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Peer-to-peer lending platforms: referral codes with special offers

Referral codes:
EstateGuru: EGU22806
October: TBARTON
Reinvest24: nhv4dof8
EvoEstate: 5eccdd7a62c79 / InRento: inr6440

In this post, you will find affiliate links to EstateGuru, Iuvo, October, Reinvest24 and EvoEstate, four peer-to-peer lending platforms that I use. By using these links, you’ll benefit from special offers.

I won’t write about the pros and cons of using these platforms, as plenty has already been written about them online. Please note that this post contains affiliate links that benefit me as well as the person using them.

EstateGuru provides property-backed business loans. It includes an auto-invest option. My current annual return, at the time of writing, is 10.82%. If you use this sign-up link or the promotion code EGU22806, we will both receive an extra 0.5% on investments in the first three months.

Iuvo provides loan to businesses, and includes the option to buy back. My current net annual return at the time of writing is 9.96%. The platform doesn’t provide a referral link. Instead, I have to send an invitation by e-mail. Leave me a comment or send me your address to my own e-mail address, and I’ll send you an invitation. If you invest more than €1,000, we’ll each receive an extra 2% of your invested amount, up to a maximum of €200. Normal: For investment of €1,000+, 1.5% each, up to €150

October also provides links to businesses. They offer a mixture of loans at rates of 6-9% and State-guaranteed loans at 2%. The downside is that there’s no auto-invest function, and many of the loans sell out within a few minutes of opening. If you use this referral link or the referral code TBARTON, then we each get an extra €20 for every €500 that you invest.

Reinvest24 is a platform for investing in property. There is no auto-bid function, but if you visit fairly regularly (say, once a week), it’s easy to find investment opportunities. If you use this referral link or the referral code nhv4dof8, we each receive an extra 1% of the amount you invest in the first year (full terms at https://www.reinvest24.com/en/referral-terms).

EvoEstate is also for investing in property. It includes an AutoBid function and allows you to limit your bids only to loans in which the platform has skin in the game. If you use this referral link or the referral code 5eccdd7a62c79, we each receive an additional 0.5% from your investments during the first six months. EvoEstate was recently merged with InRento. With this referral link, we will both earn €20.

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Macro to prepare documents for monolingual review in memoQ (and possibly other CAT tools)

MemoQ’s monolingual review feature works best with clean Word documents containing no tracked changes or comments. If you import a document in which changes are still visible or in which there are comments, memoQ will add lots of code to the target text, which you don’t want.

This macro cleans the document up and saves it under a new filename (so that you don’t overwrite the commented version), making it ready to be imported as a monolingual review.

The macro includes comments to explain what some of the lines are doing and how you can adjust the macro to meet your needs.

Since many translators use only straight apostrophes and quotation marks in memoQ, then convert them to the curly variety in the final document sent to the client, the macro includes an optional line (deactivated by default) that will revert all apostrophes and quotation marks to the straight variety. Please read the instructions carefully if you wish to use that line.

Thanks to Kevin Mote, who provided the code for the part of the macro that renames the file. My code is a slightly modified version of his. In particular, unlike Kevin’s version, mine does not overwrite the old version, since most translators would want to keep a copy of the commented version they sent to their client.


Sub PrepareForMemoQMonolingualReview()
' memoQ's monolingual review feature works best when you import a document with no tracked changes and no comments.
' This macro removes them, then resaves the file with "clean-for-import" appended to the file name.
' The part that appends the filename is adapted from the macro provided by Kevin Mote (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmote/) at https://superuser.com/a/781501. Thank you Kevin. This was very helpful!
' Please note that, unlike Kevin's macro, this version does not delete the original file.
Dim strFileFullName, strFileName, strNewName, strFileExtension As String
'
ActiveDocument.AcceptAllRevisions ' Accepts all tracked changes
ActiveDocument.TrackRevisions = False ' Switches off track changes
ActiveDocument.DeleteAllComments ' Deletes all comments in the active document.

