«Reenviar: Actividad READING CLUB BI». He de reconocer que abrí el correo electrónico con gran curiosidad. BI, ¿qué querría decir? ¿de qué me suena? ¿Un club de bislama, el idioma, en su abreviatura ISO 639-1? ¿Sobre bismuto, el elemento? ¿Sobre Bussiness Intelligence, el concepto? ¿Del Bachillerato Internacional, pero sería mezclar idiomas?

Pero no. Estas preguntas son las de la calma de una segunda impresión. Lo primero que pensé fue: ¿Cómo? ¿un club de lectura bi? Claro que al abrir el mensaje me encontré con un mensaje del programa de la Bolsa de Idiomas del Espacio Joven de Cartagena y su simpático logo-bocadillo, el que vemos arriba, y no la bandera que yo esperaba encontrar (abajo).

Quizá sirva como ejemplo para ilustrar por qué es importante estudiar cómo tu marca va a sonarle a la gente (lo que en inglés se conoce como disaster check, aquí un buen artículo en CNN Money, aquí un lector). Es un servicio que estamos empezando a ofrecer en Matiz y que llamamos consultoría lingüística de marketing, vamos, por no confundir más al personal. En resumen, se estudia uno (o por lo general, diez o doce) nombres y lemas posibles por idioma (para evitar casos como el de Mitsubishi Pajero) y se presenta un informe detallado con recomendaciones.

Ahora en serio, si estáis en Cartagena y queréis practicar idiomas, quizá os interese. Van a leer:

• Inglés: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
  
• Francés: L’élégance du hérisson
• Alemán: Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee
• Español: Crímenes Imperceptibles, conocido ahora como Los crímenes de Oxford (premio Mandarache, por cierto, que entregó Álex de la Iglesia a Guillermo Martínez allá por el 2006)

Os iba a librar de leerlo, pero ya que yo lo he sufrido, os pongo la lista original:

Ingles: The boy in striped pyjamas
Frances: Lélegance du herisson
Aleman: Am Kürsen ende der sonnenallee
Español: Crimenes Imperceptibles

Más datos, en cualquier caso, en la página de la UPCT. Ahora, si eres valiente de verdad ve este jueves 28 de febrero a las 22:30 a Dolce (Alameda de San Antón, 36, 30205 Cartagena). Hay un karaoke de disfraces en varios idiomas también organizado por el Bi. Para que luego digan que en Cartagena no hay nada que hacer.
Y si lo que queréis es formar un Reading Club Bi de verdad, hoy publica 20 minutos que en Murcia ha abierto la sexta librería de España con literatura, películas y cómics para gays, lesbianas y bisexuales. Al parecer es la cuarta ciudad tras Madrid, Barcelona y Bilbao. Lo que no te dice es la calle. Tras mucho buscar entre el lenguaje sms de Planeta Murciano, llorando sangre he averiguado que no sólo está en el barrio de Santa Eulalia, sino en la calle del Ítaca: esto es, Mariano Vergara, 17, esquina con Obispo Frutos.

En la foto, Juan Sánchez, socio de Encuentros junto con Puri Lorca. En la versión en papel está más sonriente y se ven cómics de Ralf König… qué nostalgia de Colonia. :-)

I am always interested in those working on or about the tools we use everyday. As translators, we do not get to pick our document format of choice. Wouldnt life be easier if people used compatible formats? Ah, Utopia, we are walking towards you…

Let me introduce this (very witty) short article my friend Manuel López-Ibáñez has written on the subject. He is currently pursuing a PhD thesis at the School of the Built Environment of Napier University in Edinburgh (UK).
Feel free to agree, comment (or even disagree!) in the comments section. It is moderated exclusively to get rid of spam.
Microsoft’s new trap: don’t get caught!

Perhaps you have heard of a free (both free as beer and free as
speech) office suite called OpenOffice [1]. For those who haven’t, in
short, OpenOffice is like Word, Excel and Powerpoint but different.

Apart from being software libre [2] and gratis, another interesting
feature of OpenOffice is that its document formats are standardized. A
document format describes how a document (like a presentation) is
saved in your hard drive. For a program to read your presentation and
show it in your screen, it must perfectly understand the
presentation’s format. OpenOffice uses a format that its based on a
cool and modern technology called XML.

The very best bit is that the OpenOffice XML format is an
international standard called the *OpenDocument* format. Being an
international standard means that the complete description of the
format is publicly available and everybody is welcome to use this
description in its own software. Actually, it is encouraged that you
follow exactly the description, otherwise you should not say that your
program handles OpenDocument formats.

On the other hand, Word, Excel and Powerpoint are closed, proprietary,
non-standard formats. Only Microsoft knows how they work. If you want
your program to use those formats, you have to pay Microsoft to see
the description and sign a document stating that you are not going to
make public that information before the hell freezes, and perhaps not
even after that. Microsoft may decide that they don’t like your
program (or you, or your country), and refuse to give you the
description of Word documents. Your only chance is to “guess” how Word
documents work. And it is amazingly difficult to guess such things.
And yet, OpenOffice is able to handle Word documents almost perfectly.

Moreover, nobody knows what is going on in a Word document: you may
think that you have deleted something but it might be just hidden
there. This last part may sound conspiracy mumbo-jumbo. Or theoretical
things that never happen in practice [3]. Go tell Alastair Campbell
[4]. All these cases have been discovered by people while trying to
guess how Microsoft formats work. Microsoft knows exactly what is
going on and which information is hidden and how to recover it. That
any government is using such documents to transfer sensitive
information is just creepy.

