Hackers and translators

I read this essay by Paul Graham, and suddenly it occurred to me that most of what he says about hackers is applicable to translators as well. What we do is hack words, or with words, to achieve meaning.

Because hackers are makers rather than scientists, the right place to look for metaphors is not in the sciences, but among other kinds of makers. What else can painting teach us about hacking?

One thing we can learn, or at least confirm, from the example of painting is how to learn to hack. You learn to paint mostly by doing it. Ditto for hacking. Most hackers don’t learn to hack by taking college courses in programming. They learn to hack by writing programs of their own at age thirteen. Even in college classes, you learn to hack mostly by hacking.

Because painters leave a trail of work behind them, you can watch them learn by doing. If you look at the work of a painter in chronological order, you’ll find that each painting builds on things that have been learned in previous ones. When there’s something in a painting that works very well, you can usually find version 1 of it in a smaller form in some earlier painting.

I think most makers work this way. Writers and architects seem to as well. Maybe it would be good for hackers to act more like painters, and regularly start over from scratch, instead of continuing to work for years on one project, and trying to incorporate all their later ideas as revisions.

The fact that hackers learn to hack by doing it is another sign of how different hacking is from the sciences. Scientists don’t learn science by doing it, but by doing labs and problem sets. Scientists start out doing work that’s perfect, in the sense that they’re just trying to reproduce work someone else has already done for them. Eventually, they get to the point where they can do original work. Whereas hackers, from the start, are doing original work; it’s just very bad. So hackers start original, and get good, and scientists start good, and get original.

The other way makers learn is from examples. For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques. For hundreds of years it has been part of the traditional education of painters to copy the works of the great masters, because copying forces you to look closely at the way a painting is made.

Writers do this too. Benjamin Franklin learned to write by summarizing the points in the essays of Addison and Steele and then trying to reproduce them. Raymond Chandler did the same thing with detective stories.

Hackers, likewise, can learn to program by looking at good programs– not just at what they do, but the source code too.

The complete text of Paul Graham’s essay is here.

Literary joys

I have completed translation of Terry Pratchett’s Nation (it is now being edited), and have started The Children’s Book by A.S.Byatt. It is huge – 600 pages, about the same size as Iris Murdoch’s The Philosopher’s Pupil which I have translated last year. The Children’s Book was shortlisted for Booker prize. Translators from half a dozen countries are working on it right now, and I have been included into a mailing list for The Children’s Book translators worldwide, with participation of A.S.Byatt herself. By the way, this Wikipedia article says that A.S.Byatt was actually influenced by Murdoch, and that the novelist Margaret Drabble is her sister, which  I did not know before. I read something by Drabble and I thought she writes, in fact, very much like Murdoch, but more… drab. The pun is intended. In my opinion, The Children’s Book is not like anything by Murdoch at all, at least I very much hope so. I will not survive another 600 pages of dark and depressive stuff like The Philosopher’s Pupil. The Children’s Book story is not all roses either, but at least it’s less… existential? and more lifelike. The work on it will be pure joy, anyway. Life is good.

Cory Doctorow’s Someone comes to town…, Russian translation, part 1

This is just the beginning of the book, about 30 pages long. More will follow (hopefully soon). The text is still pretty raw, it will be edited later. Anyone who wants to help with the translation or editing is welcome.

Translation World Toronto: May 11-13

The event information and the schedule

I am especially interested in this event conducted by @ryancoleman:

Workshop 1B:  Roundtable on Management Models (afternoon)

• • Robinson Kelly, CEO, Clay Tablet Technologies
  • Ryan Coleman, Co-Founder, Clay Tablet Technologies

The Integrated Lifecycle: Creating a Foundation for Envisioning and Planning an Integrated Translation Lifecycle

Over the past few years, the translation industry has seen a huge evolution in the tools, technologies and standards available to help streamline the translation process. Clients, technology providers and language service providers alike are dealing with an ever-changing landscape of service and technology offerings claiming to help make the translation process more efficient. While many organizations are beginning to embrace this shift, the industry still lacks a common language to describe and specify how the various components relate to each other to create a seamless process. This workshop aims to begin filling that gap.

