What to do when presented with questionable texts to translate? Arms trade literature, fundamental religious positions on personal freedoms, attacks on science and reason, etc. can all pose the translator a minor problem in making what is essentially a business decision – do I do it?

<awfulanalogy>As translators, we drive vehicles filled with ideas. We transport them across borders. We discuss the potential problems of our loads over our cabin radios as we pass each other like ships in the mist. </awfulanalogy>

We are not liable for originating the ideas, but we may be liable for propagating them. Therefore the choice is first and foremost legal – is it deemed by society to be non-criminal? The next question is personal; if I help spread this idea to a wider audience, would I encourage this ethically dubious behaviour, spark debate or is it of no consequence whether I do or do not translate this text?

We also have a responsibility to our businesses, as separate entities, to ensure that they are as profitable as possible. If the price of spreading the ethically questionable text is high enough, we could offset our diminishing ‘integrity footprint’ by planting opposing ideas elsewhere. This way we may soothe our souls and our sales.

Your thoughts, as ever, may be extracted and transported below.

The alternative was another laptop or a netbook. Netbooks were my ideal first choice, but given that we (as translators) type thousands of words a day, keyboards, screen sizes and processing power were major concerns. But early on in my search I came across the AMD Fusion chipset which provides cheap dual-core processing to netbooks. I found a range of netbooks having just been released at around the £300 mark and set about reading reviews and user experiences online. One product stood out; the Lenovo X120e. It had won awards, generated a buzz and looked good to boot.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb-ns5f2dV4

With this new-fangled processor, up to 8GB of RAM, a full size keyboard and a matte screen for working in sunlight, I was amazed to see that much power in a device no larger than a sheet of A4 paper, at the same price as my desktop cost to build last year. The buying process was slightly complicated as the matte screen version was only available in the States, with no international shipping option, so I set about arranging the purchase with the help of friend in New York. I ended up paying extra shipping and taxes, but still within the realm of reasonably priced mobile working. 5 weeks later the order arrived and I got to work setting it up.

Set up

I installed MS Office, MemoQ, Skype, Chrome, Firefox etc. and it all went as well as can be from that perspective. Initially I had trouble working with the US keyboard, having switched from a French one, but remembered where everything should be after a few emails. I then copied over my TMs and project files for a large translation assignment and got started. It was absolutely fine. A little slower than on my desktop, but only marginally, when loading gigabyte-sized TMs for example.

The machine came with 2GB of RAM which I have now, after several weeks of usage, upgraded to 6GB using a 4GB module from Crucial (£30 only, shipped next day!) and now the performance of the machine has leaped forward. And it performs marvellously on even the most complicated of projects.

Out and about

The battery life, around 6 hours, works well when there are no power outlets around. It’s not often that I’m anywhere without power for that long, but when out working in Nottingham city recently I found it lasted for as long as I wanted to work, giving me a freedom I didn’t have with my laptop which consumed a lot more power for a lot less performance.

Another improvement to my working environment, apart from that freedom to change office location at will, is the ability to create a stand-up desk wherever I can put the netbook down at chest height. My office chair is comfortable and protects me from all manner of aches and pains, but now I can actively stand, as I am while writing this, which I’m hoping will have some positive health benefits.

So as you might be able to tell, I’m happy with the new computer. It should last for many years to come and allow me to keep up productivity while freeing me from the desk.

Fredrik Härén spoke in 2007 on Sweden’s knowledge day (kunskapens dag). This engaging speaker stood and explained his views on the value of knowledge in the global economy. Video in Swedish.

He spoke of how the very meaning of the term “developed country” has lead to complacency, and that “developing countries” are taking advantage of new ideas, not existing knowledge, but what he calls nyskap, or “newledge” as it would roughly translate. He defines an idea as the coming together of two previous concepts, ruling out the possibility that any idea could be 100% original.

He exposes typical Western ignorance of Chinese and Indian leaders and top companies (asking what are the prime minister’s names? And what are their top ten companies?) while highlighting the fact that Chinese and Indians workers are quite familiar with both East and West in terms of politics and business, stressing that we risk being left behind.

He states that while building skyscrapers may not be indicative of a more advanced society (saying they could quite easily be described as extensions of a man’s ego, among other things) they still require new kinds of lifts/elevators, water and waste systems developing, pulling innovation along with the new buildings.

Talk is cheap

He showed that knowledge can be bought for $3 an hour, and that students and statepersons that he has spoken to who think they are smart and knowledgeable should bear this in mind. He says we should focus on imagination, ideas and innovation. Which, to cheekily try to coin a second term in this post, amounts to “the three I’s”.