ReplaceQuotes ' Reverts quotation marks and apostrophes back to the straight variety, assuming that this is the variety that was used while working in the CAT tool.
' Remove the apostrophe from the above line if you want the monolingual review document to revert to straight apostrophes and quotation marks.
' Note that to run the above line you also need to have installed the "ReplaceQuotes" and "QuotesReplacementBothWays" macros, which I provided along with several others in a blog post at http://www.anglopremier.com/blog/?p=1119.
' *****ADDITIONAL OPTION DESCRIBED ABOVE*****

' Get current name:
strFileFullName = ActiveDocument.FullName 'for Word docs
'strFileFullName = ActiveWorkbook.FullName 'Use this line instead for for Excel docs
'strFileFullName = Application.ActivePresentation.FullName 'Use this line instead for Powerpoint presentations
If (InStr(strFileFullName, ".") = 0) Then ' Checks whether the full file name contains a file extension by looking for a dot.
res = MsgBox("File has not been saved. Can't rename it.", , "Rename File")
Exit Sub
End If
' strFileName = Right(strFileFullName, Len(strFileFullName) - InStrRev(strFileFullName, "\")) 'strip path - not used. Next line used instead.
strFileName = strFileFullName
strFileExtension = Right(strFileName, Len(strFileName) - InStrRev(strFileName, ".")) ' Identifies the file extension
strFileName = Left(strFileName, (InStr(strFileName, ".") - 1)) ' Strips the extension from the strFileName variable
' If InStr(3, strFileName, "_Delivery", 1) <> 0 Then strFileName = Left(strFileName, (InStr(strFileName, "_Delivery", 1) - 1))
' The above line is not used. Originally intended to strip the word "_Delivery" and the delivery number from the file name (assumes "Delivery" is at least the third character; not case-sensitive). But I dedcided I wanted to keep the delivery number.
' If you wish to remove something from the file name you can reinstate the above line (remove the apostrophe) and replace "_Delivery" with whatever you want to remove.

' Prompt for new name. Replace "_clean-for-import" on the next line if you prefer something else to be appended by default.
strNewName = InputBox("Rename this file to:", "Rename File", strFileName & "_clean-for-import." & strFileExtension) 'Saves with the new name. Extension is not changed.
If (strNewName = "") Or (strNewName = strFileName) Then ' (Check whether user cancelled)
Exit Sub
End If

' Save file with new name:
ActiveDocument.SaveAs2 FileName:=strNewName 'for Word docs
'ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs2 FileName:=strNewName 'for Excel docs
'Application.ActivePresentation.SaveAs FileName:=strNewName 'for Powerpoint presentations

End Sub

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Macros to replace apostrophes and quotation marks before and after using a CAT tool

To ensure that concordance searches in translation memories work properly and to increase fuzzy matches, many translators systematically replace curly apostrophes and quotation marks with straight ones before importing a document into their CAT tool, then revert them back to the curly variety before delivering the final document to the client.

Until recently, I used a very simple find/replace macro to achieve this, but then I realized that the macro didn’t replace apostrophes and quotation marks situated. I searched online and found a solution that works not only in the main document but also in footnotes and text boxes. Thanks to Doug Robbins and Greg Maxey, whose work I drew on to create one of the macros below.

Copy the following code into a single module in your normal.dotm template, then run the ReplaceQuotes macro before importing your document into your CAT tool and the ReinstateQuotes macro after you have exported from your CAT tool to Word.

I’ve included extensive comments so that you can understand what each line is doing and adapt it as necessary.

Sub ReplaceQuotes() ‘ Replace curly quotation marks and apostrophes with straight ones.
Options.AutoFormatAsYouTypeReplaceQuotes = False ‘ Sets autoformat option not to replace curly quotes with straight ones. This is reset in the final like of the QuotesReplacementBothWays macro.
QuotesReplacementBothWays
End Sub

Sub ReinstateQuotes() ‘ Replace straight quotation marks and apostrophes with curly ones.
Options.AutoFormatAsYouTypeReplaceQuotes = True ‘ Sets autoformat option to replace curly quotes with straight ones, in case the user has manually set the option to false before running the macro.
QuotesReplacementBothWays
End Sub

