Reciclagem via web | Web trainings

(Please scroll down to read in English)

Ontem participei de uma ótima palestra no Aula Vox com o Danilo Nogueira. Foi uma oportunidade muito interessante de escutar um tradutor consagrado, em casa, pela internet e de graça! O evento, que acontece uma vez por mês, chama-se Reunião na Sala 7. Veja o agendamento das aulas aqui: http://www.aulavox.com/eventos/eventos.htm.

Wordnik - more than just a dictionary

If you've read the previous post and watched the video, you will know what Wordnik is about. As Erin McKean said in her talk, she wants to see all the words in dictionaries. And "Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they've found what they consider to be "enough" information about a word before they will show it to you." So, "Wordnik wants to be a place for all the words, and everything known about them." (http://www.wordnik.com/pages/about). Wordnik is worth a visit and it will be fascinating to see how it evolves.

Leading lexicographer discusses the future of the dictionary

I love dictionaries as I guess most translators do. So I was watching this TED talk again and thought you would enjoy it too:

Erin McKean redefines the dictionary -

"Is the beloved paper dictionary doomed to extinction? In this infectiously exuberant talk, leading lexicographer Erin McKean looks at the many ways today's print dictionary is poised for transformation."

Erin McKean - "As one of the youngest editors of a "Big Five" American dictionary, Erin McKean is at the forefront of a new guard of lexicographers reshaping not just dictionaries, but our language itself."

New search engines

An article in O Globo yesterday (http://oglobo.globo.com/tecnologia/) discussed new search engines (other than Google). Here's a summary of the article so you can test the new tools:

- Bing http://www.bing.com/ - The new Microsoft search engine. Strength: no need to browse the links one by one, returning to the results everytime. Next to each result you can preview the page before visiting it. Same works for images and videos, which start playing as you move the cursor over the results. You need to choose United States (top right) to be able to use the complete version.
- Wolfram Alpha http://www.wolframalpha.com/ - Uses a 'superplataform' called Mathematica. It's an answer engine. The less you write, the more information you get. If you type in the name of a city, for example, it will return lots of information about the city.
- Powerset http://www.powerset.com/ - Also an answer engine, it answers complete questions, such as 'Where is Klagenfurt?'
- Viewzi http://www.viewzi.com/ - A different way to preview results with Flash.
- Leapfish http://www.leapfish.com/ - Results from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, simple interface.
- Vadlor http://www.vadlo.com/ - Specializes in biomedical and life sciences
- Blackle http://www.blackle.com/ - Specializes in ecology - and is ecological: the background is black to save your monitor's energy.

I have yet to test them, and will follow up with my experiences. You can also let us know what you think about them by posting a comment.

(source: O Globo Digital, 08 July 2009 - "À procura da melhor resposta" - André Machado)

Who sets the price??

Great post from Translation Times: http://translationtimes.blogspot.com/2009/06/seller-sets-price.html. Judy and Dagmar Jenner have found this great video that illustrates how bizarre it is when our clients try to set our prices for us...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY

Visual Dictionary

Maybe you all know this dictionary already, but I must confess I only found it recently when I was desperate to find a specific term. It's the Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary Online http://visual.merriam-webster.com/index.php (a vast improvement on the Lexicon I used to have when I was a student...). And it really is a great help when translating into English. Sometimes you can't find the right term for that little part... So try to find a picture of whatever it is that you want (a machine, an animal, a place) and you'll get the names for all the parts. For example, I looked up 'electronic scale' and this is the picture I got:

Or take 'harbor':

And below the picture you will find all the related terms. Truly useful.

Blog of the month | Blog do mês

I'm starting a new series, Blog of the month, to write about one of the translation blogs I recommend here (list on the right).

Here's the the first one: Translation Tips http://www.rede-de-tradutores.blogspot.com/. Written by Rose Polato, who says she's 'fascinated by the intricacies of languages'. Each post discusses the translation of one group of words or is a mini-glossary about one topic. The most recent post, for example, is about the difference between laptops, notebooks, netbooks, etc (http://rede-de-tradutores.blogspot.com/2009/05/laptop-notebook-subnotebook-mini-laptop.html). And the one before that

Glossaries of financial terms | Glossários de termos financeiros

I find these two websites very helpful when translating business/financial texts:

http://www.investorwords.com/

http://www.investopedia.com/


They're monolingual (English), but excellent to research vocabulary.