Over at the Translators and Interpreters (ProZ.com) Facebook Group, there are plans for a series of weekly posts introducing you to the people behind ProZ.com. Some of them you may have come across, while others have remained in the shadows… until now! In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll get to know all of them in turn. This is our fifth profile.
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It’s winter in Finnsnes, Northern Norway. Some days it gets so cold, (minus 33 degrees anyone?), your glasses freeze over the moment you step outside – the clean, fresh Arctic Circle air searing into your lungs. There are fifty shades of snow: capping the distant mountains, stacking up in drifts at the side of the road, crunching as cars pass, or crisp underfoot. Kids can be seen skiing to school, women kick-sledding to work, and the odd granny has even been spotted whizzing to the doctor’s on a snow scooter.
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Over at the Translators and Interpreters (ProZ.com) Facebook Group, there are plans for a series of weekly posts introducing you to the people behind ProZ.com. Some of them you may have come across, while others have remained in the shadows… until now! In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll get to know all of them in turn. This is our fourth profile.
It all begins with a classic story, back in 1996: guy meets girl (she’s a foreign exchange student in high school), takes a gap year, travels from his native Utah to be with her in Argentina, breaks up with her. But along the way he gets to know the language and the culture, and ends up staying. Every year, he tells himself “Next year I’ll go back”, but next year never comes, and it’s now been well over 20 years. Jared Tabor’s Spanish is of course now fluent, with more than a hint of Argentinian accent.
Throw open the window and the air is spiced with the aroma of freshly fried Ta’amya (the Egyptian Falafel) and Ful (fava beans stewed in tomato sauce), overlaid with less attractive but equally persistent topnotes of household rubbish, in both the poorest and the richest districts of Cairo.
The streets are clogged with honking traffic, inching its way through the noisy, boisterous city. At times it feels the only way to escape and gulp in mouthfuls of fresh air is to head down to the majestic Nile.
It's against this background, in the upmarket middle-class district of Nasr City, that 29 year-old Norhan Mahmoud plies her trade as a translator and interpreter between Arabic and English.
Over at the Translators and Interpreters (ProZ.com) Facebook Group, there are plans for a series of weekly posts introducing you to the people behind ProZ.com. Some of them you may have come across, while others have remained in the shadows… until now! In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll get to know all of them in turn. This is our third profile.
Originally Lu Leszinsky wanted to help people through becoming a doctor and working for Doctors without Borders. But life took a different turn, via a move to live on her own, aged just 17, followed by a degree in translation in La Plata, near Buenos Aires, where ProZ.com has an office. Medicine’s loss is our gain!
I’m sure there are less dramatic ways of taking a fresh look at your life than having a heart attack, (as happened to me last week), but unfortunately we aren’t always offered a choice.
It casts just about everything in a new light, but for obvious reasons, the main effect is to make you consider your lifestyle in terms of health.
Because we’re freelancers, without the safety net of most long-term employees, we’re particularly vulnerable, making it all the more important to focus – if just for a little while – on some key issues.
Over at the Translators and Interpreters (ProZ.com) Facebook Group, there are plans for a series of weekly posts introducing you to the people behind ProZ.com. Some of them you may have come across, while others have remained in the shadows… until now! In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll get to know all of them in turn.
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In part 1 of Henry's story, we saw how a moment in the company of Mona Lisa sparked a flash of inspiration that led to some research which resulted in a dream…
Among the many benefits of ProZ.com Plus membership is the chance to take part in the Translation Mastermind group on Facebook. It’s an established community of professionals who enjoy sharing ideas and tips about translation, in a completely troll-free atmosphere. It’s into its fourth year now, an independent entity, but sponsored by ProZ.com from Day 1.
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Over at the Translators and Interpreters (ProZ.com) Facebook Group, there are plans for a series of weekly posts introducing you to the people behind ProZ.com. Some of them you may have come across, while others have remained in the shadows… until now! In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll get to know all of them in turn.
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When most of us are faced with change, or a new set of circumstances, we adapt in small ways, work round the new developments, try not to let them upset our routines too much. But there are some people who look at exactly the same situation and see the potential for a different reality altogether, even a way to change the world.
In 1995, a young freelance translator called
Henry Dotterer was just about to leave his job at
Motorola in Japan and take a trip around the world
when one day his co-worker said: “Come here, I want to show you something. It’s called the Internet”.
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On Wednesday 4th September 2019, twelve translators (one of whom arrived after this photo and one of whom was holding the camera!) met in the outdoor pergola of the fine Vista Corona restaurant in Barceloneta, the leisure and marina area of Barcelona, in one of the ProZ.com 20th anniversary powwows!
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