U.S. Border Patrol to Refuse Interpretation Assistance Requests from Other Law Enforcement Agents
Image courtesy of: U.S. Department of Homeland Security Towards the end of November 2012, an impactful memo was released to little media attention by the Deputy Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, David V. Aguilar. The memo simply stated that Border Patrol agents would no longer respond to requests for language assistance (e.g. Spanish […]
When you should turn down a translation project
It may sound counterintuitive, or even just scary, but there comes a point in every freelancer’s career when they have to – or should – turn down a job. Far from being a bad thing, it is a necessary part of freelancing that will ultimately be better for your career and the clients that you […]
The Risks of not Providing Safety Information in Workers’ Languages
It is no surprise that Hispanics entering the US with limited or no English abilities often end up working in factories across the country. With a limited capacity for communication in English comes a limited set of options for work. Yet factories can be some of the most dangerous places to work in any country, […]
Branching Out: The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Work
Translators work in a variety of contexts, whether independently as freelancers, with an agency, or as a manager and/or editor within their own agency. The career trajectory that some choose to pursue, after entering the industry under the wing of an agency, is to branch out on their own as a freelancer. Armed with the […]
Translation: It’s History and Trends
The term “translation” hails from the mid-fourteenth century with an etymological base in the Latin word translationem, a noun of action from the stem of transferre. It also shares roots with the word from Old French meaning “the rendering of a text from one language to another.” The verb form in English, translate, is from […]
Should Translators Proofread Documents Translated by a Machine?
It is becoming more common for agencies and freelance translators to get requests for proofreading translations done with a machine translation tool. As we’ve discussed before, these are tools such as Google Translate—the most widely used machine translation tool available—which use algorithms to translate text that you put into them. These tools have many shortcomings, […]
Should translators be paid by the hour or per word?
It is far more common for translators to quote a per-word rate to their clients than an hourly rate. Yet hourly rates still persist in some particular cases. There are many reasons why per-word pricing is the norm and preferred by both clients as well as translators and translation agencies. Chief among these is that […]
Social Media, Latinos, and the New Marketing Environment
As the marketing atmosphere changes and evolves faster than ever with new technological developments and new ways for companies to connect with their customers, we are seeing more companies reach out to their Spanish-language audiences. One way that they are doing this is by translating their web pages into Spanish. But they’re also going further […]
The Importance of Providing Written Translations of Company Policies
While US labor laws require that employers provide translations of certain kinds of information regarding company policies to Spanish-speaking employees, the laws which are currently on the books do not necessarily cover all of the information that these employees require. As a result, it is not unheard-of for employees with limited English abilities to be […]
Communicating for Life: The Language Barrier in Health Care
Learning a foreign language for the purpose of living in another country goes beyond mastering the basic conversations one might have on a street corner. With the complexity of life, comes the wide variety of situations that a person must know how to navigate in their new language in order to get by. But even […]
