Translating business film material

By -

A joint workshop held by Aston University and the WMG on Saturday 10 December 2011 at Aston University
                         
 

Business as usual? Far from it. This workshop led by Dr Jean-Pierre Mailhac from Manchester, who trains professional translators and postgraduate students in various European countries and carries out research in applied translation studies, was exceptionally enlightening, engaging and entertaining. Throughout the day the seven postgraduate students and nine professional translators and interpreters were guided by Jean-Pierre, who has himself translated, recorded and supervised recordings of film material for a wide range of companies over the last 20 years ,through the problems and pitfalls of translating and recording business films.
The theoretical part comprised a detailed description of a pressured environment in which translators must first prepare a reasonable quote, then juggle the demands of a complex translation context in which they have to create, condense and synchronise the spoken target text with the film. Moreover, they have to do justice to a wide variety of features peculiar to the AV context, including: meaningful accents, dialects and intonation, wordplay and cultural dimensions. The presentation was enlivened by some amusing anecdotes of ruffled corporate cool, sound engineers' frustrations and mismatches between the translated text and the film material: 'the difficulty of finding the right product' as a commentary for a scene in which a lady effortlessly lifts a tin of baked beans from the shelves. In practical exercises we wrestled with problems such as recognising and conveying pronunciation, alliteration, assonance (Waggle/Busy/Buddy) and wordplay in several 5-7 minute films, covering anything from publicity for the Euro (nice one!), to hedge trimmers that were a 'cut above the rest'.
My thanks to both Jean-Pierre and Christina Schäffner of Aston University for presenting and organising the workshop, also to all those professionals and students who attended and helped make this a most instructive and enjoyable day.
Jean Darvill 13 December 2011

Popular posts from this blog

Aston University / WMG workshop on cloud-based CAT tools (15 Nov 2013)

By -
As part of the ongoing efforts to boost collaboration between ITI WMG and Aston University’s Translation Studies Department, the university kindly agreed to run a free afternoon workshop on the basics of CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) tools, including Cloud-based programs (which operate remotely over a network rather than directly on the user’s hard disk). This way of working (also known as “Software as a Service” or SaaS), whereby the user pays an annual fee for the software rather than an up-front purchase price) is becoming increasingly common, and offers both benefits and drawbacks. On the positive side, where projects are managed remotely by the client, the translator is relieved of the responsibility of creating, managing and selecting his/her own term bases and translation memories for individual projects. However, this also means that the client remains in control of these databases, and that in some cases, the translator no longer has access to them once the project is fi
Read more

Happy 10th anniversary, WMG!

By -
Image
There were eleven of us at the WMG committee meeting in Birmingham yesterday. Appropriately, we met in the Edwardian Tea Room of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which is where, ten years ago, four translators met for coffee and decided to revive the West Midlands Group of ITI. It was wonderful yesterday to see that there are still so many people - from founding members to newcomers - happy to take an active part in running the group! I'll be posting some memories of the past ten years on the new WMG history page over the next few days and weeks. Feel free to comment and add your own to this post. Bärbel McCloskey, Jakub Sacharczuk, Liz Smith, Rekha Narula, Mike Hanson, Charlie Gobbett, Ros Mendy, Juliet Hammond-Smith, Ulrike Nichols, Shelagh Rothero and Jean Darvill Happy 10th anniversary, everyone!
Read more

Home

By -
Image
Welcome to the West Midlands Group (WMG) of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. We currently have around 45 members but are always happy to welcome new members, whether they are established translators and interpreters moving to our region or new professionals joining the industry. Our annual subscription is £10 for ITI members and £5 for current students. Membership also includes access to our groups.io e-group, where we chat, support one another and share news. If you would like to join us, please contact our Membership Secretary    Bryan Thomas . Connect with fellow translators and interpreters, enjoy the encouragement and support of our friendly group and attend affordable professional events in the West Midlands. We organise several professional and social events each year and have an e-group where members can ask for advice and post job offers and other relevant information.  We offer CPD bursaries allowing WMG members to participate in any CPD event, online or face-to
Read more