Sub QuotesReplacementBothWays()
pFindTxtFromOtherMacro = “‘”
pReplaceTxtFromOtherMacro = “‘”
FindReplaceAnywhere
pFindTxtFromOtherMacro = “””” ‘ Find all quotation marks (smart or curly). Four quotation marks are needed because the ” symbol has a special meaning that must be cancelled.
pReplaceTxtFromOtherMacro = “””” ‘ Replaces with smart or curly, depending on whether ReplaceQuotes or ReinstateQuotes was run.
FindReplaceAnywhere

‘ Remove the apostrophes from the start of each line in this section to replace French guillemets with English-style straight quotation marks.
‘ pFindTxtFromOtherMacro = “« ” ‘ Find all opening guillemets followed by a space (incl. non-breaking spaces).
‘ FindReplaceAnywhere
‘ pFindTxtFromOtherMacro = “«” ‘ Find remaining opening guillemets with no space after.
‘ FindReplaceAnywhere
‘ pFindTxtFromOtherMacro = ” »” ‘ Find all closing guillemets preceded by a space (incl. non-breaking spaces).
‘ FindReplaceAnywhere
‘ pFindTxtFromOtherMacro = “»” ‘ Find remaining closing guillemets with no space before.
‘ FindReplaceAnywhere

pFindTxtFromOtherMacro = “” ‘ Makes the variable empty again
pReplaceTxtFromOtherMacro = “” ‘ Makes the variable empty again
Options.AutoFormatAsYouTypeReplaceQuotes = True ‘ Reverts to Word’s default setting. Change this to “False” if you prefer Word not to replace straight quotes with curly ones as you type.
End Sub

Public Sub FindReplaceAnywhere()
‘Performs a find/replace on all parts of a text, including footnotes, text boxes, etc.
‘Found on various webpages, but seems to have been originally created by Doug Robbins and Greg Maxey (https://wordmvp.com/FAQs/Customization/ReplaceAnywhere.htm).
‘Adapted so that it can be run with the find and replace strings pre-defined by other macros.

Dim rngStory As Word.Range
Dim pFindTxt As String
Dim pReplaceTxt As String
Dim lngJunk As Long
Dim oShp As Shape

If pFindTxtFromOtherMacro = “” Then
‘ This macro can be used on its own, in which case the user is asked what Word should find.
pFindTxt = InputBox(“Enter the text that you want to find.” _
, “FIND”)

If pFindTxt = “” Then
MsgBox “Cancelled by User”
Exit Sub
End If

Else
pFindTxt = pFindTxtFromOtherMacro
End If

TryAgain:
If pReplaceTxtFromOtherMacro = “” Then
‘ This macro can be used on its own, in which case the user is asked what Word should replace the found string with.
pReplaceTxt = InputBox(“Enter the replacement.”, “REPLACE”)

If pReplaceTxt = “” Then
If MsgBox(“Do you just want to delete the found text?”, _
vbYesNoCancel) = vbNo Then
GoTo TryAgain
ElseIf vbCancel Then
MsgBox “Cancelled by User.”
Exit Sub
End If
End If

Else
pReplaceTxt = pReplaceTxtFromOtherMacro
End If

lngJunk = ActiveDocument.Sections(1).Headers(1).Range.StoryType ‘Fix the skipped blank Header/Footer problem

For Each rngStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges ‘Iterate through all story types in the current document

Do
SearchAndReplaceInStory rngStory, pFindTxt, pReplaceTxt
On Error Resume Next

Select Case rngStory.StoryType

Case 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
If rngStory.ShapeRange.Count > 0 Then
For Each oShp In rngStory.ShapeRange
If oShp.TextFrame.HasText Then
SearchAndReplaceInStory oShp.TextFrame.TextRange, _
pFindTxt, pReplaceTxt
End If
Next
End If
Case Else

End Select

On Error GoTo 0

Set rngStory = rngStory.NextStoryRange ‘Get next linked story (if any)

Loop Until rngStory Is Nothing ‘ Loops back to the “Do”

Next ‘ Loops back to “For Each rngStory”

End Sub

Public Sub SearchAndReplaceInStory(ByVal rngStory As Word.Range, _
ByVal strSearch As String, ByVal strReplace As String)

With rngStory.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Text = strSearch
.Replacement.Text = strReplace
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With

End Sub

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AutoHotkey script to move the focus away from the Concordance window

Sometimes you want to keep the MemoQ Concordance window open on your second screen while you work on your document. But there’s no built-in method to achieve this with the keyboard. You can only do so by clicking with the mouse.