Finally, he spoke of Niklas Zennström of Skype, described as deserving a medal and as a role-model for Sweden. Given the date of the talk, 2007,  the latest re-sale of Skype was not taken into account when he praised Zennström’s ability to earn 10 billion SEK (£100m)  and paid the resulting tax on it in Sweden, all within 18 months. He finished by saying that these are the Swedes we need leaving school, but unfortunately this is not the case.

The talk could be summed up in one line as follows:

To compete, we need permanent use of imagination, ideas and innovation for the continued development of our “newledge”-based economy.

What do you think? Are we standing idly by in the West as China and India seal deal after deal?

I’m now very tempted to go back to paper. The perceived added benefits of having my diary on my person at all times, synchronised to the web in case I should lose anything, do not really outweigh the advantages of using a paper diary.

Both are portable, easily searchable and quick to add entries to. So why do I still not prefer the smaller, more technologically advanced version?

- I tend to lose entries for long term tasks in the scrolling diary pages of the phone
- Task/to-do lists get filled with “ideas” rather than real tasks
- I cannot take notes as effectively on the phone, as on paper I can quickly refer to a 3 week old note about a supplier, which is trickier to do on the phone

Digital diaries do have a saving grace, however, in the form of automated annual/monthly reminders. These can be useful to keep marketing campaigns on track among other things.

I think from now on I’ll be using a blend of paper and smartphone for notes, tasks, events with reminders and recurring events/tasks.

Do you have a preference or any tips you can offer?

OK, I haven’t actually implemented any of the tips I picked up in this book yet, but I can see me overhauling all the website content I have on the back of this. And I suspect it could lead you to do the same. This will be relatively brief. I can’t spend long reviewing books; it isn’t the most productive use of my time. However, I would like to share a few thoughts with you.

As someone with no formal training in writing sales copy, yet as someone who also is in dire need of just that, I needed a few pointers. And Maslen’s book doesn’t disappoint. As translators, we write thousands of words every day, all of which are proofread. This means that we are well placed to write copy that shouldn’t embarrass our clients with poor grammar and/or spelling. But what about copywriting’s real goal, getting the reader to do what the writer wants?

This is where Maslen excels. With years of experience in the industry, he distills the most important concepts in writing effective copy. I’m sure you’ve heard of the obvious “keep it short, punchy, to the point, avoid cliché, etc.” advice, but Maslen goes so much further than that in this 200 page guide.

I certainly wasn’t expecting to be introduced to a feature of MS Word that I’d never used before, much less one that can tell you how concise and comprehensible your writing is. I appreciate his real-world approach to discarding some of the dated grammatical rules that pedants love to cling on to, as well as his no-nonsense workflow which can very easily apply to our work as translators.

Packed full of tips to win over your readers, Andy Maslen’s copywriting guide is a solid investment, especially when priced at under £6.

Amazon link, non-affiliate

The machines are taking over

I could really do with getting up in the search results, but for some bizarre reason Google has placed 4 pages of free machine-translation sites ahead of me, including – for another unfathomable reason – their own Google Translate, which makes a galliant effort to be the best “get-the-gist” translation engine out there.

Revolution, the people rise against Skynet

Again, over-sensational, but we could cross-link to each others’ sites to boost our search engine rankings significantly. That’s what I propose, at least. If you don’t work in French to English, we could benefit from a bit of mutual cross-linking.

Anyone interested?

This is the phone of geeks, anyway, featuring a full Linux operating system and root access (admin rights) to let you customise any aspect of the device. It even has Skype integrated; another bonus for a translator on the move.

Now, the CAT tool is the open-source (source code shared freely at no cost), cross-platform (PC, Linux, Mac) OmegaT. I’ve been singing its praises for several years now, much preferring it to the slower, more cumbersome CAT tools.

This may be just a novelty, but it’s great to know that I can use a CAT tool when not in the office. I don’t know if this is a first, translation tools on a mobile phone, but so far I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else online.

Here is a (very) brief rundown of how to set it up:

- get hold of a Nokia N900
-  download and install the easydebian image (instructions on maemo.org, takes an hour)
-  download the Linux OmegaT archive
- open and extract in easydebian
-  run OmegaT.jar (wait a minute for it to start)
- import your OpenOffice, rtf or txt files and get to work!

And now, for your viewing pleasure, some screenshots of OmegaT running on the N900:

Worldtowriters.com has been given an overhaul. For any translation work in languages other than French, click through.

