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31st translation contest: "A translator's life" » English to Greek

Competition in this pair is now closed, and the winning entry has been announced.

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Source text in English

[...] Translators just didn't get recognition, they didn't expect to make much of a living, just get by. Very few people were actually trained as translators, but most had a solid college education and a solid knowledge of languages, at least their own language. I had a friend who fell exactly into that category and my circle of friends expanded to include other translators. I found them to be much more interesting as people, and discovered that we often had similar life experiences. I never had trouble making friends, but I always felt "different" and I'm sure they felt it too. When my friend retired, she recommended me as her replacement. I now entered the realm of Reinsurance, of which I knew nothing. I was also the only translator there, and didn't have much to fall back on. However, it was another notch up....

On my new job, I started looking through the files, asking questions and got the company to enroll me in Insurance courses. The College of Insurance was across the street, and I consulted fire codes, insurance policies and fire extinguisher catalogs in their library. I was learning what I had never had the luxury of being able to do before: research. The first time I had to translate a proposal for purposes of insurance of a nuclear plant, I got a call from the head man in that department, congratulating me on the job I had done. "Compares favorably with what we are used to," he said. What an upper! What happened was that I consulted a document in the files similar to the one I was tackling for guidance, but when I saw that my predecessor had used the word "nucleus" instead of "core", I realized that the files were useless to me. I went across the street to the library and looked up "nuclear plants." I immediately found all the terminology I needed.

It takes a great deal more than that to be a good translator these days, of course. [...]

The winning entry has been announced in this pair.

There were 7 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase. The winning entry was determined based on finals round voting by peers.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (7 total) Expand all entries

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Entry #36236 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Winner
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429 x43 x20
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Entry #35864 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Nick Lingris
Nick Lingris
United Kingdom
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355 x46 x23 x1
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Entry #34990 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
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296 x42 x21 x1
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Entry #36067 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
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91 x42 x21 x1
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Entry #35086 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
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3003 x1
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Entry #35752 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Modern
Konstantina Theodorakea (X)
Konstantina Theodorakea (X)
Norway
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301 x21 x1
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Entry #35186 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
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1001 x1
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