| Pages sur ce sujet: < [1 2 3 4] | Off topic: Translation before the internet Auteur du fil: Nicolas Clochez
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| Thanks for waiting! | Jul 11, 2013 |
Hey all - finally managed to put together a blog post about our discussion here and I have tried to make it appeal to a wide audience - i.e. both translators who have worked with and without the Internet. Let me know what you think, either in the comments or here.
Unfortunately I did miss some of the comments at the end, but I am still in absolute awe of things like the following (e... See more Hey all - finally managed to put together a blog post about our discussion here and I have tried to make it appeal to a wide audience - i.e. both translators who have worked with and without the Internet. Let me know what you think, either in the comments or here.
Unfortunately I did miss some of the comments at the end, but I am still in absolute awe of things like the following (excerpts from the thread below):
- Whenever we wanted to visit with a client to present our work, we drove Mercedes or booked a flight.
- I also remember a client sending a motorcycle courier (yes they do still exist in Paris at least) to pick up a floppy disk,
- You had to call the agency and arrange an appointment time to send them the completed file via computer modem
- As for specialist terminology, this involved phone calls to the “experts”, anything from the Alzheimer’s Society to a polo club.
- When e-mail first became available, many agencies refused to use it for security reasons
- Print out translation and catch the bus to deliver it by hand, on paper.
Thanks so much for contributing to this post and thanks for being supportive of me using the material.
[Edited at 2013-07-11 22:35 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Heinrich Pesch 
Finlande
Local time: 02:33
Membre (2003)
finnois vers allemand
+ ...
My first paid translation was done in 1992 on my Atari ST home computer, which was a kind of Macintosh clone, only cheaper and with a bigger screen (800x480 pixels in b/w-mode). The text was about waste disposal sites and my friend needed the Finnish translation for his work.
A few months later I bought my first PC and started to use WordPerfect, which was a step backwards from the WYSIWYG on the Atari ST. I started to use modems already in 1987, first model had 300 b/s speed. In some movi... See more My first paid translation was done in 1992 on my Atari ST home computer, which was a kind of Macintosh clone, only cheaper and with a bigger screen (800x480 pixels in b/w-mode). The text was about waste disposal sites and my friend needed the Finnish translation for his work.
A few months later I bought my first PC and started to use WordPerfect, which was a step backwards from the WYSIWYG on the Atari ST. I started to use modems already in 1987, first model had 300 b/s speed. In some movies it looks like they are using those still today, when the text appears one character at a time on the screen.
But when I started out as a freelancer the net was already the normal way of doing business. I never used fax-machines, but had an e-fax-number for a few years in the 2000s. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Sian Cooper
France
Local time: 01:33
français vers anglais
+ ...
In memoriam | Bit late - my father's experience | Jul 12, 2013 |
I have only been translating for a short time, but it runs in the family, as my father was a professional translator (French and German to English) for some years. He started on a dedicated word processor - I have no idea what it was, sorry - I remember reams of floppy disks and a very slow dot matrix printer. He moved on to PC, with, as others have mentioned, a dedicated fax line and a dedicated modem line. He had a document holder contraption strapped to his computer screen, and developed a pe... See more I have only been translating for a short time, but it runs in the family, as my father was a professional translator (French and German to English) for some years. He started on a dedicated word processor - I have no idea what it was, sorry - I remember reams of floppy disks and a very slow dot matrix printer. He moved on to PC, with, as others have mentioned, a dedicated fax line and a dedicated modem line. He had a document holder contraption strapped to his computer screen, and developed a permanent scooped neck from peering at it and refusing to have his glasses fixed or to get a new office chair.
The internet came in while he was still working, but he was a little out of touch with change, living in rural France and having no contact with anyone much (unsociable creature). I, on the other hand, was in the UK, in the IT world. But it was all still new and changing - I remember once when I was visiting, he asked me rather shyly what Google was. I recall being rather vague, as I hadn't used it myself yet. 'Oh, it's just some search engine.'
He still has some great (paper-based) glossaries, that I keep promising myself 'one day' to transfer to soft format...
His favorite present was some esoteric dictionary. I found a lovely pair of 19th century leather bound, gold-embossed French/English dictionaries for Christmas for him once, and now covet them madly. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Re Sarai`s motorcycle courier | Jul 13, 2013 |
Reminds me of an unusual incident.
The owner of a small agency I did work for was a former pilot in the Swedish Air Force and to keep his private license valid he had to fly a certain number of hours every year.
One day he phoned me to say that he would be flying to our local airport to hand over source text for translation.
He landed and handed over the document, we had a chat, he smoked a cigarette and took off back home.
All in a day`s work...
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