eric haber

I have been a State Accredited Translator ("Staatlich Geprüfter Übersetzer") for English/German and German/English since 2003. During 2004-2005 I took on a wide variety of freelance translation work. The subject matter was primarily technical, including:

• Wind energy
• Industrial docking systems
• Laser engraving
• Wastewater treatment
• Underground storage of natural gas
• Electric woodworking tools
• Elevators
• Inline skates and related sports equipment

I also tackled less technical documents, such as:

• Term Sheets
• Service Agreements
• Software license agreements
• Product catalogues
• Business correspondence
• Genealogical research
• CVs and job applications
• Diplomas

For the larger documents I used a Translation Memory tool called OmegaT for efficiency, and to ensure consistent terminology. At the time this was the only open-source translation memory suitable for my purposes that I could find.

What I liked best about translation work: The wide variety of technical subjects I got exposed to.

What I disliked the most: Getting source texts by fax. It's hard to get faxed text into electronic format for a translation memory, because the low image resolution tends to interfere with Optical Character Recognition algorithms. I ended up either manually correcting the OCR output, or doing the job without a translation memory.

Simultaneous interpreting is not a part of my skill-set. I also don't translate documents in language pairs other than German-English; but I can recommend qualified people who do.

What can I say... German is my mother tongue. My favourite variety of written German is Heinrich Heine's writings. For audible entertainment, I enjoy the Gemütlichkeit of the accents and dialects of South-West Germany where I grew up.

Back in high school there was one kid who was a native English speaker. He was bored out of his mind during our English lessons, so he never paid any attention. I was bored too, but in the final year I stopped drawing caricatures of the teacher and started listening because I knew I'd need her endorsement to get into the University of Edinburgh without having to do a language test. I ended up getting a score of 10/10 while the native speaker got 9/10. Ten years later I came across him in London, and he was still annoyed about getting only 9/10 from a teacher whose English was not even as good as his own...

Once I got to Edinburgh though, I quickly found out what my grade really meant - and what it didn't. University was fine: Ohm, Kirchhoff, Fourier, electrons, holes and bandgaps... what could possibly go wrong? The vernacular was another story though. Learning to parse Scots took a while, but the real challenge was my flatmates' idiom - a most exquisite blend of Teuchter parodies, faux posh, mock Strine, references to classic British TV comedies I had never seen (don't mention the war!), and copious urine extraction. Later on I acquired a taste for other regional delicacies such as Singlish and Cockney.

Having clocked up 13 years living and working in English-speaking places, English has become my favourite. It my not be pretty, but it feels comfortable and besides, more important things "happen" in English than in any other language.

French is the first foreign language I learned at my bilingual high school. I can still read a newspaper and speak fluently, but my active vocabulary and style haven't really evolved since I was about 18; and you know what 18-year-old boys like to talk about, and how they talk about it. Let's leave it there, shall we?

As of early 2009, I'm able to have normal everyday conversations that don't need any specialised vocabulary, and I can read - slooowly, and with a dictionary to hand. I find Hebrew beautiful. Some grammatical constructs, like binyanim, have an almost mathematical elegance. I also find it hard, mainly because most of the vocabulary is unrelated to other languages I know; there are not many shortcuts. My ambition is to open up a quality newspaper, read an entire article, and understand all the details in the text, not just the general idea. Or alternatively, to watch an episode of Eretz Nehederet and get most of the verbal jokes, not just the visual ones. Sometime soon!