Atlas Translations: About Atlas

Atlas Newsletter – October 2008

Atlas goes back to school

This month, Atlas Project Manager, Natalia, went to visit St Marks CoE Academy as part of the school’s European Day of Languages and Quality Manager, Anna, went to the Careers Convention at Brentwood County High School.

Both schools are secondary schools, which Atlas decided to visit, with the aim of encouraging the children to continue learning foreign languages and to emphasise the importance of different languages within our society. During the visits, Anna and Natalia also talked to students about the services that Atlas offers and the kind of work that the company is involved in.

Later this month, Anna will also be travelling to Swansea University, where she will hold a talk for translation students on the realities of working as a translator or project manager. She will also explain what translation companies expect from their translators. This talk follows on from the success of her visit last year, from which she received extremely positive feedback from students and staff alike.

Remember, remember the 5th November

The Atlas team are looking forward to the upcoming Open Day on 5th November with great anticipation…

The event will be held at a venue in Covent Garden, London, from 10am to 4pm.
It will give suppliers the opportunity to pop in, meet the team and socialise with fellow translators. The Atlas team will be on hand to greet guests and answer questions. Refreshments will be provided throughout the day. We hope to see you there!

Comings and goings at Atlas

Atlas would like to wish a very warm welcome to new work placement student Vicky, who recently joined the company for a three month placement. Vicky graduated from university this summer with a BA degree in French and German.

Vicky says:

“I very much enjoyed studying translation as part of my course and see it as something I would like to do in the future. Atlas Translations is therefore the perfect place for me to learn more about the industry and, at the same time, it gives me great insight into the functioning of a translation agency.
When I first arrived, I was amazed by the range of services, in unlimited languages that such a small office is able to work with. However, it wasn't long before I was dealing with freelance translators, private clients, invoices and purchase orders.
I have particularly enjoyed proofreading translated documents, including articles on topics from current issues such as the Superbug MRSA, to the benefits of eating pomegranates - you learn something new every day!
These three months are already passing so quickly, my work varies every day and having a great team of staff and a friendly atmosphere in the office helps, of course. With this invaluable experience, I hope now to go on to become professionally qualified and start translating myself.”

Atlas would also like to say a big thank you to work placement, Nicola, who will be leaving at the end of the month –the staff will miss him greatly!

Of his time with the company, Nicola says:

“My work placement at Atlas represented my first real working experience and gave me a chance to explore a world that can't be taught from inside a classroom. I learnt a lot about an environment that I didn't know about beforehand, as well as the importance of efficiency and professionalism within the industry. It allowed me to develop my knowledge and understanding and gave me an inside view of how a company works and how to adapt my knowledge to this.
I am sure that these will be very valuable skills to have upon my return to university, and I believe the experience will enable me to investigate and understand the abilities that I have developed during the last three months.
I have had a very good time here - I found it to be a valuable and rewarding experience because it provided the opportunity to give some grounding to the knowledge and theories that I had previously learnt; also because witnessing the reality of the translation work environment first hand is something really extraordinary.
I'm sure my placement will have a very significant influence on my chosen career path and I highly recommend Atlas to any future work placements, as it can give a much more realistic perspective of how things work and I am sure that having a degree with a placement at Atlas will really help me to stand out from the crowd.”

Did you know….?

Atlas was recently asked to translate a song by a well-known Spanish singer.

-Can anyone guess who it is?

Atlas PMs learn to translate with Trados

Atlas members recently attended a Trados course to help keep them abreast of the latest in translation technology for the industry.

“The Trados course was run by one of our suppliers, Marie Lucchetta, and it was very helpful. Previously, I had always found Trados to be quite daunting and although I'd already attended a course and done some on-line seminars, I still considered myself to be a beginner. However, I walked away from this class feeling much more confident.

We covered some very interesting topics, such as how to use the tool WinAlign, which can be very useful for an experienced translator who has completed a number of translations but never used Trados before. WinAlign basically aligns the source and target texts of previous translations to create a translation memory that can then be used in a new and similar translation task.

I now believe that the difficulty of working with Trados actually lies at the beginning, when you first start using the software, but however daunting it may seem, you must persevere because when you get the hang of it, it can be extremely economical and you can use it to your advantage.”

Sara

“It was really interesting to see both sides of the translation process with Trados, the class gave us a much better insight into the technical problems that translators face when using this kind of translation software. It also gave a good overview of benefits and disadvantages of the tool for Project Managers. For example, we learnt that Trados can be quite tricky to work with at times, due to it being such a complex program.

The course was useful and gave advice specifically aimed at Project Managers, such as how to avoid corrupting translation files – an easy mistake to make, which can obviously lead to big problems.

The course turned out to be an extremely enjoyable day and taught us how to deal with the new era of translation software. This is important, because in a few years all professional translators and agencies will need to be able to use this software and understand its functionality.”

Natalia

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Anna Davies or Clare Suttie
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