Translation as a Profession (Benjamins Translation Library)

270 Translation as a Professionand forwards them on the list. The moderator can thus vet certain requests oroffers and filter some of the information on the list in order to avoid unwantedmessages.Discussion groups/mailing lists on translation can be accessed from www://groups.yahoo.com (go through the usual queries) or by contacting the translators’ associationin the country of reference (addresses from www.fit-ift.org/en/news-en.php/members) or by asking Yahoo, Alta Vista, Google, Copernic, etc.5.2 Search engines, directories, blogs and portalsSearch engines, directories and portals are particularly useful tools for any translatorin her/his quest for focused information in specific fields.Search engines are software applications designed to seek out in previouslyindexed Web pages information relating to the keywords that the translator(or anyone else) has defined. The search engine returns as ‘hits’ the titles oridentification and URLs for the relevant sites. The way the queries are enteredor the strategies used to narrow down the search may vary from one engine to thenext, and this makes it highly advisable to always start by reading the user guideand by doing a little test on a number of set keywords.Another way of approaching this kind of search is to use a ‘meta-search engine’,i.e. an application which itself uses several different search engines to scan theWeb before compiling the results. So far, the translators’ favourite search engineis Google at http://www.google.com.There are quite a number of ‘portals’ and blogs dedicated to professionaltranslation. These usually offer various resources and services: glossaries, predefinedlinks to online glossaries, a translator data base where translators canenter their details (working languages, specialisms and particular skills) in thehope that it will catch the eye of a work provider on the look-out for translators, adata base with translation contracts put out to tender (a brokerage system whichhelps keep the portal afloat), and various kinds of information and advice fortranslators or even, in many cases, an online magazine [keywords: translationexchange, translation forum, translators’ forum, translation blog].5.3 Terminology and phraseology management softwareTerminology management software refers to applications designed to process theterminology required for an ongoing translation or the client’s in-house glossaries.These are to be distinguished from full-blown database management systems thatallow users to create generic or specialised terminology databases.