Paolo Roat

I have been a professional translator for more than four years: formerly as an employee with the Continental Liaison Office, Italian Translation Unit, in Copenhagen and recently as a Professional Freelance Translator.
I promote the interests of my clients by providing high quality translations. My goal is to be a leader in setting new standards of excellence. I translate according to client specifications. The confidential nature of the work is respected. Delivery time is guaranteed while keeping the client fully and reliably informed of project progress at all times.
I offer English / Italian and Italian / English translations. The Italian translation (or English translation) is always performed by a mother tongue professional translator or translators for the target language / languages.
Punctuality: I always deliver ON TIME.
Quality: Guaranteed by experienced, mother tongue translators and an innovative and proven translation system for the specific language / languages.
Fair prices: The best quality/price ratio.
Paolo Roat
http://www.venicetranslations.com

Nigeria's Scam

I found this on the site: http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/

The Nigerian Scam Defined
A Five Billion US$ (as of 1996, much more now) worldwide Scam which has run since the early 1980's under Successive Governments of Nigeria. It is also referred to as "Advance Fee Fraud", "419 Fraud" (Four-One-Nine) after the relevant section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria, and "The Nigerian Connection" (mostly in Europe). However, it is usually called plain old "419" even by the Nigerians themselves.
The Scam operates as follows: the target receives an unsolicited fax, email, or letter often concerning Nigeria or another African nation containing either a money laundering or other illegal proposal OR you may receive a Legal and Legitimate business proposal by normal means. Common variations on the Scam include "over invoiced" or "double invoiced" oil or other supply and service contracts where your Bad Guys want to get the overage out of Nigeria; crude oil and other commodity deals; a "bequest" left you in a will; "money cleaning" where your Bad Guy has a lot of currency that needs to be "chemically cleaned" before it can be used and he needs the cost of the chemicals; "spoof banks" where there is supposedly money in your name already on deposit; and "paying" for a purchase with a check larger than the amount required and asking for change to be advanced. Or the victim will just be stiffed on a legitimate goods or services contract...the variations are very creative and virtually endless.
At some point, the victim is asked to pay up front an Advance Fee of some sort, be it an "Advance Fee", "Transfer Tax", "Performance Bond", or to extend credit, grant COD privileges, whatever. If the victim pays the Fee, there are many "Complications" which require still more advance payments until the victim either quits, runs out of money, or both. If the victim extends credit etc. he may also pay such fees ("nerfund" etc.), and then he is stiffed with NO Effective Recourse.
The Nigerian Scam is, according to published reports, the Third to Fifth largest industry in Nigeria. It is the 419 Coalition view that, in effect, the elites from which successive Governments of Nigeria have been drawn ARE the Scammers - therefore, victims have little recourse in this matter. Monies stolen by 419 operations are almost Never Recovered from Nigeria, though there have been some indications of progress in anti-419 matters under the Obasanjo government.
Most 419 letters and emails originate from or are traceable back to Nigeria. However, some originate from other nations, mostly also West African nations such as Ghana, Togo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast ( Cote D'Ivoire ) etc. In most cases 419 emails from other nations are also Nigerian in that the "Home Office" of the 419ers involved is Nigeria regardless of the source of the contact materials. But there are occasionally some "local" copycats trying to emulate the success of the Nigerians. These folks tend not to last too long actually operating out of nations other than Nigeria, but they do try.
Since I received many mails from Nigeria, I’d like to share these data with you.

Paolo Roat
http://www.venicetranslations.com
English to Italian translations

What is a translation?

 
What is a translation?
Various people tried to define what a translation really was:
Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat ... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.
Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929), U.S. author. Address, 1983, in Poetry Series, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.. “Reciprocity of Prose and Poetry,” published in Dancing at the Edge of the World (1989).
Translation usually requires more than a simple substitution of one term for another. If you are translating a technical or specialized document for a non expert reader, the process is similar: you want to convey the main ideas without losing or transforming the meaning. You may well need to give a little background information so that the non expert can understand the idea or term in context.
A turn-of-the-century translator said: "Translation is like a woman, if she is beautiful, she is not faithful; if she is faithful, she is not beautiful." Translators must find the balance between fidelity to the source text and readability in the target language. The best translation is the one that no one recognizes as a translation. In other words, the document should read as though it were written in the target language originally. That is, you do your best work when no one realizes you have done anything. Achieving this level of translation is like walking a tightrope blindfolded during a wind storm, with people throwing heavy objects at you and shaking the rope.
There are some people who think that translators and interpreters are at worst a nuisance and at best a necessary evil; many a businessmen and lawyer have asked questions about the possible advent of automated translation and interpreting systems. Yet it is likely that, even with all the recent advances in voice recognition and machine translation, translators and interpreters are here to stay. Why? One of the more notorious examples of machine mistranslation is the computer rendering of the proverb, “Out of sight, out of mind” as “Blind idiot”.
What does the dictionary say?
Translation: The act of rendering into another language; interpretation.
Interpretation: The act of interpreting; explanation of what is obscure; translation; version; construction; as, the interpretation of a foreign language, of a dream, or of an enigma.
Translator: One who translates; esp., one who renders into another language; one who expresses the sense of words in one language by equivalent words in another.
Interpreter: One who or that which interprets, explains, or expounds; a translator; especially, a person who translates orally between two parties.
[Sources: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.]
The word "translate" has its origin in the Latin word, translatus, which means (roughly) "carried across." So what does it mean to translate or "carry across" a document? Well, you want to carry the meaning, but where? Across to what or to whom?
The ancient sense of the Latin words “interpretation” was to interpret, to translate, to give a translation. The terms translator and interpreter are commonly confused, but the distinction between the two is quite simple. Translators work with written material and interpreters render spoken communication.
I think translating is conveying the concept intended by the source writer into the target language.
Everything becomes clear if you understand that.
Please send me your views and considerations.
Paolo Roat
http://www.venicetranslations.com/