It’s a trap! November 2, 2012
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Fun stuff, TGIF.1 comment so far
If you receive an e-mail called “LinkedIn new messages” do not click on the link(s). It’s linked to a malicious website. This applies to any e-mail from an unknown source. I must have not drank enough coffee yet today, because I absentmindedly clicked on one of its links (not even realizing that it wasn’t sent to the e-mail I use for LinkedIn!). Luckily my anti-virus protection stopped it in its tracks. I just knew I had a couple pending messages in LinkedIn, because I had just accepted a colleague’s LinkedIn request (hi, Tom!) about 15 minutes before. So think before you click!
REMINDERS
Invitation reminders:From Concepcion Bonds (systems analyst at TCU)
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This video should explain the blog post title. It’s from my favorite TV show, The Big Bang Theory.
And here’s the original (I like Sheldon’s better):
ATA conference round-up November 2, 2012
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in ATA, Random musings.3 comments
It’s been a wild few days. I stayed an extra two days in San Diego and am so lucky I did, because I missed the massive storm that was Hurricane Sandy. I didn’t think I would be able to leave on Tuesday, but luckily my flights weren’t canceled. I can’t say the same for colleagues from New York and New Jersey, who found themselves stuck in San Diego and had to find alternative housing. I know several French translators bunked with Marianne Reiner. That must have been a fun time – a grown-up sleepover, if you will. It’s a good thing most translators have stayed in youth hostels at some point in our past, because sleeping on the floor isn’t that much of a hardship.
Yes, Sandy even had implications all the way up in Ohio. Some of my friends near Lake Erie just had their power restored last night, and we lost two trees on the street. Phone service was spotty to non-existent in my home, so I have a feeling one of my local cell phone towers was damaged in the storm. The result is that it has taken me longer than usual to dig myself out of my suitcase and catch up with post-conference To Do items (this post being one of them).
I will post about the sessions I attended in subsequent posts. I just wanted to note that – unlike in years past – this year I came home with only eight business cards. One of them is an agency owner in Brussels whose company has a lot of German to English medical work. I met her at the Medical Division reception. I will be following up with a personal e-mail today and attach my resume. It’s the quality, not the quantity.
Tips for First Time Attendees PowerPoint presentation October 27, 2012
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in ATA.add a comment
It’s taken me a little longer than I planned to post my PowerPoint presentation. I apologize. Things at the conference are always a whirlwind.
Click here to view the PowerPoint.
Greetings from San Diego! October 22, 2012
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Random musings.3 comments
I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything substantial, but my life has been one disaster after another for the past few months. I was lucky I cancelled my trip to the BDÜ conference in Germany in September, because I had an emergency appendectomy right around the time I would have been flying out. I would have had to cancel my trip, my co-presenters would have had to scramble to find someone to fill in for me, and I would have been out the money for a plane ticket and hotel. While I was at home recovering from surgery (I stopped taking the pain pills after two days) my dog started limping badly, so once I was allowed to drive again I took her to the vet for x-rays. She needed hip surgery on both hips, so she went under the knife herself two days later. They operated on her right hip, which was hurting her the most, and will be operating on her left hip in 8 weeks. She is hopping around on 3 legs right now, but it’s been 12 days and she only has one pain pill left. She’s starting running around and playing a bit. She’s doing great now and is in good hands with my parents while I’m gone. Then if that wasn’t enough, I ran out to the pet store last Wednesday because I was out of cat food – and some kid ran into the back of my car going 40 mph as I was stopped with my blinker on to turn into the alley to get to my street. There were no skid marks, and my car was pushed probably 10-15 feet. It was a nineteen year old who had just been cited for speeding and failure to yield three days before by the same police officer who was first on the scene of my crash. The bumper crumpled into the trunk and the radiator exploded, with steam coming out of the hood. My car is a total loss. I am really looking forward to a few days of rest & relaxation here in San Diego. I will be car sitting for a friend who can’t drive due to a broken left hip and broken right ankle when I return, so that takes some of the pressure off me to get a new car. But at this point the only luck I’ve been having is bad luck. I’m looking forward to the conference to renew me and give me some energy and new clients.
TGIF: Found in Translation October 12, 2012
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Fun stuff, TGIF.2 comments
If you have not had a chance to look at the video that Jost Zetzsche and Nataly Kelly produced to promote their book, Found in Translation, and celebrate translators and interpreters around the world, take a quick break and watch it. It’ll be 90 seconds that will make you smile.
(Almost) Wordless Wednesday October 10, 2012
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Fun stuff.4 comments
Sorry about the duplicate cartoon. I guess I must have REALLY liked it. Here’s another one to make up for it… Don’t you wish you could say this to some of the authors of the texts we translate?
How a listserv works October 4, 2012
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices.6 comments
I was called a snot and a know-it-all on the ATA LTD listserv the other day. Some woman had asked about a PDF conversion program. This is a subject I know quite a bit about, having presented on the subject at ATA two separate times, so the attack was completely unwarranted. I had replied earlier that week that what she wanted the program to do was not within the program’s ability (as I understood it she wanted to be able to paste the English text next to the German in the OCRed file). She then proceeded to try to e-mail a file as an attachment over the listserv to one of the members to OCR for her. When the suggestion was made that the listserv allow attachments I simply replied that I voted no because I didn’t want my e-mail inbox cluttered with attachments from a listserv. The woman’s overreaction to my replies in this discussion and subsequent responses to other people’s replies defending me from her unwarranted attack (calling them scammers and spammers when they were in fact simply replying to the listserv) clued me in that the woman had absolutely no idea how a listserv worked. I’m sure most of you do, but in case you don’t, here is a quick explanation.
The term ‘listserv’ has been used to refer to a few early electronic mailing list software applications, allowing a sender to send one email to the list and then transparently sending it on to the addresses of the subscribers to the list. Incoming messages sent to the reflector address (in this case ataLTD@yahoogroups.com, but it could just as easily be ata_business_practices@yahoogroups.com, WPPF@yahoogroups.com or pt_@yahoogroups.com) are processed by the software and are
distributed to all email addresses subscribed to the mailing list. This means that every e-mail that is sent to ataLTD@yahoogroups.com gets sent to all 210 members of the listserv. Once you subscribe to the listserv you will receive all the e-mails that are sent to the list. You can’t pick and choose (although you *can* filter individual e-mail addresses into your e-mail program’s Trash, which I hope she has done with my e-mail address because I never want to hear from her again).
In the meantime, she looks like a total idiot who overreacted ‘in front of’ 209 professional translators, and, believe me, behavior on listservs plays a huge part in how people perceive you as a professional. Meltdowns such as hers last week or a few other notable instances in the past on various other listservs truly reflect poorly on the translator and influence whether someone will recommend you to their client if they are too busy to accept a job. Bad behavior on a listserv such as the ATA Business Practices listserv is even worse, because many agency owners subscribe to the listserv. So think before you write to a listserv.
Musings from an overworked translator 