Translation Blog

Help at hand for tongue-tied tourists

2007-05-04T04:42:00.000-07:00

Richard Wray
Tuesday May 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

British tourists who find themselves tongue-tied trying to communicate when on holiday overseas now have a new way to make themselves heard - their mobile phone.

Linguistically challenged British holidaymakers have traditionally resorted to badly remembered school-learned languages, hand gestures or, as a last resort, speaking very slowly and loudly in English when trying to make themselves understood abroad.

But a new service launching today allows them to download a phrase book onto their phone with a host of phrases which can be played to puzzled locals.

The phrasebooks - in six languages - have been produced by software group CoolGorilla for Lastminute.com and cost £3 to download.

The phrase books are being launched in French, Spanish, German, Greek, Italian and Portuguese(...).

The phrasebooks contain over 250 sound files that cover everything from basic greetings and ordering food and drink, to getting around and dealing with emergencies.

When a phrase is chosen a translation pops up and a properly accented voice repeats the phrase through the mobile phone's speaker so it can be played directly to local people.

There is not, however, an option which reads out: "Help! My mobile phone has been stolen."

h?-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

Help reading foreign websites

2007-04-10T09:11:00.000-07:00

WordChamp, a language resource website, has launched a very clever tool to help you read foreign websites without a dictionary. First, you choose the website you want to read and then you get a pop-up window with definitions just by pointing at words. The tool also allows you to listen to the word's correct pronunciation. Several languages available. You can access it here.

hi-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

SDL Trados - Educational Webinar presented by Gabriele Sauberer

2007-03-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

On 03 April, SDL Trados is hosting a 60 minute webinar about the new European Standard for Translation Services (EN 15038:2006).

The online seminar is free of charge, all you need to do is register here:
http://www.sdl.com/company/seminars-list/seminars-landing.htm?id=18862

h?-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

Over £100m of public money being spent on translation

2006-12-13T02:56:00.000-08:00

According to the BBC the public money spent on translation and interpreting services in the UK is over 100 million pounds. Local authorities spend £25m, NHS trusts £55m and the courts £31m on interpreting languages.

The astronomic figure gave rise to a heated debate and we've learnt that quite a lot of people believe that spending that amount of money in translation services is detrimental to the government's effort to promote inclusion. An example of this being the testimony of a Bangladeshi woman who has been in this country for over 22 years and do not feel the need to learn English because there is always someone at hand to help with the language.

Isn't offering translation services to those who do not speak English actually a very effective way to promote integration? Helping them in their transition while not yet confident with the English language? The issue here is not the money spent on translation, but whether money is also being spent on helping the new-comers to develop their English skills.

You can read the full articles here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6174303.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6172805.stm

h?-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

That means English is much better, right? - Continued

2006-12-08T02:59:00.000-08:00

Back in April we published a post about the supposedly "richness" of the English language. This was then explained by its higher number of words and its apparent faster evolution in comparison to other languages. Geoffrey K Pullum of Language Log shares my opinion that the number of different words in a language should definitely not be used as measurement in this case. You can read his post here: "Vocabulary size and penis length"

h?-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 35 languages.

European Master's in Translation

2006-10-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

Today and tomorrow the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) is hosting in Brussels its first meeting with European universities offering translation courses. Representatives from universities from all EU Member States plus Bulgaria and Romania, as well as international organisations and professional associations have been invited to the conference "Towards a European Master’s in Translation (EMT)" to discuss the future of translator training in the EU. The main goal is to establish a standard curriculum for an European Master's degree in translation.
For more information click here

h?-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

Translating the War on Terror

2006-10-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

The US Army has recently declared its intention to award 5.2 billion dollars in translation contracts: 4.6 billion for Iraq-related translations into and from Arabic, Pashto and Persian; 703 million for Afghanistan; 66 million for Guantanamo Bay and 97 million for the Balkans. What you would do if offered some of this workload? Any moral issues or dilemas?

