How did translators manage in the pre-internet era?

Lingua 5B wrote:

The kind of conference you described takes at least 12 months to prepare. If the conference in November 2022, the preparations will start today, or even earlier. As there's so much technology and risk factors involved. Also the scenario you described in the booth seems unnecessarily complicated, and a trained interpreter would do it much quicker simply by taking notes (which they know how to do as they learned it at school).

If your computer or power supply fails you in the middle of a meeting, guess who will be blamed? Not your agency, not star constellations for that day, you will be blamed that their meeting was interrupted/ruined.

[Edited at 2021-11-11 12:25 GMT]

Kay Denney wrote:

Everything took longer.
Clients used to fax their texts, or send them by post, and we billed target because we didn't know how long the source was. We'd have to estimate the length, and it was harder to determine how long it'd take to translate. It was awful when you underestimated. But competition wasn't as fierce, because it wasn't like the client could just find another translator in a matter of clicks.

It was much harder to write in the style of those in the field, because you didn't necessarily have access to texts written by those working in the field who spoke your target language. We had to rely on our own sense of what sounded right a whole lot more. So experience in the field counted for much more.

It was harder to find terminology for the same reason. I would phone companies and ask to be sent their literature, sometimes having to pretend I was a potential client. Specifying that I needed their brochures in both languages, because not everybody spoke either in our company, which didn't necessarily sound very true.

I remember for a specialist translation of maybe 2,000 words, having to traipse over to a library on the other side of Paris, because it had a bilingual encyclopaedia in the relevant field. There are very few copies of this encyclopaedia worldwide, so I thought myself lucky to be able to do the trip in just a day.

And delivery was on a specific day, never at a specific time. I remember sitting in the front garden, racing out to wave the courier rider down as he sped by. And another time I decided to deliver a job in person, and timed my arrival for after lunch, except they were all just sitting down for a late lunch as I arrived, so they made room for me at the table even though I had already eaten!