Michael Roberts
michael@vivtek.com
302 N. 11th
Richmond IN 47374

Overview

This is the translation version of my résumé, and as such, it contains only brief reference to the extensive technical experience which I consider an integral part of my translation skills. For more detail, see my technical résumé. Although I was certified as a technical translator in 1988, I have been translating on what I consider a professional basis since August of 2001, about 8.5 years now.

In the past year, the number of words I can translate per month has risen to about 120,000. In 2006, I translated slightly more than 1.2 million words, mostly from German, with French, Spanish, Hungarian, and Italian making up the rest. And 200 words of Dutch. That was fun. In 2007, I translated 1.25 million words, and in 2008, that figure was 1.26 million. In 2009, the trend fell slightly to 1.24 million.

In January of 2005, I stopped tabulating the individual jobs on this résumé because it was just getting too tedious. Since then, the character of those jobs hasn't changed greatly, except that I've done a lot of work translating technical books for SAP Press, which has been educational.


Working parameters

Software available:TRADOS, SDLX, Transit; Office, Adobe Illustrator; professional script programming.
Platforms:PC/Windows and Linux.
Capacity:DE>EN up to 6000 words/day; FR>EN, ES>EN 4000 words/day; IT>EN,HU>EN about 2500 words/day.
Availability:Varies according to current workload, of course, but in general, I can nearly always work in a job of 3000 words or less.
I am always interested in hearing from new agencies.
Rates:I'm flexible on rates, so feel free to ask if you want special consideration, but my standard rate is 0.09 EUR per new source word. I can work as low as 0.06 EUR, especially if you pay for repetitions.


Translation experience

Areas of specialization: IT/software, telecommunications, electronics; pharmaceuticals, clinical trials, medical devices; patents; some experience with machine tools (DE) and with business reports (DE, FR). Recently some SAP-oriented translation (DE).

Jan 2005: (32,000 words)

Dec 2004: (44,000 words) Nov 2004: (49,000 words) Oct 2004: (54,000 words) Sep 2004: (73,000 words) Aug 2004: (90,000 words) July 2004: (59,500 words) May 2004: April 2004: Mar 2004: Feb 2004: Jan 2004: Dec 2003: Nov 2003: Oct 2003: Sep-Oct 2003: July-Aug 2003: July 2003: June 2003: May 2003: April 2003: March - May 2003: February 2003: January 2003: November 2002: August 2002: July 2002: December 2001: October 2001: (11,000 words) September 2001: (10,000 words) August 2001: (40,000 words) August 1999: (19,000 words)
Technical experience

Please see my technical resumé for details of my technical experience.

September 1996 - present: Sole proprietor of Vivtek
As Vivtek, I provide consulting and implementation for online and offline software development, primarily in the area of online databases. I write technical articles, several of which have been published (for pay) on IBM's developerWorks site. These are pretty good online samples of my writing skills, so you might want to look at a couple of the more recent ones:

Zope for the Perl/CGI programmer (May 2001)
Extending Python and Zope in C (June 2001)
September 1992 - September 1996: Contract work with a major pharmaceutical company in Indianapolis.
Database and document management work.

February 1991 - June 1992: Systems programmer for a division of a equipment manufacturing company.
Mainframe work. Very different from what I do now!

January - December 1990: Programmer/Analyst for a small software development firm in Indiana.
Database and graphical work.

July 1988 - December 1989: Programmer/Analyst for a large software development firm in Germany.
Database work. In German!


Languages

Speak: English, German, some Hungarian.
Read: French, Spanish, Italian.


Education

Master of Science, Computer Science, Indiana University, December 1996.
Bachelor of Science, Computer Science / Electrical Engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, May 1988.
Technical Translator certification for German language, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, May 1988.