THE TRANSLATOR’S PRAYER

O Reviser which art unbearable,

Pitiless be Thy rigour.

Thy fall shall come

Thy will shall be ignored,

On Earth as it is in Heaven.

Yield on this day

Before our objections of every day

And forgive us our mistranslations,

As we forgive your atrocities.

Let us not succumb to the temptation

Of taking advantage of TERMIUM

Instead of using the library,

But deliver us from gallicisms.

For Thy word is law

For ever and ever,

Amen.

        When using a search engine, the most difficult problem to solve is the huge amount of results you get and the importance to be granted to them.

        As a matter of fact, the efficiency of a search engine is mainly due to its ability of listing the results of our search giving the higher rank to the most important topics found.

        In addition to that, its efficiency is also shown by its capacity of interpreting our query, which is a very difficult side of the job, as it is an automatic mechanism, not a human being endowed with intelligence.

 (Seneca - De Brevitate Vitae)

 
 What's a freelance translator

             A common and widespread assumption among those who are not familiar with this job is that being a freelancer implies more freedom of movement than working as an employee. In practice, you can work 'when' and 'if' you decide to.

Funny mistranslations.

Thailand: an ad for donkey rides asked "Would you like to ride on your own ass?"

Even big companies make huge mistakes while translating into foreign languages. Check out how Coca-Cola and KFC mistranslated their brand names to Chinese.