During this unique, interactive session, attendees will work together through a facilitated, visual process to define the components, standards and considerations for creating integrated, efficient, translation lifecycles. Further, we’ll look at how the various components and workflows work together. This workshop is ideal for anyone who has involvement in, or direct responsibility for the ongoing improvement of processes within their organization, whether they are on the client or vendor side.

Attendees will play an active role in shaping this common language and will leave the workshop with a new tool set for envisioning and planning integrated lifecycle solutions.

Terry Pratchett’s Nation

Yay, I got an offer to translate Terry Pratchett’s Nation into Russian!
Crisis or no crisis, people still read good books.

Bad translation is bad for your business

A Little Help From My Friend — Mr. Dell
By Michele A. Berdy

Помощь: help, aid, assistance

Oh, boy: there’s a spring thaw in U.S.-Russian relations. Folks are meeting and talking more often. Good thing? Absolutely. Guaranteed to be successful? No way.

This seems like a good time to revisit the exchange between Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Davos earlier this year. It’s an excellent example of the perils of cross-cultural and interpersonal communication and the limitations of interpretation.

Read further: http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1016/42/375124.htm

The flattening of language is a flattening of meaning

I am now reading God’s Secretaries, a great book by Adam Nicolson about the making of the King James Bible. It was a new translation made by a whole team of learned men upon request of King James. This version of the Bible shaped the British history and was shaped by it. Nicolson’s book  is a wonderful reading, but one passage especially attracted my attention as it described what we would call now the workflow of a translation team in the early 17th century England. A copy of a Bible with the translators’ notes and markings was accidentally discovered in a British library.

Here’s an excerpt from Nicolson’s book.

Aunt Tania’s advice for an aspiring translator – continued

Some more advice (continued from here).

Q. I don’t know how to send an invoice – I do not want to appear unprofessional
A. Create a simple form including all the required information (date, your name and address, client’s name and address, short description of performed work, amount). No one will hold it against you if the invoice contains no bells and whistles. (Note that from the legal point of view you are not obliged to register your business, you can conduct it using just your own name.) I started using somewhat nicer form when I registered my own company (so now I have something like a logo in a corner) but the rest is pretty much the same. Don’t worry about the clients, they will look at how you do the job and not at how artful your invoices are. Besides, many of my clients do not require any invoice whatsoever – I name the price, they agree, I do the job and they send me the payment. Translation agencies usually ask you to send them an Excel spreadsheet once a month for all the jobs you did in that month, and they often give you their own invoice form to use.

Aunt Tania’s advice for an aspiring translator

I met some people at an event in Glendon college (where I take a course right now) and they asked me how to get started as a translator. I think I am very well qualified to answer this question: when I decided to switch from software development to being a full-time translator and technical writer, I started, practically, from scratch, and in less than 2 years I got to a level where I can support myself and my family, being a sole breadwinner. About 90% of my last year income came from translation.

So, here’s my advice to an aspiring translator in the form of questions and answers.

Next Media – Monetizing Digital Media conference

I’ll be volunteering at Next Media – Monetizing Digital Media conference at CIRCA next week. The schedule looks promising. If you are there, drop by to say hello.

(Also there are Fastlane event and Toronto Wiki Tuesday on Tuesday Nov. 11th, and I am finishing the translation of Irvin Yalom’s “Momma and the Meaning of Life” into Russian – still 90 pages left and I must finish by about Nov. 15th so we have some time for editing before the deadline which is on the 25th… Also, I am still unable to figure out why most networking events in this city are scheduled for Tuesdays. Has anybody found a way to be in two places at once? Is it possible that there are several separate crowds and each one goes to its own set of events? Somehow I don’t think so.)