After a few weeks of development, the new linguist database linguistdb.com was launched and has so far signed up a great range of various language pairs all ready to work on a freelance basis for any company or agency that wishes to work with them.

Late last year I had created thefrenchjourney.com to help people learn French in a fun and intuitive way. The plan was put on hold for a good 6 months but is now coming back online after a consistently good traffic record, even with no new updates.

So with the launch and re-opening of these two sites, I hope to work my way back up through the search engine rankings and into the lives of linguists and French learners.

I’ll keep you posted if there’s anything to report, dear reader

Collected from the freelance translation community on twitter , via the hashtag #xl8

This post aims to collate helpful information from freelancers and translators around the world on managing money, tax, clients and cashflow. It may be of use and interest to other freelancers.

Please feel free to add any tips that may have been of use to you over the years in the comments section below or email them to contact@lukespear.co.uk.

The advice:

————————-
Tax tips

(expenses, claims, IRS, HMRC, VAT, etc.)

UK based:
- Starting up is simple: declare to HMRC within 3 months using the self-employment form found here.
You’ll have to complete a tax form by the 31st of January every year. It’s easy to fill in online.

On this form you can claim for expenses. If you work from a rented home (flat, etc.) then you can claim for a fraction of how much of the home you use. An accountant can help with this, but 1/3 of rent is not uncommon (this does not constitute professional advice, just personal experience). Homes with mortgages are subject to Capital Gains Tax for any claims made, also the fraction is subject to a time-rated scale for usage. Definitely seek professional advice here.

VAT not essential, still awaiting more advice from the freelance community on potential benefits.

————————-
Cashflow
(long payment terms, late payers, example payment request letters, etc.)

Payment practices
It’s best to check out any new clients you are working with to make sure they aren’t a fly-by-night agency that won’t be around to pay you the agreed amount when it comes to it. The main way to do that currently is via the proz.com Blue Board, using its useful search function. Other ways were recommended as follows:
From @Gaby_Ibanez, who describes herself as a “Translator. Subtitler.” from “Beautiful Argentina”.

“Yes, always check out the agency’s payment practices and never stop doing it, no matter how long in this business you’ve been.”

“There are several PP lists: some are free, some you have to pay to get access to them. There’s also the Blue Board on Proz. >>”

“>> And the Hall of Fame & Shame (TranslatorsCafe.com), but to have access to the last 2 you need to have a paid membership.”

Leading on from this, the ATA have released a document called “Ensuring payment”, here’s the direct link [pdf].

In this document you’ll find links to various company payment practice lists from around the world.

@pcruzp, an “EN FR SP Freelance Translator”.

“#Proz BB it’s a good start, but I trust more on Yahoo Group Lists for PPs + checking Contact Details + http://whois.domaintools.com/”

Using the whois tool enables you to compare the name of the website registrant to the person/address you are in contact with and progress in any potential research that may need carrying out.

More useful links from @Gaby_Ibanez regarding Payment Practices.

1 - WPPF: World Payment Practices Fees
2 - Translation Payments WhoWhenWhat
3 - TCR List managed by Laura Hastings; a paid service.
4 - Payment Practices managed by Ted Wozniak; a paid service.
5 - Blacklisted Translation Outsourcers a paid service.

More information is available, as pointed out by Gaby, on their respective websites.

Terms and Conditions
Including your terms of work in initial contact with new clients is effective, as practiced by Tom Ellett of Albascan Translations, with an example of his terms and conditions here, including the following clauses on:

- Copyright
- Confidentiality
- Amendments (and their costs)
- Cancellation (and its cost)
- Liability of the translator
- Payment (within 7 days, interest at 2% per month)

Also, interestingly, is the “wire transfer fees and other [payment] charges are payable by the Client.”

Included are two reminders (as logos) of the associations the translator is a member of. All clearly laid out on one A4 PDF.

There was also advice from @petergarner when asked if he used Terms and Conditions with either direct clients or agencies.

“Generally no. But occasionally I am asked to provide a formal estimate 4 big jobs, in which case I include certain pretty basic T&C.”

It is possible to speed up late payments using a letter or email. Here’s one that worked for me, but may have damaged future relations. If anyone has a more diplomatic offering to share, it’d be welcome below.
————————-
Hi [project manager],

Thank you for checking the invoice payment status. When we spoke over the phone regarding the work you’ll remember that you assured me of a 60 day payment. Changing the payment terms without notification is unacceptable.