For the reasons above, OpenDocument, the format used by OpenOffice and
many other programs, is very interesting. It is so interesting that
Microsoft didn’t want the name of the format to include the words
OpenOffice. So Microsoft lobbied the standards committee to change the
original name of “OpenOffice Document Format” into OpenDocument.
Well, this doesn’t actually seem such an evil thing to do, does it? It
is a standard format. It would be nice to honor their inventors, that
is, OpenOffice but it is also fine if the name is not associated to
any particular program, since anybody is welcome to use it.

Interestingly, Microsoft is going to change its document formats for
Microsoft Office 2007 and they have decided to also use XML
technology. But instead of using the standard OpenDocument format,
Microsoft is going to use their own closed, non-standard format:
Office Open XML I actually needed to read this again to fully grasp
it:

1) Microsoft lobbied to change the name of the public standard format
from Open Office format to OpenDocument. This is the format used by
Open Office suite of programs.
2) Microsoft’s new closed, non-standard format will be called Office Open.

If you still don’t get it, don’t worry, That is precisely the point
[5]. To confuse people so they are tricked to say things like “Word
uses an open format” (no, it uses a format called Office Open that is
actually closed) or “Open Office is a format supported by Word” (no,
Office Open is the non-standard format supported by Microsoft. Open
Office uses the standard format OpenDocument).

Don’t let Microsoft mock you or your friends. Don’t get caught in
Microsoft’s trap [6].

[1] http://www.openoffice.org/
[2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#translations
[3] http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MSECP.2004.1281241

This article has been published under a CC Attribution-ShareAlike [*] license.

[*] http://creativecommons.org/license/results-one?q_1=2&q_1=1&field_commercial=yes&field_derivatives=sa&field_jurisdiction=&field_format=Text&field_worktitle=Microsoft%27s+new+trap%3A+don%27t+get+caught%21&field_description=&field_creator=M.+L%C3%B3pez-Ib%C3%A1%C3%B1ez&field_copyrightholder=M.+L%C3%B3pez-Ib%C3%A1%C3%B1ez&field_year=2006&field_sourceurl=&lang=en-us&language=en-us&n_questions=3

]]> http://blog.bmartinez.com/index.php/2006/10/09/guest-post-manuel-lopez-ibanez-on-document-formats/feed/ 0 http://blog.bmartinez.com/index.php/2006/04/14/visionary-business-allen/ http://blog.bmartinez.com/index.php/2006/04/14/visionary-business-allen/#comments Fri, 14 Apr 2006 22:35:37 +0000 Bego http://blog.bmartinez.com/?p=7

(Una versión de este artículo en español)

In class they have recommended us this book, Visionary Business. It has been tremendously useful for me (except for the last chapter, which deals with the author’s personal utopia). It has helped me imagine my business model. You can read the beginning in Amazon.

One of the things I really liked is the concept that there is actually a way to balance business and personal life (i.e. happiness). What I didn’t like is the paternalistic tone of the final, utopian chapters. But it is definitely worth a read, as the author (bless his heart) kept it really short.

Visionary Business: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Success, by Marc Allen.

First of all, congratulations to María (one of our partners) who yesterday got a very promising job. I am particularly proud of this fact because I helped her with her CV. Hey, that’s a 100% success rate (three out of three) :-)

So, about our lessons… we have spent our last two sessions speaking about SWOT analysis: Strenghts, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is said to be a very simple approach to marketing strategy, but in my opinion it is proving to be a very good starting point into evaluating our idea.

To do a SWOT analysis, you fill in a form like this one (you can find ten different SWOT examples here)

(Another interesting page I found is about the AIDMA Law).

Our tasks for next week include finishing this SWOT analysis (in Spanish, DAFO, Debilidades, Amenazas, Fortalezas, Oportunidades) and writing the introduction to our business plan. A skype meeting is in order!

Hello everyone!

This is our first post to our shiny new WordPress company blog. Yesterday we had our first lesson (course planning and marketing), our first step into what hopefully will become a (not only) translation agency. This lessons come in five hour sessions with a thirty minute intermission, so do not expect me to sum up everything said everyday because we would be here, well, all day.

Let me introduce myself: my name is Begoña. Friends and people without the letter ñ in their keyboards call me Bego. I am a translator and interpreter living in Cartagena. Of course, I cannot pass this opportunity of introducing you to my daughter Lucía. María and Marina (at the moment, the other 66.66…% of this project) will also hopefully be posting here in the near future.
So, without further ado…

Lesson one: Marketing basics

In our first lesson, we learn that the purpose of marketing is identifying and satisfying needs (In Spanish: identificar y satisfacer necesidades). Historically, companies have focused their efforts on either production (just produce, produce, produce), product (we create the best x), sales (just sell, sell, sell) or marketing (we study the market and act accordingly). Here you have a very interesting summary of what was said about marketing, and I suspect of what will be said today (more or less) (you just have to love Google).

The challenging sentence of the day:

If you want your business to survive, you have to base your marketing policies in human needs instead of in specific products or services.

So, what is the human need behind the translation/interpreting market? I think the answer is communication. What about you? The floor is open.