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5 reasons to become TED translators Print
(3 votes, average 4.67 out of 5)
Written by Marco Cevoli   
Monday, 04 January 2010 00:00
The English translation of this article has been kindly offered by Fabrizio Bianchi. TED.com, "Ideas worth spreading". This is the tagline of a website you can't miss, where you can access for free hundreds of video recording of talks given by some of the most interesting minds of the planet, each one not longer than 20 minutes. It is worth participating in this initiative, even just as voluntary translators? Absolutely. Here we will explain the different reasons.

TED.com is a non-profit initiative dedicated to the diffusion of ideas. It was born in 1984 as a conference getting together people from 3 different environments: technology, entertainment and design (hence TED).TED.com The success and developments were unexpected. Together with the annual conference in Long Beach in California, and the TEDGlobal in Oxford, England, TED gave origin to a community and a movement that orbits around the "live" events, but, most importantly, around the TEDTalks website, where more that 900 talks are archived. Recently, it has been given the possibility to subtitle the talks, in order to give access to this huge resource of knowledge to a bigger audience.

Why should ever a professional translator take into consideration his participation to a non-profit project? There are at least 5 good reasons:
  1. Prestige
  2. Visibility
  3. Diffusion and sharing of knowledge
  4. Exercising
  5. Access to special offers

Prestige

The speakers present on TED come from the most varied fields of science, art and technology, but they are always innovators, important personalities or, plainly said, of people that "make a difference". Binding your name, even just in a minor role, behind-the-scenes, to this community can anyway upgrade your reputation as a professional of linguistic services.

Visibility

The list of TED translators is visible on the website and is constantly updated, serving as a display for all the participants. Ted.com is among the 2000 most visited websites and it offers the possibility to share its contents freely on other websites. Therefore each translator can freely embed the translated talks on his personal website, without infringing any copyright.

Diffusion and sharing of knowledge

Putting aside any opportunistic and commercial consideration, participating in a project like TED means to contribute to the diffusion and sharing of knowledge. This reason alone should be valued more than all the other ones put together.

Exercising

Both for the covered topics, mostly innovative ones, and for the used language, colloquial and often tongue-in-cheek, the talks represent a very efficient translating training ground. Apart from this, the work is done through an online platform (dotSUB), forcing, at least, to learn the use of a new tool. The professional translators will therefore meet their match, while the less expert ones will have to use all their abilities to produce a final text worth the original. Please note: we are not saying that all of the TED translators are good or that the results are all optimal: quite the opposite. There is a wide variety, since there is not really a filter at the start. Everybody can propose himself as a translator and sometimes the results of this can be seen. But everybody can also propose as a proofreader therefore providing a second check on the translating job and another chance of display.

Access to special offers

A last point not to underestimate is the possibility to receive special offers from TED, for example a 50% discount to attend the main event in Long Beach. The conferences are limited and the invites run out in a very little time. Therefore is very important to highlight that together with the discount you are also assured a seat. For those who can't afford flying in California, TED allows to follow the event in streaming together with a maximum of other 10 people, completely for free.

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Molto interessante ma peccato che non si riescano a scaricare con i sub in ita comprese, le puntate su computer. E peccato anche che su ipod o ipad non si possa abilatare i sottottitoli in ita o altre lingue.
Sai se qulacosa cambierá a breve?
Grazie
Sara , novembre 28, 2010
...
Marco Cevoli
Dato che sono in formato Flash, i video di Ted.com sono volutamente visibili solo online. I mancati sottotitoli su iPod e iPad sono dovuti alle limitazioni intrinseche ai browser di questi dispositivi, non a un problema di Ted.com. Fortunatamente esistono sistemi, al limite della legalità (per questo non pubblico qua i link) per scaricare file FLV sul proprio computer. Una volta scaricato il file, un'intelligente applicazione online permette di scaricare anche i sottotitoli: http://tedtalksubtitledownload.appspot.com/. Infine, è possibile visualizzare il video con i relativi sottotitoli con qualunque riproduttore video decente (VLC o Media Player Classic, ad esempio).
Un disclaimer è d'obbligo: queste istruzioni dovrebbero funzionare, ma tieni conto che non le ho provate. Spero ti siano utili almeno come punto di partenza. smilies/smiley.gif
Un saluto
Marco Cevoli
Marco Cevoli , novembre 28, 2010

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