Ethics for Translators

A Child’s Guide to Good and Evil, recommended, from Amazon

This 1998 relic is as good as any code of ethics I’ve ever seen. Indeed, ethics itself does not vary among professions. Right and wrong are fairly simple, as generalities go.

CODE OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICES

Competent Translators agree:

1. To translate with the greatest fidelity and accuracy we can command, endeavoring always to give the readers and audiences the impression they would have if they could understand the original.

2. To maintain professional discretion by respecting our clients’ rights, by divulging no confidential information we may have acquired in our professional capacity under nondisclosure agreements, and by refusing assignments we believe would violate contractual rights of third parties.

3. To turn down assignments for which we believe ourselves to be less than qualified in either language or understanding of the subject, except with the prior knowledge of clients or employers; and to turn down assignments that we believe we cannot properly complete within the time allowed.

4. To settle professional differences by arbitration whenever possible, and to seek and accept work only on virtuous or honorable terms.

5. To defend all individual rights of translators, including their right to exercise the profession freely, unvexed by coercive restrictions.

This part about coercive restrictions is apropos in view of current hubris in the ATA Chronicle, published by the American Translators Association (May-June 2019 p. 2). The current ATA was assimilated in the 1990s by the American Society of Association Executives through voter suppression, and revamped so that anyone joining could vote on policy. Before, as of 1981, only those able to pass a translation test could vote or run for office. Since the change, the association has morphed into an expensive lobby for barriers to entry into the profession.

Most vocal among those lately importuning the Texas Legislature to keep interpreters scarce and expensive are folks who have never passed an ATA translation test. Nor have the bulk of them passed a Texas court interpreter test. A large number of incumbents, myself included, were for the longest time “grandfathered” in on what amounts to a bribes-for-work-permits racket, but even that was a farce disguised by tortuous legalese. That law stopped nobody from interpreting in the courts.

Many grandfathered incumbents for over a decade lied about the nature of the law. Those worthies told newcomers the law required them to buy the license in order to interpret in court. In fact, the original Texas law existed only as a pretext, making it easier to dismiss an obviously incompetent impostor during proceedings. It was only repealed after the truth was broadcast, then replaced with an even worse law.

Similar rackets sought in the past to prevent Texas roofers from bidding against corporations. Those were repealed. Spurious and parasitic extortion rackets organize, under color of altruism, to erect barriers to keep young interpreters from working in the courts–except as disposable contract labor on behalf of companies with political pull.

The whole point of ethics–a code to guide your choices and actions–is to thwart such impairment of individual rights.

Clarity isn’t oversimplification

Don’t miss the Kindle version of my book on the Crash and Depression! For sale on Amazon Kindle

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Herbert Hoover, Free-Market Individualist?

Herbert Hoover Public papers 1930, p. 89

How many times have you been urged to believe that President Herbert Hoover was a capitalist opposed to communo-fascist collectivism? Hoover himself, defeated in 1932 and unhorsed in 1933, characterized FDR policies as fascist regimentation. He should know:

Hoover’s 1931 Moratorium on Brains gave the National Socialist Party the needed boost to win in 1932. Both altruists opposed individual rights.

The motto of Hitler’s party was “The Common Good Before the Individual Good.”

See how all of this arose in the context of Prohibition and The Crash in Amazon Kindle format. Did Republican dry fanaticism wreck the economy?

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Prohibition and The Crash

Portuguese-language edition on Amazon Kindle

If you are seriously trying to unravel the reasons behind the Crash of 1929 and the causes of the Great Depression which followed, this will open your eyes. The project–a banking interpreter’s searching examination into a mystery daunting to economists–sifts even the forbidden causes.

Prohibition and The Crash, English version on Amazon Kindle

In hindsight, the causality blank-out defies comprehension. Economists and historians were able to look back on prohibition, the Crash and the Depression without noticing the causal links between them–assuming they coexisted by the sheerest of coincidence. Back then the connection between prohibition and the economy was asserted daily and hotly debated.

“No one man will ever realize how big it is, so lay off.” –Al Capone, July 1930

“When the time comes that we can look at this depression objectively it will be our duty searchingly to examine every phase of it.”—Herbert Hoover, June 15, 1931.

Maryland Senator Millard Tydings used statistical data to refute every argument advanced by proponents of prohibition. He also documented hundreds of cases of legalized murder (or extrajudicial killing) of ordinary citizens and bootleggers by wielders of police powers. His 1930 book examines economic effects and how the 18 new powers granted Congress by the looter amendments to the Constitution plus the character of the American people doomed economic dictatorships from the outset.

