News for Translators March 2021

Big news in the translation world recently was the annual CIOL DipTrans exam. This postgraduate-level qualification was held on Tuesday 19 January, with candidates able to sit the exam online this year for the first time. Don’t miss this article by one of our students, Helen Gräwert, about this year’s exam and the online option.

The pandemic hasn’t just affected how people sit the DipTrans this year, it’s even changed our vocabulary. Oxford Languages, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary has foregone its usual Word of the Year campaign for a report entitled Words of an Unprecedented Year. You won’t be surprised to read that entries include pandemic, lockdown and stay-at-home.

Have you heard of using voice recognition software in your translations? It can increase your productivity and even help improve posture. Translator Claire Cox has a great post on her blog where she talks about upgrading to the latest version of Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software and how she uses it with Trados. She has some really interesting insights into how it works with Trados and MemoQ. So, if you’re thinking of investing in one CAT tool or the other, it’s well worth a read before taking the plunge and making that (sizeable) investment.

For those interested in the literary option in the DipTrans exam and literary translation or if you just want to read more in Spanish, check out the New Spanish Books 2020 selection. It aims to promote Spanish literature in the United States, with a panel made up of experts including translators, agents, librarians, professors, authors, editors and publishers. The New Spanish Books selection for this year highlights the best works in Spanish from 205 titles. You can find the finalists here.

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