hي-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

Speak your clients' languages

2006-10-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

The results of the first large-scale behavioral study of consumers' preferences with regards to English or non-English online content has been recently published by Common Sense Advisory. In response to the ongoing debate on whether the translation and localisation of online content is worthwhile, a group of researchers surveyed the opinion of more than 2,400 non-English speaking consumers from 8 different countries: Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Spain, and Turkey. The idea was to understand what is the impact of language on purchasing decisions.
The conclusion? Yes, language does matter. Even consumers who feel comfortable in English prefer to purchase from websites written in their native language. The final report entitled "Can't Read, Won't Buy: Why Language Matters on Global Websites" is available for download from the Common Sense Advisory website.

hي-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

Certified translations

2006-10-04T04:56:00.000-07:00

What is an 'official' translation? Do I need the service of a Sworn Translator? To answer these and other questions hí-fen has recently put together a "Quick Guide to Certification and Legalisation of Translated Documents", which you can download here.

hي-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

Tale of a Lucky Client

2006-09-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

Have you ever met a Green Card lottery winner? Yesterday, we received a call from a client requesting the translation of some documents from German into English. The reason he needed the documents translated was that he had just heard the big news that he was one of the lucky winners of a brand new Green Card. And I've always thought the lottery was a lie....

hي-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

Free Microsoft glossary

2006-09-14T00:57:00.000-07:00

Microsoft have just launched a new updated version of their glossary.
The new glossary contains over 9,000 English terms and their translation into 45 languages.
You can download it from here.

hي-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

hí-fen and the World Cup

2006-06-12T04:06:00.000-07:00

Some European translation companies have reported a decrease in business activities as the continent turns its attention to the FIFA World Cup 2006, but at hí-fen business is as strong as ever. We have been very busy translating the official FIFA website. Adriana Francisco and Kiki Mazzucchelli are working as part of a group of English into Portuguese translators accredited by FIFA who are working under the supervision of Translations.com - one of the largest translation companies in the world .

You can browse some of our translations here.

hي-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

Applying for a freelance translator position

2006-05-27T01:54:00.000-07:00

At hí-fen we receive a lot of CVs from translators applying for a freelance translation position with us. When sending your CV to translation agencies translators face the very hard task to stand out from the crowd. The following 5 points should never be overlooked:
1. Clarify your source and target language. Include your language pair(s) on the email subject and somewhere at the start of the emai. You would be surprised by the amount of people that do not state their language pair when applying!
2. It is important to demonstrate that you have basic linguist qualifications. Translation agencies hire translators on complete trust, so the more qualified and experienced you are, the most likely project managers are to trust que quality of your work.
3. When writing your CV describe the projects you have worked on rather than listing the translation agencies you have worked for.
4. Do not sell yourself short. Reliable translation agencies who are serious about their work won't hire translators who offers rates below the industry standard. Try not to sound too desperate. Project yourself as a confident and professional business person.
5. And, finally, do not forget to run a spell check before sending your email!

Good luck!

Check this blog regularly for more information about translation opportunities with hí-fen.

hí-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

Skype interpreting services

2006-05-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

Skype has recently joined Language Line - a world leader in telephone interpreting - to offer interpreting services via Skype. The service is offered in over 150 languages, is available 24/7 and costs US 2.99 per minute.
This new deal has opened interpreting opportunities with Language Line in more than 50 languages. Vacancies are up for grabs!

hí-fen translation solutions is a translation agency based in London providing high quality translation services into and from over 30 languages.

Google a reliable site

2006-05-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

I have recently found out that you can use Google to search within an specific website. This method works well in trying to narrow down your searches to sites which you consider a reliable source. For example, if you want to know if the term "action plan" is more commonly used than "plan of action" you can use Google using the following keywords:
"action plan" site: http://www.bbc.co.uk and then
"plan of action" site: http://www.bbc.co.uk
This will tell you which one is more often used by the BBC.

Poetry in translation

2006-04-19T07:56:00.000-07:00

THE TIMES/STEPHEN SPENDER PRIZE FOR POETRY IN TRANSLATION

Translate a poem from any language, classical or modern, into English

# Three categories: Open, 18-and-under and 14-and-under
# Cash prizes from £50 to £500
# All winning entries published in a booklet
# Selected winning entries published in The Times

The last posting date for entries is Friday May 26, 2006

For details and entry forms go to www.stephen-spender.org or write to the Stephen Spender Memorial Trust, 3 Old Wish Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex BN21 4JX.

Read last year’s winning entries at www.stephen-spender.org or e-mail info@stephenspender.org for a free copy of the booklet Poetry in translation.

