Atlas Newsletter – December 2008
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First of all, A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! from the Atlas Team, who would also like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for all the hard work completed in 2008!
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Please note our Christmas closing dates – Our offices close on Tuesday 23 December 2008 at 4pm and re-open on Monday 05 January 2009 at 9am.
Question of the month! Test yourself with our December question: What is the most widely spoken language of the world? (answer can be found at the bottom of the newsletter).
Voice to Picture Workshop
Atlas is pleased to announce that it is hosting a “voice to picture” voiceover course on Saturday 7th February 2009. The company has teamed up once again with a long-established, professional voiceover artist who has more than 20 years of experience and is an experienced trainer. His career in voice-overs began with a contract with the BBC World Service, where he learnt to become a translator and broadcaster, practising every day for five years.
He has recorded thousands of hours of narration for documentaries, corporate videos, training material and language courses, mainly in French but also in English, Italian, German and even Spanish, which he started to learn at evening classes! The aim of the course is to provide technical and practical experience and advice, working with studio equipment and to picture. This would benefit anyone who has attended Absolute Beginners, or who may have some limited experience they would like to build on. For more information or to book a place, please contact Sara on sara @ atlas-translations.co.uk.
Here is what an attendee from our trainer’s previous successful courses thought:
“You began the workshop with some breathing exercises that would help us before a voice-over, to relax, open up our chests and let us project our voices properly. You also taught us other exercises … I found your comments extremely useful and constructive... a good sense of humour and that always helps to create a relaxing atmosphere and loosen inhibitions.”
Translation is “the language of Europe”
The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and the Commissioner for multilingualism, Leonard Orban, invited sixteen well known European translators, writers, publishers and literary critics from different countries to a lunch-debate on translation and culture on the 6th November in Brussels.The event focused mainly on translation as the key to dialogue between cultures and the intellectual connection between small and big countries.
"I believe that translation is one of the expressions of multi-lingualism. A society is multi-lingual not only when its citizens can speak several languages, but also when its languages keep constant communication through translation. Translation is a continuous negotiation between the author, the translator and the reader. In Europe, we know that very well, because negotiation is the very essence of the fact that we are together."
Commissioner for multi-lingualism, Leonard Orban
This lunch-debate is the first step of a two-stage initiative by the European Commission to be completed in April 2009. The target is to promote multi-lingualism as a tool for social cohesion and as a way of helping European companies prosper and strengthen bridges with the rest of the world.
Answer to December question: Mandarin Chinese!
A national survey, commissioned by the geographic technology company ESRI UK, found that most people did not know the answer to our December question. The poll of 2,000 adults, which was undertaken to mark Geography Awareness Week, revealed that more than half (51%) of the people questioned, wrongly believe that English is the most widely spoken language of the world, while just over a third (37%), correctly identified it as Mandarin Chinese.
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Dr Rita Gardner, Director of the Royal Geographical Society, said:
"The poll raises some questions about how engaged people are with the many geographical issues in the wider world and about geographical factual knowledge. Good geographical knowledge and skills are vital for all of us, as responsible citizens, if we are to fully understand the nature of change in the world's people, places and environments."
Guess who?
Earlier on this month, Atlas had a surprise visit! After a couple of guesses, the Atlas Project Managers discovered this surprise visitor to be one of the company’s much-valued Spanish translators, Mark Guscin. Atlas is always happy to receive visitors.
“We all know that without Internet translation would be so much slower, if not impossible for those of us who live outside the UK, although this inevitably leads to a somewhat impersonal working relationship. On my way back from a congress in Canada, therefore, I stopped over in London and made time to visit the Atlas offices, where I was warmly received by Anna, Natalia, Agnieszka, Sara, Vicky and Jessica. We had a cup of tea and a chat and it makes it so much easier and that much nicer to work with people when you know what they look like (I am not sure if they feel the same about me ....). Thanks to everyone in the Atlas team!”
Mark Guscin
Of course we do Mark. It was fun guessing who you were!
Thank you for your interest in the Atlas monthly newsletters. We welcome your feedback and ideas for future articles. See you next year!
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Anna Davies or Clare Suttie
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