ZOMBIE NOUNS!

Helen Sword wrote about zombie nouns as an op ed in the New York Times last summer, and I have been thinking about them more and more often as I notice examples cropping up all over the place. The problem with living dead verbiage, or nominalizations, is the pomposity of the presumption to ply readers with an excessiveness of wordiness. Did you get that? Probably not. It's a lot easier and more direct to just say that zombie nouns make sentences unnecessarily wordy and pompous. If you haven't already caught on from my example above, a nominalization is the creation of a noun by fusing a noun ending (like -ism, -ity, or -ness) onto a verb or an adjective. The irony is that the name nominalization is in itself a zombie noun, isn't it?! Here is Ms. Sword's definition: "Nouns formed from other parts of speech are called nominalizations. Academics love them; so do lawyers, bureaucrats and business writers. I call them “zombie nouns” because they cannibalize active verbs, suck the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings." Wonderful!

This is your warning to steer clear of the zombies and viva active verbs! Or, if you like the living dead, join the comment conversation below to make a few new blood-sucking zombies...

Ebonics and ESL?

     I just read an article called "Watch Your Language" in the most recent edition of Sarah Lawrence College's magazine entitled The Will to Live. Because the college emphasizes and practices teaching through small group lectures, the magazine often features an article based on a partial transcript of the roundtable discussion that takes place between students and professor. This one particularly interested me because it takes on the issue of the Oakland, CA school board's decision to recognize Ebonics, or in linguistic terms African American Vernacular English, as a language, making speakers of Ebonics ESL students in that district.
     Since many of you out there who read my blog are fellow Sarah Lawrence graduates for whom this type of dialogue is natural and/or linguists, translators, and language instructors who thrive on matters of the tongue, I thought that it would be brain candy to get a discussion going. I have posted the short two-page article here for you to read, as well as links to the Sarah Lawrence magazine website. Read up if you're interested. Then, post your ideas here. Are Ebonics and English distinct languages? Is it appropriate to educate Ebonics speakers as ESL students?

Mosey On Home

You always say walk. Why not use stroll, amble, wander, meander, mosey, march, trudge, saunter, or stride? English is pretty wonderful in its richness and nuance. Do you appreciate the fact that we can differentiate between walking confidently and walking with a purpose without using a single adjective?! I do. Spanish offers us several options as well; for example, you can caminar, patear, recorrer, pasear, or marchar. Today I challenge you refresh and broaden the range of words you employ. Let's ditch our habitual words and phrases and challenge our brains and tongues. Add some synonyms to my list in either English or Spanish...or get a new one going!

Cake-tastrophe!

    As you know, yesterday I wrote about people using poor spelling in their routine on- and off-line correspondence and on their social spaces like Facebook and Twitter. It made me remember a book I saw years ago at a friend's house called Cake Wrecks, which you can check out here. The author is Jen Yates, and I found her blog, Cake Wrecks, which is just as hilarious and pithy as that book I flipped through. 

     Translation often involves working in conjunction with transcribers, and I have often found myself in the position of having to interpret what a transcriber has written due to spelling or other mistakes that happen in the process of transcribing. These cakes are a really funny testament to the cake decorator's role as a part-decorator, part-transcriber (all courtesy of cakewrecks.com). I only wish that these bakeries had had a translator or an editor to catch their terrible transcriptions and spelling and punctuation mishaps!

Dose spilling rilly mater?

Poor grammar and spelling mistakes are two things that I am apt to notice right off the bat. Even my fiancé, who isn't nearly as nit-picky or sensitive to language variation as I am, complains rather frequently about how often he encounters spelling errors in his day-to-day business and personal correspondence. Why is this? Have we gotten so lazy about communication and taken our casual  channels of communication, like email, twitter, Facebook, and IM, to such an extreme that we don't even care if our language is correct as long as it is communicative.
     Most of us have seen this well-circulated example of how our brains can comprehend a passage even if every word is spelled incorrectly: "Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."
     It is an interesting cognitive ability, yet when we refer to it in terms of the importance of spelling, you must take into account the many years of schooling we have all had to get to where we are now. If we didn't already have a solid knowledge of spelling, would we still be able to comprehend the passage above? If we all forsake spelling rules and begin writing carelessly, will our English still be the same language in a few generations?
      I read an article today on FinancialTimes.com called If You Want a Job, Learn Your It's and Its. It's an extremely interesting article that I'd suggest you read. The author, Michael Skapinker, quotes several employers who claim that they would not hire someone who made spelling errors such as confusing "it's" with "its" or "they're" for "there" or "their." These employers are skeptical about such a person's ability to pay attention to details on other tasks, as well as the cause of their inability to straighten these problems out in the twenty plus years prior to seeking work at the companies in question.
     As a translator, I am a writer and a lover of language, so spelling errors often feel like garlic to my inner writer vampire. Maybe we can raise awareness and help some people correct their "your" and "you're" usage! Okay, probably not, but at least we can laugh! Besides the few examples I mentioned here, what are some of the other most frustratingly common spelling mistakes (in English or Spanish) that you see around? Comment below and let's get a conversation and a good laugh going!

