16 Apr 4 Online Translation Activities to awaken your Senses this Spring
Why not awaken our translation senses differently this spring: online translation activities
Spring is finally blooming in Northern hemisphere with the five senses coming alive and urging us to experience something new. This time of the year, you would usually see me – or not, if I’m good enough at finding hidden spots – hiking through remote places, rain or shine. But, as most of us are experiencing an unprecedented lockdown, spring seems a little more difficult these days, including for translators, who are quite used to stay home. Whether amid a lockdown or on a lazy rainy day, if you are interested in online translation activities and need some inspiration on how to spend your time differently, keep reading.
1. Create your localization learning path: online translation activities
Intended for developers, product owners, localization professionals and translation students, Localization Essentials by Google is a free course taught by industry experts and gives access to student support community. Its aim? To provide learners with linguistic, cultural and technical knowledge on localization. Tested and highly recommended!
Do you speak Italian? At Creative Words we have created our very own e-learning platform. The CW-ELAB is available in Italian and provides insights on different aspects of the translation industry. Since its launch in January, 600 learners have enrolled. Curious to know why? Sign up and join the community to discover more.
2. Tune into the frequencies of translation
Are your eyes tired of staring at your screen? Time to pause then, and listen to Globally Speaking Radio, an insightful podcast for and from localization professionals. From best practices for getting paid to ethics matters in machine translation, this podcast covers it all. Can you guess my favourite episodes so far? Those about travel, of course (and yes, we will travel again!)
3. Volunteer for a good cause
Supported by a global network of professional translators, Translators without Borders’ mission is to provide people access to vital knowledge in their language. If you are an expert translator interested in helping with medical texts or translating for crisis response, this can be a great chance to help someone somewhere in the world the whole year round.
Other volunteering opportunities are being launched every now and then to support people and communities in need. One example? TAUS has just launched the Corona Crisis Corpus project, and you have time until 1st April 2021 to help creating bilingual corpora so that information can be accessed easily in many languages.
4. Watch series from a translation perspective
If you are a fan of ‘90s series and a linguist at heart (like I am), I bet you are enjoying watching your all-time favourites again and again, maybe in a different language. When Friends was first aired in Italy, it was quite hard to get series in original language. We were used to know characters through their Italian voices, accents and legendary quotes.
With series now available in multiple languages on different streaming platforms, why not to play with your fellow translators to score creative choices made at the time for subtitling and dubbing? If you are feeling inspired, you can even start a group chat and share your own options with your friends in translation. How would you tackle that title, idiom or cultural challenge? And how much effort would you put in one single sentence? How many options would you need before getting a decent solution? You never know, it might be your chance to discover the creative version of yourself.
Have you ever tried any of these online translation activities?
Feel free to share your own tips on alternative ways to learn about and practice translation!