New article at proz.com

2006-04-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

Adriana Francisco, Managing Partner of hí-fen translation solutions, has recently published an article on how freelance translators and interpreters can use blogs as a powerful marketing tool. You can check the full article here.

That means English is much better, right?

2006-04-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

The Independent has recently published an article celebrating the fact that some time this summer the English language will reach its 1 million word mark. Apparently, on the 21st March the English language consisted of 988,968 words. Global Language Monitor - an American linguistic consultancy - claims that it has developed an alogorithm which can accurately count the number of words in the English language. According to the article, English is by far winning the "language with the biggest number of words" race, as it is 'evolving' faster than any other language. Apparently there are 225,000 words in Spanish, 200,000 in German, 125,000 in Russian and - guess what? - only 100,000 for the French. Any indications why English speakers are usually monolingual?
Full article here .

Useful glossary

2006-04-10T04:34:00.000-07:00

Translating software or websites?
You can use the Microsoft glossary as a reference. It is available in 58 languages (including variations) and can be found here .

Paying peanuts

2006-04-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

I have recently noticed that some of the translation jobs posted at translation directories such as proz.com and translatorscafe.com offer extremely low rates. I am aware that some of the agencies work from countries where the currency is weak in comparison to £s and €s. However, agencies offering rates of USD 0.03 and USD0.035 per word are definitely crossing a line. I would be extremely hesitant to subcontract a translator who claims he/she would work for less than USD90 per thousand words. Given the industry's lack of regulation and the common idea that anyone who speaks more than two languages is able to translate, these low rates present a risk to the translation industry in general. Professional translators should think twice before accepting underpaid jobs, even if they are desperate for a job.

New membership

2006-04-05T04:14:00.000-07:00

hí-fen translation solutions has just become a member of the ATC - Association of Translation Companies , one of the most prestigous professional groups representing the interests of translation companies in the world.
"Members of the ATC are carefully vetted before admission into membership, adhere to a strict code of professional conduct, are subject to the rulings of a professional ethics committee and carry full professional indemnity insurance cover to safeguard the interests of the translation purchaser."

Open source subtitling

2006-03-27T05:08:00.000-08:00

I've recently came across a very interesting subtitling website. They have an open source catalogue of subtitled films and extremely easy to use subtitling tools for those who want to contribute. You can chose a film (independent production) and subtitle into your mother tongue, which will then be available on their catalogue. I think it's a great initiative as it will make lots of independent films available in different languages. The films are usually short (up to 20 min) and the translator gets the name on the credits and link to a website. The only downside is that anyone can translate the films, not only professional translators, which will definetely present limitations to the quality of the subtitles. Anyone interested? dotSUB.com

Translation Blog

2006-03-24T07:23:00.000-08:00

Translation Blog

2006-03-24T07:05:00.000-08:00

Last night, hi-fen attended the event “London 2012 – Be prepared” organised by the London Development Agency and Canary Wharf Group plc.
It was the first meeting of East London SME businesses who don’t want to miss the opportunities arising from the London Olympics in 2012. Even though the procurement phase won’t start until 2009, we have already started looking into the possibilities and opportunities.
In 2010, the Olympics Committee will launch the Volunteer Programme. hi-fen would like to get involved in the process of helping local volunteer interpreters who would like to participate in the event.
More soon.

FUNNY TRANSLATION 2

2006-03-24T06:31:00.000-08:00

Multilingual Websites

2006-03-24T06:21:00.000-08:00

The following article was published on the Financial Times website. Here you'll find some interesting insights on multilingual websites.

FTIT February 7 2001

Multilingual websites widen the way to a new online world
By Julian Perkin
Published: February 5 2001 09:53GMT | Last Updated: February 5 2001 16:19GMT

Anyone who surfs the net regularly could easily form the impression that nearly all the world speaks English. The language, it would seem, is fast becoming a lingua franca, with all the benefits this would bring for communication and understanding - and threats to cultural diversity and regional independence.

English is everywhere - in Hollywood films, on TV and in pop music. The vast majority of international conferences and communications for business, science, academia and other disciplines are in English. English is typically the language of people who either come from richer nations, or is the second language used by a wealthy and influential professional elite. Hence its dominance.