What Are Your Tips for Higher Productivity?

Image courtesy of Boaz Yiftach / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

     Sometimes it can be challenging to be productive. There. I admitted it. But, I know I am not alone. We all strive to be better, faster, and more productive, but it can be a challenge when there are people chatting nearby and distracting you, the person in the cubicle next door keeps asking you questions, or Facebook keeps calling you back with its siren call and tempting you to either cyberdrop (that's my new term for eavesdropping on the internet) or barrage your friends with TMI. As an independent freelancer who works from a home office, some of those distractions can be equally powerful, though different, for example: the unwashed dishes in the sink (and then after that the vacuuming that kinda needs to be done), kids, and the long open hours of...self management. With all of that in mind, I thought I would throw a few thoughts out about the strategies I use to help keep my nose to the ground (What am I, a dog?! Don't answer that.). That being said, I would really love it if you add your comments to the site below the article, or send them via email so I can add them.

Tip #1: Dress for success...but make sure success feels good.

I have heard that you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and I really love that concept. No matter how much we wish it were different, how we look and what we wear has an influence not only on how others perceive us, but also on how we feel and how productive we are. So, it's a fantastic idea to look great for work. However, if all you can think about is the blisters on your feet from those heels or how tight the waistband is on your dress trousers, that is not a good precursor for productivity. Make sure that you look great and also feel great so that you can focus on what needs to get done. Even if nobody else is going to see you because you work from home and conduct most of your business via the internet, it is really important that you get up and get dressed and feel like the successful entrepreneur that you are. As far as I know, nobody who is not an athlete ever achieved greatness in sweatpants.

Tip #2: Drink a lot of Water.

I sometimes have to try hard to remember to drink enough water throughout the day, not only because I know it is one of the best things I can do for my body, but also because I really believe that it helps me get my work done. If I try to sit at my desk for hours on end and bang out a lot of work, it can often be tiring and counterproductive. Yet if I am drinking water all day and taking frequent but short trips to the restroom, I feel hydrated and I have a chance to get up and stretch my legs and give my brain a two-minute break, which makes it easier to focus when I get back to my desk.

Tip #3: Work on One Thing at a Time.

I always get into trouble when I try to do too many things at once. I feel overloaded, and that can be almost paralyzing. I find it useful to focus on just one thing at a time. A useful tool for doing that is making lists with realistic tasks. For example, "get more clients" is not a realistic task, but "email the two new leads I got" is.

Tip #4: Separate Work Space for Work.

Mixing work with personal distractions doesn't work well. We all know which one usually wins. So, if you work at home, keep your office, or at least your desk, and your working hours sacred. Do not let personal business creep in. Likewise, in the office, don't make your office or desk a chatter zone or else you and you colleagues will be chattering all day. Use your work space for work, and when you just have to share a story, do it during a break time in a separate location like the office kitchen or outside.

I hope some of those tips were useful to you in some way, and if you are still reading, thank you! Go to the comment box below and add a note for me and my readers. Then...get back to work!

Reactions to the ATA Conference in San Diego

     What did I do last weekend? Thanks for asking! I was able to attend the American Translators Association's annual conference on Saturday, October 27. Unfortunately I couldn't attend the event every day, but Saturday was well worth it. I felt like this was a very fun and valuable experience, so I wanted to share my reactions.

8:30-9:30 Essential Anatomy and Physiology for Judiciary Interpreters by Jennifer de la Cruz

I am not primarily an interpreter, yet I found this presentation to be very well structured, well presented, and interesting. I am currently finishing up my translation certificate at UCSD and working on a medical specialty, so it was interesting to compare the presenter's experiences and the information she gave us with the content of the course I am currently in. I feel like I learned a few great tips and a lot of good medical terminology. Jennifer de la Cruz also followed up immediately with the emailed materials she promised.

10:00-11:00 Creating a Website for Your Translation/Interpreting Business by Tess Whitty

This was another very good session. Tess Whitty executed a very nice presentation. I felt like I had figured a lot of it out on my own already, but I was glad to know that this is one of the websites that she recommends! I also took a few of her suggestions to heart, which you'll see in a few changes I have already made and planned to make to this website.

11:30-12:30 My Tijuana Family by Rogelio Camacho

 My favorite session! It was so FUN! The entire hour was devoted to Mexican slang, and Rogelio Camacho talked about each term and its meaning and context while we jotted down the English equivalents. It was fast, lively, and super interesting, and I now know that Abuelita de Batman! means Heck yeah! in Tijuana.

2:00-3:15 Machine Translation in Practice by Mike Dillinger

A couple of colleagues/friends and I decided to check this session out to see what the whole machine translation scene is about. Overall I found the presenter to be very knowledgeable and he did a superb job. It was nice to broaden my horizons a bit because I didn't even really know what post-editing was until after this session.

3:45-5:00 Improving Your Negotiation and Communication Skills as a Freelancer by Ioana Radoi

This was my second highlight of the day. I loved Ioana's style of deeply involving the audience. It turned into a sort of forum in which many different professionals in different stages of their careers shared tips with each other about getting work, pricing, and so much more. It was extremely informative, interesting, and fun!