrella came running into the kitchen, accompanied by Jara this time, to announce there was going to be one more performance and could I please stay. I laughed and nodded in agreement as the girls scattered to reassemble the audience. So we performed our ACS version of Cinderella for a third time, the audience and cast still more polished and enthusiastic, and Jara gave a beaming performance as a bilingual Cinderella. All in all, it was one of the most rewarding evenings I have spent as a volunteer at ACS. Not only did I get to play the prince for three young ladies who really needed a prince in their lives right then, I had the chance to relive my own childhood for a few minutes, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Back |
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Italian TranslationcontinuedHow do these characteristics make it important to use properly qualified, professional translators? A qualified, professional translator has a very good knowledge of both the source and the target languages and cultures. Living in the two countries for a sufficient amount of time is therefore essential to understand their different societies and master their idioms. This way, a professional translator is able to point out to a client any cultural issues that may require some adjustments in the translated text. This is important, for example, when it comes to translating concepts such as striving for excellence and leadership, from English into Italian. Another difference that a professional can point out pertains to visual images, which are often used in ads and software. For example, photos of baseball should be replaced by photos of soccer games, which are definitely more appealing to the Italian public. In addition, a professional translator is aware of possible new trends of the languages, keeps up with the introduction of new foreign terms into the target language, especially in the high-tech and business sectors, and uses several reference sources when it comes to translating new topics, such as terrorism. A professional translator offers all these skills and ultimately keeps up with the new software tools especially developed for our profession. Do you know examples where translation or localization mistakes have occurred with this language, such as problems with text expansion, date/time formats, counting errors, character encoding, etc., or mistakes with the translation itself? Perhaps you’ve been asked to review a translation that did not seem to be the work of a properly qualified, professional translator. Since the Italian translation of English text expands by about 30-40%, during the QA phase of localized strings, I have often encountered enormous problems with cutoff strings, which were simply replaced by dots…in addition, the use of several codes in the software localization business can often cause the wrong order of words in a sentence, and lack of agreement between nouns and adjectives, if the translator is not familiar with the process. Another example can be taken from a typical technical manual, where the word “replace” is sometimes used with the meaning of “to put back” (in Italian “riposizionare”) and sometimes it means “to substitute” (in Italian “sostituire”). As an editor, I have seen many cases in which a certain cover that had been disassembled in step 1 simply needed to be put back (replaced) as described in step 5, but the translator used “sostituire” (substitute) instead of “riposizionare” (put back). Other typical examples are mistranslation of dates. For example 2/3/2008 becomes 3/2/2008 in Italian, as the day precedes the month. Relate an example or two where you found a website page or form difficult to use because it was poorly localized into your language/locale. How might a business lose money, prestige or incur legal risk due to this bad translation? Most of the problems I have encountered with localized websites had to do with typos and meaningless sentences. My impression was that the text was either translated in a hurry, and evidently not rechecked, or it was done by a machine. Since a website reflects the professionalism or lack of professionalism of a firm, if a company presents itself through poorly localized websites, it can easily lose possible customers. If a website is accurate and easy to read and use, it suggests that the corporation it represents looks for quality and has therefore relied on professional agencies and translators who pay attention to details. If possible, provide one example of a particular phrase or concept that only a properly qualified, professional translator would be able to correctly communicate. It is often hard to translate software strings from English into Italian, especially when the English text uses adjectives and/or past participles of verbs that require different translations in Italian due to the gender and number of the words they refer to. For example:
In Italian "album" is masculine and "cartella" (folder) is feminine, therefore "selected" needs to be translated into “selezionato” when it refers to "album" and “selezionata” when it refers to "cartella". Since translators need to respect the codes provided by the software developer, a skilled professional will need to work around the given placeholders and words. In our case, the solution would be to use a noun (Selection of) that can be used for both album and cartella to avoid the past participle (Selected) that would require different gender agreements with album and cartella. A possible translation would be:
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