Defending shoot-first prohibitionism was Herman Feldman, Professor of Industrial Relations at the Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance, Dartmouth College–1927. The way he tells the story, all of the postwar economic growth was due to the beneficial effects of national prohibition. After the Crash, his output ceased.

Prohibition and the Crash also sheds light on the causes of the Panic of 1893, Panic of 1907, and several lesser financial convulsions. It just might help to understand recent crashes during the Reagan (1987) and Clinton (2000) administrations, for the same ingredients were there.

Never is anything but government responsible for causing economic collapse. The fact was widely known and published in 1775 by Adam Smith:

Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.

About taxes Smith reflected:

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries.

The worst Stock Market Crashes began in 1929 two weeks after the Jones 5 and 10 Law (Increased Penalties Act) was signed on March 2 (two days before Herbert Hoover took office as President). But the average chart slope went from positive to negative on or about September 2, 1929, as former prosecutor Mabel Willebrandt explained enforcement tactics in “The Inside of Prohibition” syndicated in 20 major newspapers. Once investors understood the Income Tax and asset forfeiture were weaponized against beer, the collapse began about September 2 and accelerated. See for yourself.

Clarity isn’t oversimplification

For financial, tax and banking translations, look me up.

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Bad PDF Converter: ABBYY 14

Anyone thrilled with ABBYY 12 for converting pdf documents to Word processor format may wonder why Amazon does not sell version 14. Version 12 is all sold out, and you have to go to the company website to even order 14. For specific information be prepared to paw through some inelegantly translated descriptions.  It turns out that ABBYY 14 is to ABBYY 12 as Windows Vista is to Windows 2000. See for yourself.

Here is how a chunk of Brazilian legalese converted with ABBYY 12 loads into memoQ (a standard translation-assistant tool):

Here is how that same section imports after conversion with ABBYY 14:

The reason I converted again with ver. 12 was that it would take ten times longer to unmangle the ver. 14 output document and make it translatable. The mess of formatting codes you see was left over after I polished up the fonts for consistency, leaving no font stretching, shrinkage or mixing of sorts. ABBYY 14 produces conversions that are absolutely useless for translation and nearly impossible to clean up using the current version of Winword. Small wonder nobody but ABBYY wants to sell it! But there is hope.

While I was struggling to find a way to buy the program (after exhausting all possibilities of purchasing another ABBYY 12) I asked about the possibility of converting without MS Office installed. Nobody at ABBYY had a clue whether their new product would work with Apache Open Office. Omega-T, a free, open-source translation tool, works fine with Microsoft’s competitors. As soon as I installed ABBYY 14 on a clean machine, I tested it with Apache Open Office and no MS Office installed. The conversion worked! The resulting word processor file looked presentable, needing only the usual touch-ups

Once I get caught up I’ll reopen the ABBYY 14 file and save it using the Apache open source program to see if it makes any improvement. Some pdf converters litter the output with “text boxes” that move unpredictably and mess up translations. Opening and saving the resulting Word file with Microsoft’s simple Wordpad gets rid of those, and the resulting file is often salvageable for translation with professional warez. Stay tuned. In the meantime, Caveat Emptor! One sweet solution could be for ABBYY to rename ver. 12 as ver. 14 and forget all about the hideous v.14 miscarriage–kind of the way Microsoft did after releasing Windows Vista.

UPDATE: ABBYY techs suggested using the formatted text option to export converted files. That “solved” the most distressing problem. The interface, however remains user-hostile and even with that work-around all progress is much slower than in ver. 12

Orwellian quality translations

If in need of translations involving oil, dams, power plants or contracts, look us up.
Visit the immigration-related blog too…

My book on the Crash and Depression is out in Portuguese and English on Amazon.com

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ERA 2… A New Hope

Sinfest.net nurtures controversy

After the Libertarian Party’s role in drafting Roe v. Wade euchred George Wallace Dixiecrats out of effective participation in the movement to restore the Comstock Laws, The Empire Struck Back.

That seminal 1972 election showing–with fewer than 4000 popular votes and one rational electoral vote– enabled the LP to protect pregnant women and doctors from fanatics by providing the language that framed the Roe v. Wade decision. Just as irritating to girl-bulliers was congressional approval of the 1972 version of the Equal Rights Amendment, to wit:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This article shall take effect 2 years after the date of ratification.