As a reminder, on the [date] you further confirmed a 60 day payment:

[quote previous email exchange]

Is there anything you can do to prioritise this payment? Neither of us would want this to get any more complicated than it is, and it would be better if we could keep this matter private, would it not?

Sincerely,

[name]
————————-

Invoices
Céline of Naked Translations has offered this list of items to include on any freelance invoice. Behold:

INVOICE or QUOTE, clear and visible
Date
Your details
Client details
Client reference
Invoice number
Job description
Rate
Amount due
Payment terms
Payment details
Payment due date

“This makes it much easier to get paid on time and to chase any overdue invoice.”

Céline also suggests the use of FreeAgent. It’s an online accounting system that allows you to import bank statements for speeding up most accounting work. It also calculates taxes, graphs essential data and separates expenses from income quite simply. A 10% discounted version (normally £15 for freelancers) is available here freeagentcentral.com with my referral code, but I’m still in the free trial and haven’t made up my mind whether or not to stick with it.

I have also seen Crunch.co.uk which provides a similar service coupled with an accountancy firm to tie up loose ends and incorporate you if it becomes worth it, which they say happens around the £25k mark.

————————-
Sales
(increasing them, growing business, cold calling, email templates, etc.)

It seems it would help with professional image to have a website. Among the examples of what appear to be clear and well designed sites are those of Tom Ellett, Céline Graciet and Percy Balemans.

Tips from the translation community on positioning include having a single or few specialisms. This helps the client better understand your offer.

Gaining new clients (the dreaded marketing!)

@pikorua
“I get most of my clients via word-of-mouth/networking and via my ProZ profile/website.”

@AngelaMDickson
“None of the active ways I’ve used to seek clients have been as effective as being easy to find and having an in-demand specialism; in other words, they find me.

I have met 2 (in 5 yrs) worthwhile clients after bidding for their jobs on proz. I only bid for interesting-looking jobs tho.”

@ultramegajoy of the Netherlands has also reached a great stage where,

“Most of my new clients come from word-of-mouth referrals or networking, occasionally ProZ direct contact.”

————————-
Costs

(reducing them, waste, good deals on insurance, webhosting or related, etc.)

Hiscox offer insurance to freelance translators that covers £250k throughout Europe for professional indemnity at £15 a month. Most surveys and polls taken show translators don’t generally have insurance, and if they do they’ve never used it, but it’s not very expensive to add a further comfort for your clients. It may be a shrewd marketing move, if nothing else.

Cheap web hosts in the UK with great customer support, use them to *easily* register your domain and set up webhosting: layershift. Around £10 for a web address (domain name) and £4 a month for hosting.

————————-
Links

A small list of Small Business websites:

US based
Inc.com – online version of print magazine.
CNNmoney.com Fortune & Money magazines with CNN.
Sba.gov US Government tools and resources.
Duct Tape Marketing for low cost, effective marketing strategies.
Business Week The Small Business section
All Business information and advice from a well regarded, oft-cited source.
Startup Nation “175,000 pages of award-winning advice”

UK based
Startups.co.uk is an active community with a broad range of articles.
Business Link is a UK government run site for tools and resources.
UK Business Forums is another active community with lots of real, experience based advice.

More to come, add a comment and stay tuned

Myth 1 – Voice recognition makes too many mistakes to be worthwhile
I have used Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 for two years now and find the amount of mistakes made to be minimal. Those mistakes that appear over and over can be trained away. Common mistakes I find with my accent – a non-region-specific blend of Southern/Midlands UK with hints of other influences – would be “we’re” recognised as “were”, “for” (ie. he’d be there fuh three days) being missed by the software or names of people the software hasn’t heard before. These errors have been trained away in minutes though, and I always keep an eye out for them now, just in case. The software is set to recognise me as a British English speaking male. I have read the training texts for approximately one hour in total.

I don’t use the software on every translation I do as it often isn’t appropriate. VR software seems better suited to dialogue or magazine style texts than, for example, context-less software translations. As I translate comic books, this is where VR really comes into its own. The bottom line, as they say, is that my productivity increases.

Myth 2 – You need the latest computer to run VR software
My computer is a trusty Thinkpad T42 with 1GB of RAM and a 32GB HD. It can be slow. But not that slow, in that as stated above, productivity increases. Obviously a faster computer would make the process a lot more satisfying to work with, however, I have found that my low spec has presented no obstacles in this respect.