As a consequence, English documents pervade the internet. Statistics vary, but the estimates suggest that around three quarters of the pages on the worldwide web are in English. Yet only 5.4 per cent - little more than 1 in 20 - of the world's population have English as their mother tongue, according to IDC, the Boston-based IT market researchers. The majority of these are Americans. A further 7 per cent of the world's population are proficient English speakers, so the language is a good means of communication for around an eighth of the world's inhabitants.

There are fractionally more native Spanish speakers in the world, and the Chinese languages dwarf English as a native language, spoken by 20.7 per cent of the world population. Three-quarters of these, or 15 per cent of the world population, speak Mandarin alone - nearly three times as many people as have English as a first language.

The pre-eminence of English in other fields may be unassailable, but on the internet at least, its dominance is set to decline sharply as international internet access grows and more companies and institutions around the world put their information online and start to conduct e-business.

According to research by Steve McClure at IDC, growth in web usage and e-commerce in Europe and especially in Asia will outstrip that of the US by between two and five times over the next two to three years.

IDC surveys and data from Forrester, another IT market research group, also show, not surprisingly, that the vast majority of people prefer websites in their native language, especially for leisure activities such as online shopping. Moreover, they are more likely to buy things online if they can use their own language.

GlobalSight, a consultancy firm that advises organisations on internationalising websites, estimates that, by 2003, only one third of the projected 603m internet users will be English-speaking.

LeAnn Barber of Scient, an e-commerce consultancy, says: "There is an accelerating boot-strap effect, that is, as more content becomes available in a particular language, more people use the internet, and as more people use the internet, content producers are incentivised to use the internet as a medium."

Websites needed in many languages

Government and venture capitalist investment in infrastructure, she adds, will be required to break the cycle in which there is not enough content to attract users, and consequently not enough users to justify the creation of content.

Companies of any size wanting to leverage the internet to reach global markets, therefore, need to offer versions of their websites in each of the languages of their target markets. But Mr McClure says there is little response from those he has questioned in the US and Europe regarding their plans to make their sites multilingual.

Europe, he notes, has natural advantages over the US, since it has local linguistic skills and inherent cultural diversity. But there is little evidence that European businesses are turning this lead to their advantage.

This may be because the problems of maintaining a multilingual website are formidable.

Translation is just the starting point. Automated translation is available for free to individual web surfers, who can use it to get rough translations. But the quality, although improving, often yields laughable results and is no good for companies wishing to post alternative-language versions of their websites. So web pages have to be translated manually, or else automated translations must be reworked and polished by skilled translators.

Computers can play a valuable role in the overall translation process, providing, for example, online bilingual dictionaries, term banks and translation memories that scan databases of similar sentences that have been well-translated previously.

Once a website is translated into a number of languages, the web's interactive nature invites customers to respond with sales queries and support issues in their own language. Each of these needs to be dealt with in that language, requiring a large number of linguistically, as well as technically, skilled staff.

Sony, which operates websites in 14 languages to market and sell its consumer products such as laptops and memory sticks, is applying technology to automate some of this unwieldy problem. "Translating and localising the website is the easy bit," says Paul Johns, marketing director for Europe, Middle East and Asia at Broadbase (formerly Servicesoft), the company employed by Sony to handle as many queries as possible without human intervention. This is known as multilingual auto-response.

Mr Johns reckons that "80 per cent of all inbound queries to a call centre or website can be dealt with through about 20 answers." The problem is that these 80 per cent of questions can be stated in a myriad ways. And in an appropriate style. Emma Naismith, marketing director at Los Angeles-based Bowne Global Solutions, says prices need to be expressed in the local currency, dates must be in the right format, and weights and measures should be familiar.

Colours and images may need to be altered as they can convey different implications or simply work better in some countries than in others. Black is seen as the sombre colour of mourning in many cultures, but white conveys the same in other countries. A thumbs-up or the showing of palms through a wave can have the opposite of the desired effect.

Some images - especially those symbolic of national pride or patriotism - need to be switched. Graphics may support slogans or captions that contain plays on words that make no sense after translation. Ms Naismith gives this example: "A German ad for a bank shows mice sitting on some coins. The text below the picture reads 'Hier konnen Sie Ihre Mause anlegen', which translates into English as 'Here you can bring your mice'...I n German, 'Mause' ('mice') is a slang word for money...this graphic [as well as the text] would have to be changed for different readerships."