True, Phyllis Schlafly’s cuckoo-infiltration remake of the Wizened Christian Temperance Union began an outpouring similar in content and shrillness to the original reaction to the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Repeal 43 years earlier. To them the idea of women making their own reproductive choices was as odious an affront to Allah as the thought of beer NOT being a shoot-first felony. After all, had not the Methodist Board of Temperance and Other People’s Morals determined that proper temperance was the deadly force exerted by dry killers, often led by vigilante Men of God?

But a campaign of murdering doctors coupled with incessant dinning for eight different Constitutional Amendments to compel women into involuntary biological labor was put onto effect by activists of the American Party, Prohibition Party and Republican Party–the latter under prohibitionist control since 1928. The hysteria spread like Nationalsocialism and the ensuing remake of racial purity rallies staged at Klanbakes and Nuremberg outdid southern celebrations exulting in the Kennedy assassination, and even louder Burn-The-Beatles demonstrations put over as outpourings of “Our” Savior’s opinions.

My book on how prohibition caused the Crash is available on Amazon Kindle in Portuguese

Privatized Border Protection

Is this privately-funded Wall worth 270 electoral votes?

The city of Sunland Park, New Mexico, is OK with privately-funded border protection moving ahead with a chunk of “KEEP America Great Again” border wall. You’d expect Reason, a soi-disant Libertarian magazine, to cover the event with confetti and fanfare. But nooooo…

Unmentionable Pakistani-Indian border wall, now with laser sensing added…

Not even a Shikha Damia article tsk-tsking the altitude of privately-funded consciousness has appeared! To Shikha, the Pakistan-India border fence is an Orwellian unmentionable, and any hesitation in letting a locust swarm of superstitious starvelings waltz across OUR line in the sand without inspection borders on racism. No Radley Balko article is yet imported from the looter press, to push uninspected entry as a crime-reduction strategy. Elbowing past the deafeningly silent property and privacy enthusiasts at Reason came none other than the Public Brainwashing System with a sullenly objective account of events.

What gives?

Come to think of it, Irish voters in a 2-to-1 landslide repealed a republican-style constitutional amendment forcing women to reproduce by involuntary labor A YEAR AGO. Americans took 14 years and 7 months to repeal national liquor prohibition with platform help from the Liberal Party and women’s organizations. The Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision was drafted by the Libertarian Platform Committee in mid-1972. We won fewer than 4000 votes (one of them a faithful electoral vote) that November, yet 45 days later our plank showed up (with an extra week of individual rights tacked on) in a Majority Report assuring individual rights for women even if pregnant!

Roe v. Wade was like the Moon landing, a milestone event that put America ahead of Europe and Russia, and paved the way for Canada’s abolition of all abortion laws. Goaded by backlash from Republican conservatives and the Emerald Isle’s own papal pederasts, Irish politicians passed a constitutional birth control prohibition amendment in reaction to the Libertarian victory over Comstock and Dixiecrat jurisprudence.

For 35 years Irish women labored, oppressed by the social pressures of silence and stigma (not to mention policemen, bailiffs and wardens with guns). With repeal finally secured, Republican fascisti weep, Fabian socialists rejoice and claim credit, and Reason magazine–like a True Believer–runs Stephanie Slade hagiographies and teevee panegyrics pushing Catholic dogma as the One True libertarianism. Other than Tuccille, nobody at Reason betrays awareness of the democratic emancipation of Irish women–45 years after the Libertarian Party handed a similar victory to American women and to men who believe even female individuals have rights.

Republicans are doubtless building their Wall–NOT to again (as during our invasion of Mexico, WWI & WW2) stop bandits, spies and undesirables from sneaking across. More likely it is meant to exclude morning-after pills along with all things enjoyable. Nevertheless, Reason’s betrayal of clear jurisdictional boundaries has not yet stopped looter intellectuals from lumping us together with conservative national socialists. Recent LP platforms abetting national socialist coercion of pregnant women under color of fiscal conservatism has resulted in women crossing the street to avoid us!

Still, Reason downplays our 1972 plank, avoids dissecting the antiabortion amendments Dixiecrat Republicans endlessly crank out, elides any reference to Libertarian Party impact on Roe v Wade, and has yet to notice the smiles on women’s faces in Ireland.

Read ’em and weep, Lebensborn legislators!

Irish women sure as hell notice. While their eyes are smiling, let’s hope they soon forget libertarian impersonators whose counterfeit platform tried to convince voters that restoring women’s individual rights would be evil, wrong, socially dangerous. If you can find that Irish “libertarian” platform plank, please send me a copy for my Hall of Horrors. I need impostors to bet money no such planks were published, and will use my winnings to pay for the proof.

The Portuguese edition of my book on Prohibition and The Crash is on Amazon Kindle

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