David Stevens
Dutch, French, and German are the languages I professionally translate into English, my native tongue. So: hello to our American readers—and hallo, bonjour, or guten Tag!
I have been a freelance translator with McElroy Translation for nearly 20 years. Long Island, New York, is where I live. However, despite the many hundreds of miles separating us, I feel very much "at home" with McElroy in Austin, Texas. Meeting all the staff members at an ATA reception in its offices on West Avenue several years ago, and touching base with company delegates at ATA conferences in various other cities thereafter have helped form this bond. The many routine phone calls, faxes, e-mails, etc., over the years have additionally helped to consolidate our relationship.
An extensive scientific background is one of my strong points. I have bachelor degrees in math and physics, along with bachelor and postgraduate degrees in chemistry from various colleges in England. I volunteered as a Scientific Intelligence Officer in the U.K. Civil Defense Corps for a couple of years (in lieu of regular military service since the draft in England ceased just as I was finishing my university studies there). My foreign language skills were acquired academically and, more importantly, "on the job" in Europe where I did project work for many years in the photochemical industry (primarily in England, Holland, France, Germany, and Switzerland). In 1984 my family and I crossed the Atlantic to live in America. A few years later, I achieved my ambition of becoming Director of Research at the large photochemical company on Long Island that had sponsored our relocation to the United States. I hold several older patents in silver halide photographic science. Translating modern patents by younger scientists is now one of my favorite activities!
Foreign languages began to fascinate me when I was still a kid. As a youngster, this developed further by collecting foreign stamps and coins and trying to decipher the "funny" writing on them. This then led to my "collecting" pen-friends in many different countries and vacationing with some of them. It was in Holland, on vacation, that I met and later married one of these pen-friends: Adriana, my wife of nearly 50 years now. We have four grown-up kids and nine grandchildren so far. We are all U.S. citizens.
It was while still living in Europe that I first worked part-time on a freelance basis, namely as a translator/abstractor for the American Chemical Society in Columbus, Ohio. Hundreds of patents and scientific articles that I translated/abstracted have appeared over the years in "Chemical Abstracts," the famous database of the ACS. I am ACS-certified as a translator/abstractor in my three foreign languages into English. I have a medal somewhere in my office recognizing my years of service with the ACS.
I have translated for several chemical companies and numerous translation agencies on a freelance basis since I decided to leave the chemical industry and become a full-time, home-based translator in 1989. There are a great many advantages in working from home: for example, you are never late getting to work and never late getting home, and you never have to deal with traffic jams … your shoes don't wear out very quickly, either!
I passed the relevant language proficiency tests that the better organized translation companies, including McElroy, require of potential freelance translators. These involved test translations of real-time articles. A merely academic knowledge of a particular foreign language will not get you very far in the professional translation business. Experience "on the job" is indispensable—and the more of it you have, the better you will be as a translator. Knowledge of the subject matter in question is also vital, as is the "golden rule" of translating only into your native language or acquired mother tongue. As an example, Adriana speaks and writes her native Dutch and acquired English perfectly fluently. She is also an excellent wife, mother, and grandmother ... but please, don't ask her to translate anything technical!
So, in the early part of 1989, equipped with my first PC, I started working at home from my three foreign languages into English. My PC had WordPerfect 5.1 software and a 1200 bps modem in it—all state of the art at that time! Modem-to-modem file transfer—with a phone call beforehand to set up the transmission parameters, such as "parity" and other weird items—was how things were done in those early days. It's so easy now by e-mail, and especially with McElroy's new website (www.mcelroyhub.com) that handles all aspects pertaining to the assignment of translation jobs to its various translators. In those early days, the source material used to be sent to the translator by fax (usually in the form of a fax of a fax of a fax ...) or as a bulky computer printout via overnight courier. Legibility was often a problem. Everything is crystal clear nowadays as a result of electronic file transfers ... but why, oh why, do they often use such tiny letters? The enlargement system of my library's copy machine gets used quite frequently to solve the eyestrain problem here.
I am now in the semi-retirement phase of my life. I find that freelance translation is an excellent way to stay mentally active while providing a useful service to the clients of McElroy in many different parts of the country. It is also an excellent way to improve one's technical knowledge and language skills. In my opinion, language learning is a never-ending process, and this applies just as much to English as it does to foreign languages. Numerous dictionaries, textbooks, "Google," and other search engines, and occasionally colleagues in other areas of the highly confidential business of professional translation are all essential aids in the work of a freelance translator. Nowadays, I like to specialize in the translation into English of German patents, and McElroy has become my favorite translation company in this regard.
On a lighter note ... McElroy has a consecutive numbering system for the regular translation jobs it assigns to its freelance translators. Among the roughly 10,000 translation jobs (and the tens of millions of words) I must have translated over the years, I was pleased to receive Job Nos. 50,000 and 100,000 at the time they arrived at McElroy for translation. The longest translation I ever did was a book amounting to several hundred pages for a religious publishing company in Holland. The most stressful translation job I can remember came in at about 5 p.m., near the end of a normal business day; it amounted to roughly 5,000 words and had to be ready for a hearing in a Texas courtroom the following morning. It's certainly nice and quiet working through the night and seeing the sun come up again the next morning—and the rate of pay for such night work is pretty good, too—but I felt like a real zombie for the next day or two!
Thank you for reading my story. I would like to end by wishing us all the very best—the staff at McElroy, its clients, and its freelance translators—as we move onward from this auspicious 40th anniversary year!
