> 1) How 'polyglot' are you?
(jealous Au)
never ask a language person that sort of question :-)
I sort of find it vulgar when people claim they speak X languages (X from 2 to 200). Given that minority dialects now want recognition as real languages (we're entering the era of "communautarism"), and that "speak" ranges from knowing essential greetings to Phd mastery, I must more or less "speak" the hundreds of languages of Europe, center, east, south, and west, a patchwork of slavic, saxon, anglo, latin, gaelic, and all their offsprings. My blind spot is scandinavian languages, which of course I find fascinating.
My "pride" is that I learned a sub-group of Zulu by living with them afor a few months. The survival kit of course, from biological musts to diplomatic politeness. That's funny, something in me gives me away as a non-native speaker there, but I didn't figure it out yet. I'll get down there soon to learn a few more essentials.
> 2) Do you translate? (sorry if it seems stupid or obvious, just that I am curious about this one)
not anymore, but I train translators, both in private training sessions and at university, so I can keep contact. I swim in translation, though I don't drink it anymore. I occasionally do goodwill interpretation at community level whenever some guest with a funny language appears :-)
> 3) Do you improve your tools based on your own experience (related to question 2) or based on feedback you get from other translators?
always from experience, and then the new features are put to the test with a group of testers, who are all, without exception, real-world translators: wordfast_beta@yahoogroups.com
4) What about this statement «do not accept discounts for 100% matches»?
well, who made the statement? My advice would be the reverse: do not accept unpaid 100% matches, charge at the very least a revision rate (25% the translation), at the very least. I'd love to see the FIT or national bodies make recommendations on that direction... but I know it's difficult. There are no two translation projects that are smilar, some jobs are for publishing '(or human reading) and some are just for engineers' reference, whatever, so it's difficult anyway to edict rules. But when a translation aims at a high quality, 100% matches *must* all be carefully proofread, and that commands a salary of course.
> Thanks and have a
day!
you too and everyone down under!
- yves