NEW YORK — Abigail Dahlberg realized she was a success a few years ago while explaining her unusual specialty -- translating documents about waste- management issues from German into English -- to a wide-eyed listener.

"I've heard of you!" the man exclaimed. "You're Trash Girl!"

He may not have known her real name, but that didn't bother Dahlberg, whose cheery British accent belies her reputation as an expert in all things ekelhaft. That's German for "yucky."

In the burgeoning world of translators and interpreters (translators deal with written documents, interpreters with the spoken word) it's all about the niche.

"It's not just having the language skill. It's also having the expertise in the subject matter," said Dahlberg, whose story was striking enough that Nicholas Hartmann, president of the American Translators Assn., retold it during the group's 50th convention in New York last month.

For four days, some 2,300 attendees networked, traded stories and listened in on workshops and seminars at a Times Square hotel.

That's 1,000 more than attended last year's conference -- evidence that even in this economy, the industry is healthy.

Hartmann said demand for translators and interpreters is expected to grow by 15% in the coming year as globalization, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide green movement spur demand for information in myriad languages.

E-mail, Skype and other technologies have opened the door to cross-cultural communications, but they alone cannot bridge the language gap.

"It's so easy to communicate, but once you find someone you want to communicate with, you find they don't speak your language," Hartmann said. And as Dahlberg's situation shows, it's not enough to simply speak another language.

"There is a wealth of knowledge and background you need in your area of specialty," said Dahlberg, who speaks French as well as German and English and found her niche while working for a publishing house in Germany that dealt in environmental and waste-management documents.

"Translation is far more than words," said Hartmann, who specializes in translating German patents. It requires him to understand not only the context of words and phrases, but also the technical and legal issues involved. And his spelling has to be impeccable.

The slightest error can cause extraordinary embarrassment.