Noteworthy Finds
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Introducing JetWit.com
Hajimemashite, SWET Members. My name is Steven Horowitz, I’m an alumnus of the JET Programme (Aichi-ken, Kariya-shi, 1992-94) now based in New York City and the creator of both JetWit.com and the Writers Interpreters Translators (WIT) Group.
I recently learned of the existence of SWET from Ruth Stevens when I was invited to attend a shinnenkai for the Nichibei Exchange group in New York City. Ruth put me in touch with Lynne Riggs and Sako Eaton, and as I read the organization’s history I realized that I had wonderfully stumbled into something with much greater scope and experience than I had ever conceived of when I started the WIT Group.
Last year, completely oblivious to the existence of SWET, I began organizing a group for JET alumni and Friends of JET (i.e., a catch-all term for the rest of humanity) called the Writers Interpreters Translators (WIT) Group. The group was created to share work opportunities and information, get answers to questions, create opportunities for collaboration and generally leverage the resources of a relatively loose alumni network of people who are connected to Japan in some way.
Soon after creating the WIT Group, I created the JetWit.com website/blog to be a sort of public face for the group. A place to publish work by JET alums, post job opportunities, give exposure to the creative accomplishments of JET alums and provide a directory of JET alum authors, journalists, translators, etc.
The irony in all of this is that I’m not necessarily a writer and I’m certainly not a translator or interpreter. (At least not of any language.) By day I have a job that involves bankruptcy law and various other devastatingly dry topics. But for the last seven years I served as the editor of the JET Alumni Association - New York’s quarterly alumni publication, and found I really enjoyed gathering people, coming up with ideas and creating structures to enable them to contribute in a way that would be both entertaining and helpful to JET alumni and others connected to Japan.
If anyone is interested in linking up with WIT and/or JetWit, I encourage you to take a look at the JetWit.com site and to get in touch. There’s also a JetWit group on Facebook. I’m always happy to be in touch with people who can provide insight and perspectives to what is a relatively young group (though there are some members who are fairly established in their respective fields). I’m also always willing to chat and brainstorm with anyone interested in writing posts on relevant topics for JetWit.com. (Unfortunately, I haven’t come anywhere close to making money on all of this, so I can’t pay anyone for their writing at this point, though I would love to attract some advertising in order to be able to provide at least a little bit of compensation to those who contribute.)
I hope you find JetWit.com and perhaps the WIT Group to be useful resources. I’m open to any suggestions and feedback as they are great platforms for experimenting with new ideas.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
On the Media’s podcast on Kisha Clubs
SWET member Allan Murphy recently called my attention to a recent episode from the On the Media podcast at NPR that features Japan’s “unique and often troubling system of Press Clubs.” The podcast itself and the listener comments that go along with it both provide insight into the Japanese approach to journalism.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Speaking of Translation Podcast
Via Thoughts on Translation, I see that Eve Bodeux and Corinne McKay have a new podcast, appropriately called Speaking of Translation. Something tells me this one will be well worth subscribing to.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
MultiLingual Celebrates 100th issue
In celebration of its 100th issue, MultiLingual magazine is offering discounted subscriptions for the remainder of this year. The print edition is available for as little as $29.25 (it is normally $85 for those of us in Japan), and the digital edition is only $10 (normally $28). At prices like these, the multilingual wordsmiths among us can hardly afford not to subscribe.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Google to offer services for translators?
I first noticed this article at CNET News before the recent Obon holidays, but details seem to have leaked out that would suggest Google is preparing a document translation service that would put people who need translation services in touch with translators who can provide them. Although the service itself is not available yet, it seems to include tools for translating and reviewing documents, managing glossaries, and viewing one’s previous translations, all of which are features typically found in computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools.
Google’s motive for providing these services is not yet clear, but it’s not difficult to imagine that Google would be interested in using the translations stored in this system to improve their automated translation capabilities. Whatever the motivation, if Google’s translation center does come to fruition, it will be interesting to see what effect it will have on sites like proz.com, on translation agencies and other middlemen in the translation business, and quite possibly on the makers of CAT tools like Trados.
Thanks to Philippa Hammond at Blogging Translator for the heads up and to Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped for more details.
General • News • Noteworthy Finds • Translation • (0) Comments • Permalink
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Take Your Tools With You With PortableApps
If you ever find yourself working on more than one computer (and these days, who doesn’t?), you’ve probably found yourself wishing that your data and applications could be quickly and easily ported to the various machines you work on, so that you wouldn’t need to spend so much time installing applications on your various machines, configuring them, and keeping them all in sync. If you have ever felt this way, you might be interested in the PortableApps.com suite of open source applications that can be run from just about any computer that can read from a USB memory device or just about any other type of storage device, like a memory card or even your iPod.
I’ve been getting a tremendous amount of mileage out of the PortableApps suite, which includes portable editions of such notable applications as Mozilla Firefox (in which this blog entry was written), Mozilla Thunderbird, the GIMP, and OpenOffice.org.
Although the better-known applications above tend to get most of the attention, there are a few others that are also quite noteworthy, among them:
Abiword Portable
If you need a word processor, but not necessarily all of the other applications included in OpenOffice.org, this lightweight application is a great alternative.
Sumatra PDF Portable
The sheer bulk of Adobe Reader is enough to send many users to popular alternatives like Foxit Reader, but it would be a mistake to overlook Sumatra PDF Portable, which might not have quite as many features, but is often even faster than Foxit, which is itself pretty impressive.
Task Coach Portable
This handy combination to-do list and task manager has functions for helping you manage your tasks through to completion, of course, but it also has functions for keeping track of how much time you are spending on each, which tasks are taking more time than you’ve budgeted for them, and how much revenue you’ve generated from each task.
GnuCash Portable
After you’ve found out from Task Coach how much money you’ve been earning on each task, the next logical step is to keep track of your total earnings in an application like GnuCash.
In addition to the applications I’ve mentioned already, there are also a number of very useful utilities and development tools available.
The only real downside to using the PortableApps software is that it is currently for Windows users only (or Linux, if you use Wine). (Mac users, if you know of similar offerings on the Mac side of the fence, please feel free to share them in the comments section.) For anyone who regularly needs to use more than one computer, the advantages of using PortableApps are numerous and compelling—try some and see for yourself!
Noteworthy Finds • Tools of the Trade • (3) Comments • Permalink
Monday, June 09, 2008
Learn Urawaza Skills, Win a Prize from Lifehacker
Late last week I noticed that Lifehacker had posted a review of Lisa Katayama’s Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan and this week, I see that they are holding a video contest to see who has the best urawaza skills. Seeing as how most members of the SWET community live in Japan, there should be someone among us who can win this contest hands down.
You’ll have to hurry if you want to enter, though. Entries are due “no later than Tuesday, June 17.”