Culture can also influence the design and operations of a website. In Japan, where people are uneasy about giving their credit card details over the web, internet sales processes have to be changed to enable customers to order online, and pick up their goods from a local store or collection point.

In Switzerland and Korea, putting an X in a box -a common technique on web pages for selecting items from a list - suggests that the items should be excluded rather than included. There are also legal and taxation issues that need to be addressed to do business, including e-business, in different countries.

Risk of detering online customers

A good multilingual website will need to be designed well so that, for example, links from Spanish pages always lead to other Spanish pages, these being logical, consistent and faithful translations of the original site.

Some multilingual sites revert to a base language, usually English, when no translated page is available. This risks putting off customers. At the very least, a warning message should be displayed giving them the choice to continue, or quit, or perhaps use a rough automatic translation tool.

From the company's point of view, keeping all the translated pages on the website updated and consistent is a significant challenge. SDL International is one example of a company that is integrating translation memory and work flow tools with standard content management systems from Vignette and Interwoven to provide the necessary multilingual content management.

"Efficiency gains are considerable," says Mark Lancaster, SDL's chief executive. "You wouldn't even attempt these tasks without translation memories and multilingual content management. We are typically seeing 80 per cent gains in speed and 60 per cent gains in cost. And a change to a translated sentence or paragraph on website, including checking in context by a human translator, can be turned around in 10 minutes or half an hour. With manual processes this would have taken between a day and a week."

We cannot expect everything on the web to be available in every language any time soon. The internet started life as a rich archive of references, research and academic papers before it came to be thought of as the platform for e-business.

This enormous virtual library remains in place. Without automated translation of a far superior quality than is currently available, this material is far too voluminous and complex to be translated. At the same time, scientific documents, political and legal papers, newspapers and the like are continually being added in languages other than English at a tremendous rate.

Translations into English may therefore become increasingly important. As ad hoc translations are made, vast translation memories may come to the fore. It should become an important principle that manual translations, and computer-assisted translations that are polished by a human translator, should not be lost so that they can be recognised and offered again.

Colossal challenge

The technical and organisational challenges of managing this process effectively will be a mammoth task. It could be something that is built into a future version of the web. There may in the future be opportunities partially to reimburse the person or organisation that originally made, or footed the bill for, a translation each time it is re-used.

Research from Merrill Lynch suggests that only about 10 per cent of companies that trade across borders on the web have any serious plans for co-ordinating and maintaining their websites across multiple languages.

Perhaps large companies are not best placed to penetrate international markets. Local companies which need operate only in the language of the target market and have a full grasp of cultural issues will have advantages that may give them a strong lead.

It is not difficult to copy the best ideas in e-commerce - such as flight and holiday sales, sales of books and music, auctions and electronic marketplaces - and to establish local language and culturally appropriate versions.

There will be many exceptions where strong companies have products, technology or information that is uniquely available from them - Sony PlayStation games, for example - or where sheer financial muscle enables them to provide more competitive financial products such as insurance.

But the barriers of language and of culture may well put a brake on the ability of corporations to expand unchecked, while also offering much-needed opportunities to smaller, local companies in many of the world's less prosperous regions.

FUNNY TRANSLATIONS

2006-03-23T07:22:00.000-08:00

2006-03-22T08:10:00.000-08:00

2006-03-22T05:51:00.000-08:00

In the age of global markets, businesses are quite keen to get the best, state-of-the-art website to promote their products and services. A lot of money and effort is put into the design, technology and SEO. Then there is also the cost of developing the content, which involves hiring marketing professionals, copyright fees, etc. But is it enough to guarantee business?

What happens in this process is that the translation of the website is often overlooked. We have recently posted a poll on ecademy.com on the subject:

"HOW LIKELY ARE YOU TO BUY SERVICES/PRODUCTS ONLINE FROM A WEBSITE WHICH HAS BEEN POORLY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH?"

The results can be accessed on: http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=65095

The majority of people would avoid a badly translated website. We can only conclude that bad translations mean bad business!

2006-03-22T05:20:00.000-08:00