Myth 3 – Voice recognition software costs too much for too little return
The latest version of the Dragon software, version 10, (non-affiliate direct link, amazon.co.uk) is only £40 in the UK and $40 in the US. Reviews and descriptions say it does not require training, with over 99% accuracy out of the box. I haven’t tried it yet, but look forward to doing so. I’ll import all of the training I’ve accrued over the last few years at the same time.

I find this excellent value for money, given the speed increase involved.

Fact 1 – Working with others in the room is an issue
Switching the software to “Off” in order to talk to someone in the room can be impolite, as if you’re finishing a conversation that the other person wasn’t aware you were having. Also translating intimate scenes between cartoon characters can be slightly embarrassing, although perhaps I’m in the minority of translators having to deal with that particular issue. General unavailability to talk and being a distraction to others make VR an antisocial piece of software.

A word of advice – don’t leave the room with the VR software and TV/radio on at the same time, it’s not fair on your computer.

Fact 2 – Typical VR errors are hard to detect
Homophones, words that sound similar, are the standard errors with VR. These are figured out with the help of context in the VR software. For example, wants vs once. Which, incidentally, is the kind of error I start to make myself when tired. On a slight tangent, this has started me thinking and googling about words being stored as sounds rather than letters, with spellings being a guide and mnemonic for how to write out the sound, but I haven’t got very far with that research.

Homophones are harder to detect than typos. They aren’t picked up in spell-checkers and even proofreading them can be tricky at times. I proof read every sentence after settling on a translation, and then the whole text again in context. I do this anyway, when not using VR, but keeping an eye out for these specific errors is an additional requirement to consider.

Fact 3 – VR is fully compatible with CAT tools
Wherever you can input text on your computer, you can use VR. Wherever the cursor blinks, the text is entered. All punctuation must be pronounced. This can take some practice. The software can be set to punctuate automatically, but in my case I’d rather have control of that.

As translation requires a stop-go text input method, while our brains search the memory banks for fuzzy matches, the productivity increases would be less marked than if reading from a book into the software. However the speed gains are still present, especially in larger segments, and it is for this reason that I’d still recommend its use.

Examples online
Plenty of examples of typing performance increases can be found through Google et al., here’s the first one I saw, including a video: Typing vs VR. The author found an increase in speed from 73wpm to 126wpm and a reduction in errors. Although as stated in the comments and above, VR errors are of a different nature.

If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them in the comments section below.

PS Contrary to most voice recognition related blog posts, this one was not dictated with VR.

I am ever-so-slightly proud of the twitter hashtag #xl8 being used by folks around the world on a daily basis, some 10 months after I first proposed it to some of the more active members of the twitter translation community.

Composition: in the technical language of IT the ‘x’ is sometimes used to represent ‘trans’ (XMIT/XFER). The much loathed txt spk accounts for the last part of the tag. And there you have it. Four characters. Helps translators to find each other in the deluge of daily tweets.

Here’s the tweet I made back in January:

Instead of a mailing list, then, does anyone think #xl8: a translators hashtag would be worthwhile? How to start it?
5:53 PM Jan 13th from TweetDeck

http://twitter.com/spokk/status/1116171158

The story itself gives you a protagonist who is held in an emotional bind about the action he has just carried out, implied in the denouement as something quite chilling.

The adjective-filled style may please the word-lovers of the world, but I’m starting to wonder if it didn’t contravene the point of the exercise: producing a short story in a limited number of characters. Did I just produce a scene? Is it better to pad out one single conflict in as descriptive a manner as possible or rather suggest a more complex scenario in the available space?

Here is the -132 character story in its entirety:

His eyelids slowly parted. Waves of joyous grief pulsed under his claret-speckled labcoat. In the distance, a blade met concrete.

RT via Confic

Featured translator on Proz.com

It certainly has been a good week for exposure.

- A translation of Jean Van Hamme’s Largo Winch that I worked on earlier this year has now been featured in the Wall Street Journal in an article about the celebrated writer Van Hamme’s thoughts on writing talent in Belgium. The article can be found here: WSJ Article.

Translation featured in the Wall Street Journal

- A favourable mention (in December 08) on the Comic Geek Speak podcast, Exploring Bédé at around 12 and 21 minutes. You can listen to the podcast here: BD podcast.

Alternatively, you can listen to the podcast right here:

In an article in the Svenska Dagbladet, Olle Josephson writes of a Scandinavian political convention bringing together Norwegian, Danish and Swedish youth movements for an exchange of ideas earlier in 2008. That exchange, reports Olle, now takes place in English. This is in part due to the way that the Scandinavian languages have now diverged further than ever, while still being easily understood on paper, the linguistically closer Swedish and Norwegian speakers can now have difficulty understanding spoken Danish. One solution, as proposed by Olle, would be to spend “10–12 hours of Danish teaching per school year, that should quickly allow students to reach a reading and comprehension level high above their second language choices such as German or French“.

