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Poll: What was your first translation project about? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Liviu Ionescu
Romania
Local time: 05:40
English to Romanian
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Almost 50 years ago, two documentary movies about the reflective plates used to mark the highways in England and about the collapse of the Tacoma bridge.
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It was for Applied languages (Now Capita) on CAT - Caterpillar for around 13k words. Thanks to then PM Rehan Tufail.
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Darrel Knutson 
Germany
Local time: 04:40
Member (2010)
German to English
| A keynote speech | Mar 4, 2016 |
My first translation was the keynote speech for a computer convention held in Florida in the early ‘90s. It was faxed to me. My translation was delivered by a courier service on a floppy disk. Ah, the good old days before the internet!
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traidor
English to Portuguese
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| 1979 - On Personal Power, a book by Carl Rogers | Mar 4, 2016 |
ProZ.com Staff wrote: This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "What was you first translation project about?". This poll was originally submitted by samah A. fattah. View the poll results »
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Evdoxia Renta
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:40
English to Greek
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| The theory of dreams | Mar 4, 2016 |
The theory of dreams by Sigmund Freund:)
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JANOS SAMU
United States
Local time: 19:40
Member (2003)
English to zzz Other zzz
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| First paid translation in prison | Mar 4, 2016 |
It was in 1966 in Hungary, in the Budapest X Kozma u. prison where I served my sentence as a political prisoner. My cellmates were teachers, priests, journalists and we all had to work in the prison's translation office doing the translations by hand and the editor and proofreader (who were also political prisoners) corrected them with a red pen. Then the translation was given to a typist (also political prisoners) who worked on a manual typewriter. There were 17 translators and a typist all in ... See more It was in 1966 in Hungary, in the Budapest X Kozma u. prison where I served my sentence as a political prisoner. My cellmates were teachers, priests, journalists and we all had to work in the prison's translation office doing the translations by hand and the editor and proofreader (who were also political prisoners) corrected them with a red pen. Then the translation was given to a typist (also political prisoners) who worked on a manual typewriter. There were 17 translators and a typist all in the same room.
My first assignment was the translation of a 16 page pamphlet titled Straferziehungskindergärten in der DDR from German into Hungarian. The translation was for the Penal Administration Center of Hungary. Even if we had dictionaries, the subject was difficult for me and even if I spoke the language, I did not have professional translation experience so when it came back from the editor it was the Red Sea. It hurt my pride so much that at age 22 I cried like a little kid. But my editor was a very patient Catholic priest, who recognized my talent of languages and wanted to help me. He explained what the small and the bigger errors were. The biggest problem was that I translated the text literally. He encouraged me to ask him whenever in doubt and this is what I did. I learnt a lot from him and my next translation was a book from Russian into Hungarian. The title of the book was: Охота на бекасов и тетеревов в Сибири. This turned out to be much better.
By law even the inmates had to be paid and we were paid by the hour: 40 fillérs per hour, which was at the 1966 exchange rate US$0.015 that is one and a half cents per hour. I spent 4 days on the translation of the German booklet, so I earned 48 cents in 4 days.
After I served my sentence I started freelancing and two years later I became staff translator at a research institute. Since then I made my living by doing translations and interpretation until I retired last year, but still doing translations and editing in my area of interest. ▲ Collapse
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| My first translation project | Mar 4, 2016 |
My first paid translation was an architect,s final project : the refurbishing of a train station with lots of vocabulary like hydraulic tiles, concrete, etc etc
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Octinur Alam
Indonesia
Local time: 09:40
Member (2023)
English to Indonesian
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| My First Translation Work | Mar 5, 2016 |
That was long ago - back in my last year of High School, or 1st/2nd year of College? 1995-1997 - just about 20 years! Oh my!
That was from mum, who worked as a secretary in a subsidiary of Heineken here in Jakarta. It was a newsletter for the office. Then manuals. It was fun!
Those were all paying jobs, and mum took me and my brother and sister out to dinner whenever I completed the job and she got the payment. The money I earned was used to take us out and to add... See more That was long ago - back in my last year of High School, or 1st/2nd year of College? 1995-1997 - just about 20 years! Oh my!
That was from mum, who worked as a secretary in a subsidiary of Heineken here in Jakarta. It was a newsletter for the office. Then manuals. It was fun!
