Archives October 2014

Slides for Talk at ATA55: Software L10n QA Assurance from the Tester’s Perspective

Here you can find a link with the slides (in PDF format) for one of my talks at the American Translators Association’s 55th conference in Chicago on Software L10n QA Assurance from the Tester’s Perspective.

The talk is complementary to the paper that I contributed to the proceedings. You can download the paper here.

Fictitious warp drive software used as an example in the talk

Fictitious warp drive software used as an example in the talk

The talk will discuss the QA process at the example of a fictitious app to control a warp drive (for non-sci-fi afficionados: a faster-than-light drive for space ships). The source language is Terran (American) English, the target language is Klingon (tlhIngan Hol). Even if you are not a sci-fi fan, you will appreciate the reasons for this choice: First, since warp drives are very much a fiction at the moment, I can’t infringe on any copyrights of existing software. Second, the Klingon language grammar, although pure fiction, is very thoroughly developed and a large number of resources exists for those who want to learn the language (see references in the slides). Third and perhaps the most important reason, the Klingon alphabet is not at all similar to the Latin alphabet and is therefore ideal to illustrate the points I want to make in the talk, because most people will have a hard time reading Klingon.

Qapla’!

Article on Translation Scams published in The ATA Chronicle

I am happy to announce that my article “Translation Scams: Avoiding Them and Protecting Your Identity” has just been published in the October edition of The ATA Chronicle (links to an almost final pre-print version).

The article is a summary of my series of blog posts on the topic. You can access the original blog posts here:
Maria Brown and the Nigeria connection
Password Protection for your CV/Resume with Adobe Acrobat
Protection against Identity Theft
Translation Scams – Buyers and Translators Beware!
Verifying Identities and Payment Practices Online