1. On Sarah Dillon’s weblog, there is an entry headed 5 Qs with Marc Prior:

Based in Germany, Marc Prior is a freelance translator with over 20 years’ professional translation experience under his belt. By day, he translates from German, Italian and Dutch into English, specialising in occupational health and safety and environmental engineering. By night, he’s a mentor on the very popular ITI Professional Support Group and is also active on support forums for a range of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) tools. Read on for Marc’s take on life without Windows and getting started as a translator.

This is an interesting interview, mainly about Linux and becoming a translator. Marc was in his mid-teens when he decided to become a translator, so he presumably went through the whole process consciously, which makes him well-suited as a mentor.

2. I know Marc from FLEFO on Compuserve, in the good old days. When I was talking to him recently, I was mentioning Brian Mossop’s book Revising and Editing for Translators. I read the first edition and found it very interesting. Part of it I implemented, and part I read away from the office so never got back to. Mossop discusses degrees of quality, since checking has to take place under constraints of time and money. He also quotes empirical studies – what do translators actually do when they revise? I wondered if the second edition was much different? It looks as if it has more on computer aids to checking.

I only just realized that Brian Mossop has a website, and there are some articles of his there too, for instance “Approximately 3037 ships”: Translating French approximation words, and Empirical studies of revision: what we know and need to know
.

3. Finally, I accidentally discovered a new translation theory e-journal (only available online), trans-kom. The first issue has an emphasis on theory:

In this thematic issue launching the e-journal trans-kom, the important question
of universality in translation will be reflected upon from a number of different theoretical
and empirical vantage points, and in particular from the perspective of “intervention” –
which may be taken to be the very opposite to universality. If universality constitutes
something like the “stable core” of translation, intervention is the way originals and
their translations vary or are deliberately made to vary, in the act of translation.

Further information in the first PDF:

trans-kom
trans-kom ist eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für Translation und Fachkommunikation.
trans-kom veröffentlicht Forschungsergebnisse und wissenschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge zu Themen
des Übersetzens und Dolmetschens, der Fachkommunikation, der Technikkommunikation, der Fachsprachen,
der Terminologie und verwandter Gebiete.
Beiträge können in deutscher, englischer, französischer oder spanischer Sprache eingereicht werden.
Sie müssen nach den Publikationsrichtlinien der Zeitschrift gestaltet sein. Diese Richtlinien können von
der trans-kom-Website heruntergeladen werden. Alle Beiträge werden vor der Veröffentlichung
anonym begutachtet.
trans-kom wird ausschließlich im Internet publiziert: http://www.trans-kom.eu