Those were all paying jobs, and mum took me and my brother and sister out to dinner whenever I completed the job and she got the payment. The money I earned was used to take us out and to add to our tuition and daily groceries, so yea I'm pretty proud of myself. xD ▲ Collapse
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Vaman Kale
India
Local time: 08:10
German to English
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| An old Mercedes car manual | Mar 5, 2016 |
It was the technical manual for an old Mercedes car (1950 or so). I wrote out the translation by hand, using a thick Hermann-De Vries tech dictionary, made whatever corrections, then typed it out on a typewriter, even making tables using the TAB key. This was in 1981, so no computers. I got Rs. 7500 for that job, which was thrice my last salary drawn at the company which I had quit to start as a freelancer.
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Nicola Thayil
Australia
Local time: 12:40
Member (2012)
French to English
| Training manual | Mar 5, 2016 |
A training manual for McDonalds with a glossary and I didn't have a CAT tool!
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| Poll: What was you first translation project about? | Mar 5, 2016 |
My first translation ? That's a difficult one... When I was 9 years old, our parents demanded from me and my brother to say one sentence in the language(s) of the country we where going through. Nothing special, in Spain, Madrid "Tres tres naranjus por favor", in Rome "Prego uno gelato", and so on. After that till 1979 I had done nothing when the Cuban cultual attaché came to my hometown and then I had to do Spanish-Hungarian-Croatian-Bunjevci-Serbian simultaneous translation. I got my licence ... See more My first translation ? That's a difficult one... When I was 9 years old, our parents demanded from me and my brother to say one sentence in the language(s) of the country we where going through. Nothing special, in Spain, Madrid "Tres tres naranjus por favor", in Rome "Prego uno gelato", and so on. After that till 1979 I had done nothing when the Cuban cultual attaché came to my hometown and then I had to do Spanish-Hungarian-Croatian-Bunjevci-Serbian simultaneous translation. I got my licence in September 1991, but from September 1988 I had to translations at the Belgrade Belgian Embassy in French, English, Arabic, Dutch and some 10-12 other languages on daily level. About any thematic the belgian diplomatic staff was interested in : TV programs from Hungarian and Serbian to Dutch, Slovenian law about female violation unto French and Dutch,... ▲ Collapse
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It was translating sub-titles into Spanish for Hollywood. Seemed awfully smart and easy at the time. Lots of action movies and as I was paid by the minute, it was delightful.
But apparently I was good at it, cos I ended up doing The Simpsons and The West Wing. No-one but me knows how much they say per minute in the White House!
Now translating philosophy and architecture seems easy in comparison.
[Edited at 2016-03-05 20:08 GMT]
[Edited at 2016-03-05 20:08 GMT]
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Elmachich
Morocco
Local time: 03:40
English to French
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| A big technical operations manual | Mar 6, 2016 |
A huge technical operations manual on how to make invisible military aircrafts... on security advice for the experts engineers and technicians handling the hazardous used materials, etc... it was internally published for the local and foreign people involved in the project.
I remember I was never left alone and if so, somebody will just come quickly to visit and ask about the development of the translation... My office was near the General Manager and an expert was made available wh... See more A huge technical operations manual on how to make invisible military aircrafts... on security advice for the experts engineers and technicians handling the hazardous used materials, etc... it was internally published for the local and foreign people involved in the project.
I remember I was never left alone and if so, somebody will just come quickly to visit and ask about the development of the translation... My office was near the General Manager and an expert was made available whenever I needed some technical explanations for my job.
The next big assignment was about a submarine device with no pilot on board ... ▲ Collapse
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chaplin
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:40
English to French
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| My first project was of a technical nature | Mar 6, 2016 |
My first project was a manual about seat belts. I went to the local factory and it really helped to understand all the tests I had to translate after. It was hard as I did not have a computer at a time and had to go to a friend's house to do it. The keyboard was a qwerty which added to the challenge. I was used to a French one which is azerty.
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Jenny Stillo
United States
Local time: 20:40
Spanish to English
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| The New York Times Style Magazine | Mar 6, 2016 |
I was lucky to land a translation project for the NYT magazine! I had done translations before this one, but this one was in my AFE (after formal education) era. I have had many wonderful direct clients after that.
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