Requirements:

- University degree in translation or a related field

- Minimum of three years’ experience in translation

- Excellent organizational skills and superior written communication skills

- Ability to work under pressure and meet tight deadlines

- Ability to work closely with others

- Copywriting experience a significant asset

Main tasks:

- Translating texts from French to English in such fields as entertainment/events, fashion, gastronomy, marketing, tourism, and travel

- Proofreading and editing English texts and translations

- Conducting terminology research

- Acting as an English language reference for our translators and clients

Send your resume to emploi@syllabus.ca. Only the candidates selected for a written test and interview will be contacted. Please do not call for information. Communications Syllabus is committed to diversity and equity.

Please know that I am not one of those translators who holes up in an office with my nose in a book. Au contraire, I consider myself quite social and I try desperately to keep up with the times, although my two nearing-double-digits children serve as daily reminders that my slang is getting rusty (read: archaic). Here was my chance; the package guaranteed that I would “Get hip in mere days!”

Getting straight to it

Feeling quite confident that we were already quite hip, my colleague Sabrina and I decided to test ourselves, i.e., take a stab at defining the terms before flipping the cards to reveal the definition. The first term: muggin’. Yeah, I didn’t know that one. Up next: salt. Naturally my proposal was the not-so-slang definition found in the dictionary. Alas the term has—according to the flashcard and seconded by Sabrina—since taken on another meaning. As you have probably already guessed, my colleague (who is almost ten years my junior, in my defence) pwned me. I did however recognize the word kicks, saving me from total mortification.

But it makes you wonder where—or with whom—you have to hang to speak street? The high school caf would be my guess. Singing “shorty this” and “shorty that,” Sabrina suggested I listen to more hip-hop or “young” music, like the stuff playing at the clubs (and she wasn’t referring to the 80s bars that my generation frequents).

Don’t waste your time looking in Gage or Oxford for these coinages; something tells me the majority of them will fizzle out before ever warranting inclusion. And what about a word like pwn—that isn’t even pronounceable and that, in this case, evolved from a typo . . . does it really have a place among all the conventional English terms? It would be like including LOL, but that’s another can of worms altogether.

If it offers any consolation, when some guy comments on your badonkadonk, or invites you to check out his whip, you can get his gist with a quick Google search or go straight to urbandictionary.com. Or you could always do as I did and get yourself a deck of Slang Flashcards for a quick lesson and a good laugh.

Now if only I could find a way to slip these words into my translations . . .

Introduction

Since 1990, the Translation Group – Rx&D has published a quarterly terminology bulletin, Pharmaterm*. Each 4-page issue generally tackles one terminology problem and is written by a person familiar with the subject. The draft articles are reviewed by peers. Anybody can suggest a topic for an article. A cumulative index is published every two years.

Distribution

All issues and a cumulative index are available at no charge on this site. There is no subscription.

Today, Sabrina’s fight has shifted gears! She’s raising money for the Segal Cancer Centre of Montréal’s Jewish General Hospital—a place she became all-too-familiar with throughout her courses of chemotherapy. On July 10 and 11, she’ll be slipping on the spandex and pedalling 300 km from Montréal to Quebec City in the Ride to Conquer Cancer.

What’s the price of gold? $2,500. Get her to the podium by clicking here!

So much for thinking it was just a brand name! Suddenly I’m questioning what went into the Orange Julep I loved so much as a kid . . .

(Photo: Steve Brandon)

Her personal page: http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?SID=2194899

Louis Ménard and Antoni Dandonneau’s new Dictionary of Derivatives and Other Financial Instruments has arrived!

The Autorité des marchés financiers and the ‘Ordre des comptables agréés du Québec are launching the Dictionary of Derivatives and Other Financial Instruments, a bilingual dictionary comprising 734 definitions available simultaneously in English and French. Notable features: synonyms, related topics, and comparisons between different concepts and terms.

The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA)’s translation department was hired in July 2009 to translate the International Financial Reporting Standards for the International Accounting Standards Board. The CICA was also expected to complete the translation of the Canadian Auditing Standards in December 2009, at which point it would begin translating the international version—available online on the International Federation of Accountants’ Web site.

You can access it via the new Language Portal of Canada.

Hurray!