Working languages:
Korean to English
Japanese to English

DFoster
Doing my best to show yours.

Local time: 01:02 EDT (GMT-4)

Native in: English Native in English
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Account type Freelance translator and/or interpreter, Identity Verified Verified site user
Data security Created by Evelio Clavel-Rosales This person has a SecurePRO™ card. Because this person is not a ProZ.com Plus subscriber, to view his or her SecurePRO™ card you must be a ProZ.com Business member or Plus subscriber.
Affiliations This person is not affiliated with any business or Blue Board record at ProZ.com.
Services Translation, Editing/proofreading, Voiceover (dubbing), Subtitling, Transcription
Expertise
Specializes in:
Education / PedagogyGeneral / Conversation / Greetings / Letters
Idioms / Maxims / SayingsLinguistics
Mathematics & StatisticsSocial Science, Sociology, Ethics, etc.
Journalism

Rates
Korean to English - Rates: 0.12 - 0.15 USD per character / 23 - 25 USD per hour
Japanese to English - Rates: 0.12 - 0.15 USD per character / 23 - 25 USD per hour

KudoZ activity (PRO) Questions answered: 2
Portfolio Sample translations submitted: 1
Experience Years of experience: 19. Registered at ProZ.com: Dec 2009.
ProZ.com Certified PRO certificate(s) N/A
Credentials Korean to English (TOPIK)
Memberships N/A
Software Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Frontpage, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Powerpoint
CV/Resume English (DOC)
Professional practices DFoster endorses ProZ.com's Professional Guidelines (v1.0).
Bio
A United States citizen, I grew up in Lexington, KY, basically the center of the US, but had a very strong desire after high school to develop a little more knowledge of the world. The way people communicated in my own town was different, with a college town bringing various people from all over the country and world and an agricultural society holding tight to their culture. This laid the foundational groundwork for understanding how to communicate with people from each group individually, as well as how to communicate with both parties present.

University life started with a focus solely on mathematics, but eventually the international culture caught my attention, and I found myself growing fascinated with different languages, namely the writing systems. Throughout university, I picked up several language books, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Thai, Greek, and Arabic. Eventually my time and available resources restricted me to focus solely on the Far East languages. After adding Linguistics to my list of specialization (mathematics still has a place in my heart), I realized that to truly understand a language, we have to immerse ourselves in the culture itself. I made friends in a medium sized Korean community, and eventually decided to move to Korea for a year, planning to travel to Japan and China in one year intervals.

Submersion in a culture cannot truly give you the full experience in only one year. I decided to stay an extra year in Korea, then another, and then another. All the while I developed my Korean skills with the natives, honed my Japanese skills with private tutors and occasional interpretation work, and focused on the history of Asian culture. Although I never made it to Japan, I still would like to grasp at least a year of experience in the country to gain a clearer understanding of the cultural foundations of Japan that have made it so financially successful. China is also a dream of mine, as it is the cultural basis for much of the Asian world's art, literature, and even writing systems.

In terms of language, there seems to be a great divide between how people translate utterances of an Asian into English. More often than not a sense of eastern mysticism accompanies an otherwise mundane statement, which is in a sense unfair to both the recipient of the message and the original speaker. Speak to a Korean or a Japanese in their native tongue, and what they say is not some oddly poetic and concise statement encompassing Zen principles, but normal conversation. This is my drive when translating. Businesses have an idea of what they want to convey, and their business partner wants to feel that the culture they are connecting with has some neutral ground.

Always a fan of learning and improving, I would like within 5 years to develop my Chinese ability further to include it in my professional profile, and within 10 include Italian (one of the first languages I ever studied). In the meantime, even when not working on assignments, I keep my skills honed with newspaper articles and technical documents as practice. School may be over, but the lessons should never stop.

I hope that you appreciate a prompt, efficient, and well voiced translator, because quality is my main focus when trading the most important commodity in business: your word.
Keywords: Korean, Japanese, translation, journalism, subtitles, technology, patents, efficient, freelance


Profile last updated
Aug 6, 2010



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