Ayana Ishiyama always thought she wanted to be a journalist. Two years ago, when she left her hometown in northern Japan to study abroad in the US, she signed up for journalism courses and wrote articles for the school newspaper to sharpen up her English skills. But while she loved interviewing people and sharing their […]
Camille Martinez is a native English speaker who’s fluent in Spanish. In her career, she’s run a language school, worked in medical translation and interpreting, and even started a translation company. But in TED’s Open Translation Project, Martinez occupies a key role: English Language Coordinator. She is one of a handful of volunteers who help […]
It’s a piece of cake. You can’t put lipstick on a pig. Why add fuel to the fire? Idioms are those phrases that mean more than the sum of their words. As our TED Translator volunteers translate TED Talks into 116 languages (and counting), they’re often challenged to translate English idioms into their language. Which made […]
The Open Translation Project has a global family of over 18,000 volunteers. But for the Dekkers — living in Sde Warburg, Israel — the OTP family isn’t a figure of speech. They’ve made translating TED Talks into Hebrew a true family affair. Husband and wife Ido and Tal Dekkers have worked on more than 2,000 […]
By Kate Torgovnick May and Krystian Aparta Music is the universal language. So why, then, do so many songs get translated? Sometimes, bands adapt their lyrics into English to reach international audiences—which explains why so few of us can sing ABBA in the band members’ native Swedish. Other times, songs are adapted into local languages […]
What’s funny in one language isn’t necessarily funny in another. Maysoon Zayid’s “I got 99 problems … palsy is just one” presented many challenges for TED translators bringing the hilarious talk into their language. As she tells stories from her life as a Palestinian-American comedian with cerebral palsy, Zayid cracks with wordplay. For translators, it’s […]
“In this place, you can connect to people that have been drawn apart for years by nationalists and the war. You can put them together in the same room and … people are talking about the greater good.” This quote was recorded at the first regional Open Translation Project workshop held in Novi Sad, Serbia, […]
“I write sci-fi novels, because if I wrote a white paper nobody would read it,” Daniel Suarez told a panel of translators at TEDGlobal 2013. The science fiction author and drone activist was taking questions during his Skype Open Translation session, in which he described a dystopic–and all too believable–future dominated by autonomous lethal drones. His […]
TED Talks are available in 100 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese, thanks to the tireless work of our volunteer translators. So far, more than 10,000 volunteers have created upwards of 40,000 talk translations — and every week, the TED Blog brings you a Q&A with one of them. Today, meet Khalid Marbou. 1. Where do you […]
[ted id=1652]Regardless of what you might see on shows like Grey’s Anatomy, teaching surgery is very difficult. This is a fact that Dr. Steven Schwaitzberg stresses in today’s talk. Schwaitzberg, who spoke at TEDxBeaconStreet in November, is a pioneer in the field of minimally invasive surgery, which is less painful for patients and allows them […]
TED’s Open Translation Project: 9,000 translators, 88 languages, more than 29,000 volunteer-contributed translations of TEDTalks. In this video, you’ll hear from some of TED’s language volunteers about why they choose to translate TEDTalks for the world. Learn more: http://www.ted.com/translate
From the Atlantic, this fascinating essay on Google Translate at an interesting point in its growth: Last week Google Translate announced that it now has more than 200 million monthly users. As Alexis Madrigal noted, this means that Google is now translating as much in a day as all professional human translators combined complete in […]
TEDxSummit, 16 April – 20 April, 2012. Doha, Qatar. Photo: Kris Krüg At TEDxSummit we caught up with Ivana Korom to talk about translating and planning a TEDx event in Serbia. Ivana is a freelance trainer and educator from Novi Sad. When and why did you start translating for TED? I’ve been translating for two […]
TEDxSummit, 16 April – 20 April, 2012. Doha, Qatar. Photo: Kris Krüg At TEDxSummit we caught up with Kristine Sargsyan, TED translator and organizer for TEDxYerevan. Kristine has been working in the NGO and business sector as an Organizational Development Consultant and Project Coordinator for 13 years. When and why did you start translating for […]