This short script moves the focus away from the Concordance window and to the main MemoQ window, allowing you to work on the document while keeping the Concordance window open. Just press ctrl+k to activate the script.


#IfWinActive, Concordance
^k:: ; MemoQ: Move focus away from Concordance window
WinActivate memoQ
#IfWinActive
return

The following script closes the Concordance window. Continue reading

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Spot the foreign-language influence

Amazon.com: For If The Flies - t-shirt: Clothing

¡Por si las moscas!

Anyone translator living in his or her source-language country needs to watch out for source-language interference. Similarly, an author who writes in one language but lives in a country that speaks a different language needs to be wary of interference from the host country’s language.

Today, Google recommended an article to me in which I noticed foreign-language interference almost from the beginning. See if you can spot it too in this article about the level of English in Spain, then click on “Continue reading” to reveal the answers.

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Day 3 of WFS Live: How football clubs secure partnerships outside their local geographies

This week I’ve been attending World Football Summit‘s second WFS Live event. Day 3 included a panel discussion on “How football clubs secure partnerships outside their local geographies”.

As a translator, this session was of particular interest to me, since translators play such a vital role in helping football clubs and leagues to reach new markets.

Matthieu Fenaert of Real Valladolid explained that, in the current economic climate, it was important to consolidate existing partnerships, rather than building new ones. Asked how international sponsors could be retained in these difficult times, he said that clubs needed partners, not sponsors, a view echoed by the other panellists.

On the topic of foreign investors, he said that they had to respect the history of their new club, noting the uproar among Cardiff City fans when Vincent Tan changed the club’s colours from blue to red – a decision eventually reversed due to fan pressure.

Marc Armstrong of Paris Saint-German said that clubs had had to adapt their sales methods due to travel restrictions. He said that, while on the one hand there was no replacement for face-to-face travel, perhaps it would not be necessary to travel so much in future.

He also spoke about the club’s shift from national sponsors to global partners. When I lived in Paris and attended games at the Parc des Princes, nearly all PSG’s sponsors were French brands, many of which operated solely in France. Fast forward 20 years, and the club’s partners are much more global, a deliberate strategy by the club.

Marc added that the club had created a lifestyle brand to stand out from other clubs. Other strategies had included establishing innovative partnerships, such as with Finnish mobile game development company Supercell, and putting key players in contact with the leading influencers in key markets. Creativity, flexibility and intelligence, said Marc, were necessary to find opportunities.

Casper Stylsvig talked about some of the innovations that AC Milan had introduced, reaching out to fans through music and entertainment. He noted that many big brands sponsored both music and sport. Since people today consume sports differently, clubs needed to change their narrative. By way of example, Casper Stylsvig referred to the virtual concert the club had organized the previous Friday, in collaboration with Roc Nation. Such events should be connected to the club’s image: last week’s concert featured many upcoming stars from the world of music, in keeping with a club that had one of the youngest teams in Europe.

I was particularly interested in hearing the thoughts of Andrew Hampel, since, like me, he provides clubs with skills and expertise that they do not have in house. For instance, moving to a new stadium is a once-in-a-lifetime event for most football clubs, but Legends International has already worked with several football clubs that have built a new ground. Like the other speakers, Andrew Hampel stressed the importance of partnership, rather than sponsorship, and said that, to engage in a sophisticated way, clubs needed to understand their partners’ businesses – which is where companies like Legends International come in to provide the necessary expertise.

Despite the current economic climate, football clubs – especially the heavyweight clubs – are looking to go ever more global. Although there is currently a major focus on new markets in the Asia Pacific region, which will require language consultants who work with major Asian languages like Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai, the English language is still going to be a vital part of club’s communication strategies, perhaps even more so than the local language in some cases.

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On the usefulness of machine translation (hear me out!)

Colleagues who know me know that I’m not a proponent of offering machine translation post-editing as a service. There is just so much to fix in a machine-translated text that it’s not a productive way of working, especially if you’re a perfectionist like me, who would find it to difficult to leave a sentence alone if the translation can be understood but could be improved.

