Author Archives: dougie

To the business fair

Posted on Thursday November 22nd, 2012 by dougie

Being an auto-entrepreneur means invitations to various business seminars and fairs regularly arrive by post and email. I’m somewhat allergic to “business” per se, but the conventional wisdom is that finding direct clients is the key to success as a … Continue reading →

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Two bilingual texts to admire

Posted on Wednesday April 4th, 2012 by dougie

One naive imagination I held which has been cruelly shattered is that I would be able to advertise my talents merely by linking to the work that I have done when it is published online. Of course, such projects are … Continue reading →

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Developing a bilingual site using WordPress

Posted on Monday May 23rd, 2011 by dougie

Well, as you can see, there’s rather a nice little pair of flags to the right of this entry, which enable you to toggle between French and English. This feature comes thanks to the excellent qTranslate plugin for WordPress, which … Continue reading →

Posted in qTranslate, translation, wordpress | 1 Comment

The rough school of online translation help

Posted on Thursday May 19th, 2011 by dougie

In my quest for at least enough prominence to earn a modest living, I participate in the KudoZ forums at Proz.com. Working translators pose tough terms for others to discuss and propose translations. Each accepted answer earns a few points, … Continue reading →

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infrastructure update

Posted on Thursday May 19th, 2011 by dougie

I’m in rather a good mood with my technology today, after the recent hassles. The new laserwriter installed with only the minimum of configuration difficulty yesterday, and has been tested connected directly to the laptop and to the network. My … Continue reading →

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Is proprietary translation support software worth it?

Posted on Tuesday April 26th, 2011 by dougie

I’m a happy Ubuntu user, but the reality is that there are still a lot of Word files flying around in the commercial environment. A combination of Open Office and OmegaT seems to handle them quite well, but on my … Continue reading →

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Running with the ProZ

Posted on Sunday April 24th, 2011 by dougie

I regularly update a list of significant projects on my professional profile at Proz.com. I recently paid for full membership to the site in order to bid for a job going by within my fields of interest: and landed it! … Continue reading →

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Revealing my brilliance as a translator to the world

Posted on Wednesday March 9th, 2011 by dougie

All my work so far has come from personal contacts, but it’s not enough to live on. Sites such as proz.com and translatorscafe offer the prospect of getting work from around the world, but it’s not so easy: there are … Continue reading →

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Adding Scribus and OmegaT to the infrastructure

Posted on Sunday February 13th, 2011 by dougie

Set off on the latest job expecting to meander: and duly did, getting somewhat bogged down in software issues, rather than Just Doing The Work. The job, through an agency, was delivered as reasonable photocopies of the paper originals as … Continue reading →

Posted in ASUSEEEPC1015N, certificates, libreoffice, OmegaT, openoffice, scribus, translation | 2 Comments

That final quarter

Posted on Friday February 11th, 2011 by dougie

So far, work’s been arriving through local networks rather than online. Recent efforts: 4 hours of coaching for an academic bound across the Atlantic to give a talk at a conference in Florida, editing a major paper in bio-inspired robotics … Continue reading →

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