And the French, seeking their own solutions to what they see as a threat to their culture, discussed the point in Le Monde this week as the French music festival Francopholies brought down the curtain on 130 French artists, 17 of whom sang exclusively in English. The internationally renowned Sebastien Téllier admitted, “I choose the language that emphasises my music best. If I’m in doubt, I google the expression to see if it exists or not… I want people to own my music themselves and give their own meaning to it“.

However the appeal of English may go beyond its simple artistic merits, as J.B. from the band Nelson explains, “on the European market, we’re equal and on a par with the Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians“ in a tone more akin to an international group based in France than a mere French group. But with France’s strict quotas for French language music to be broadcast through the media networks, English language French music is largely being censored – although a loophole is occasionally exploited when a song adds a few lines of French in order to be classed as French culture, such as Camille’s album release Gospel With No Lord.

A movement in political and cultural terms is taking place throughout Europe, globalisation and culture exchanges are taking place in a tongue that has made no efforts to impose itself, yet has somehow become aspired to. The transatlantic expression, “two nations separated by a common language” may soon have to be adapted to something rather less elegant in order to keep up with the times.

Luke Spear

This article cited text that was translated from Swedish and French in the following publications:
SvD
Le Monde 

I’m actually just writing from your future, I’ve chosen this guy’s webpage to post to as he seems like he wouldn’t start running around claiming to be a “messiah” like that other guy did when I accidentally dialled in the wrong date. Seems to have caused a little confusion for you back there, but it’ll soon work out.

This all might seem a little unusual for you, dear reader, but it’s quite simple from here. I just fire up my retinal display, open a post page and start thinking out my message. Once done, I select the language I want - in this case English, British standard 2008 version – and the date I’d like to post to. See, science has recently discovered how to travel through time but only for sub-atomic and quantum sized particles. That led to some pretty interesting developments, this transtime mail for one, but I digress.

What I wanted to tell you about, not as a bleak apocalyptic message of destruction, but as a gentle warning to human translators, was that things are going to change quite soon and you may suddenly find a lot less work being sent your way. For translation, at least. Computing and technology are gradually changing your lifestyle in imperceptible stages at the moment, (your moment, that is) so small that the change is almost undetectable. But due to the lowering cost of computer components there will soon be a surge in people connected and trading globally. A critical mass of people requiring just-enough-to-understand translations will be reached in a short time and machine translation will be in vogue.

Human translators will gradually be replaced by proof-readers who check machine text as it comes onscreen. They are paid by the hour at a minimum wage. The job will require editing a stream of text as it is piped onscreen as fast as the proof-reader can go, the slowest readers being replaced daily in the online network of millions. But what about the people who need legal contracts or mission critical texts translating? How can they trust a machine? I hear you cry. Well, AI improvements and processing power have come a long way in a short time and you wouldn’t believe what wonders await you. There’ll be plenty of opportunities for you to retrain, but it may be better to start thinking about your future now. Concentrate on your writing skills because your potential market is about to grow like you wouldn’t believe.

Don’t be disheartened, make the most of the opportunities coming your way, harness the power of your imagination because you people are going to need it when the information exchange really begins.

P. Francberg,
EuroNation,
2047 AD
(4,540,000,0047 ABB)

“For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”

And rightly so. A concise work with protagonist, scenario and resolution punctuated and wrapped neatly into a oneliner that can justly be called a story. However a slew of copycat sixworders have hit blogs around the web, each as weak as the next with often pithy headlines that aspire to the American author’s genius only to consistently fall somewhat short.

Thankfully, in late 2006 Wired ran the scifi version and the Guardian the ‘contemporary authors’ version shortly thereafter. It’s a very interesting phenomenon and well worth exploring but far from suggesting additional asassinations be added to the messy fray; what could also be of interest in the eye of a language enthusiast is the challenge that translating these stories presents.

The additional problem of word limit may have been artificially created through people latching on to the fact that the Hemingway story is just six words long and deemed this to be its true mark of excellence. However he perhaps wasn’t counting when he wrote, aiming for concision while retaining his meaning. In translating, then, how concerned should the translator be with the quantity of text?

“A vendre : chaussures bébé, jamais portées”

At least in French, this doesn’t seem to be too much of a concern.