Nevertheless, I don’t belong to the camp who believe that machine translation (MT) is never useful. In fact, I challenge anyone to tell me that MT would not save them time if they were translating the following sentence.

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I’m going to Cannes!

As I was doing the washing up last night, I decided to tune in to France Info. And it was perfect timing: a few minutes later the presenter interviewed Aurel about his film, Josep, which had been selected for the Cannes Film Festival 2020.

The animated film, produced by Les Films d’Ici Méditerranée, tells the story of Josep Bartoli, a Catalan artist who was among the many Republicans who fled north into France to escape the Spanish Civil War. The French government placed the refugees in concentration camps, in awful conditions, in the middle of winter. You can read a full review in English here.

So why was I so excited when this interview came on the radio?

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The true identity of Athletic Bilbao’s last Englishman is finally unearthed

Earlier this month, Spanish football historian Lartaun de Azumendi published a 43-Tweet-long thread to explain a remarkable discovery he had made about Martyn Veitch, the man usually cited as the last foreigner to play for Athletic Bilbao before they introduced their famous Basque-only policy.

His discovery quite literally changed the history books, as several days later, Athletic Bilbao updated its website to reflect Lartaun’s discovery. The thread was in Spanish, but as a professional translator specialising in sport, I’m always on the look out for interesting stories that would interest English readers, so I asked Lartaun if I could translate it.

Although I have published a version on Twitter, I recommend reading it on here, where I’m free from the shackles of the 280-character limit. Enjoy!
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Izaskun Orkwis’s article on institutional translation

I first met Izaskun Orkwis at the 1st International Conference of Economic, Business, Financial and Institutional Translation, when my only institutional client was the OECD. Since then, she’s given me some great advice on how to get my feet in the door of international institutions.

In an article for the latest edition of the ATA Chronicle, Izaskun draws on her experience with international institutions to explain some of the quirks of working for them and how to ensure your translation is fit for purpose. The article is packed with pearls of wisdom. Here, I highlight just a few, with some additional remarks based on my own experience:

“the different language versions must match exactly, including all nuances and formal structure…replacing parentheses with commas may be fine in other contexts, but not in institutional translation”

 

“There will be humongous databases and parallel corpora that will be both a blessing…and a curse (sometimes you must reuse previous language, unchanged).”

Sometimes I’ve translated 3,000 word documents in 15 minutes, as nearly the entire document is a recycled version of an old one in the translation memory. But as Izaskun says, sometimes the databases are a curse. This is especially true when you find inconsistencies in the memory and you spend far more time deciding which previous version to use than you would have spent just translating it from scratch.

“the institutional translator must…lose their individual voice…the translated document, just like the original, belongs to the institution, which is its sole author”

 

“the institutional translator must…adopt the institution’s working methods”

The latter is particularly challenging for those of us who do short-term contracts for various institutions, as the working methods vary from one institution to another. To give just one example, the World Trade Organization uses Trados Studio (with two different workflows, depending on the type of document), whereas the United Nations Office at Geneva has its own computer-assisted translation tool that runs in the browser. Some institutions require you to upload your translation to a portal; others ask you to save it to a shared network drive.

“the institutional translator must…adhere to vetted terminology”

Izaskun goes on to say that you should consult a terminologist if you feel the need to depart from the vetted terminology. In the work I’ve done, I tend only to have to consult one of the revisers, not a terminologist.

Sometimes the solution in the terminology database is not what the more senior translation staff actually use. In such cases, if I were working at home, with my own setup, I would quickly edit the entry in my termbase, but in an institutional setting, terminology vetting is a complex process and it can take a long time for the entry to be corrected. It gets even more complicated if you suggest a change to the editorial manual. Since it is used by all the UN offices, someone in Geneva can’t just change something without consulting colleagues in New York, Nairobi and elsewhere, which is perhaps why we’re still not allowed to make country names possessive, despite the fact that every UN translator I’ve ever spoken to hates the rule!

“whenever there’s a quote from or a reference to a previous document, no matter how long or short, you must assume there exists a previous translation that needs to be found and reused”

Continue reading

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