The 2nd International Media for All Conference – Text on screen, text on air,

aims to bring together professionals, scholars, practitioners and other interested parties to explore audiovisual translation (AVT) in theory and practice, discuss its linguistic and cultural dimensions, and investigate the relevance of translation theory for this very specific yet quickly expanding translational genre. It is also interested in initiatives promoting cooperation in AVT between the business and the educational worlds.

Special attention will be devoted to accessibility issues, since the conference organisers are especially interested in the progress being made in turning today’s elitist information society into an information society “for all”. Markets worldwide are changing fast, with distribution policies and strategies being shaped by political decisions and economic factors beside audience expectations and needs. Contributions investigating the social and economic implications of making accessibility an a priori fact of life rather than a necessary evil are therefore welcome.

Through papers, panels, and round-table discussions dealing with such issues, we hope to be able to promote new perspectives, reflecting and anticipating the developments of our rapidly changing times.

Text on screen, text on air will take place in Leiria and it will be the first AVT and accessibility conference ever in Portugal.

The 2 day conference (8–9 Nov) will be preceded by one day of optional Workshops (7 Nov).

A Forum on AVT Research will be held on the evening of 7 November. This is an open space for people who are interested in academic research in AVT for the discussion of issues such as finding a research topic, structuring a research project, finding funding, writing a PhD dissertation, pursuing postdoctoral studies, publishing academic papers, running for prizes and obtaining scholarships.

URL:www.transmediaresearchgroup.com/mediaforall.html

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

(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.

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.