In an article published today on HeraldToday.com, Dana Sanchez writes how "...some tourist organizations are translating their published materials into other languages."
It goes on to say that not only other languages should be considered, but also dialects, mentioning, among other things, how the material was made available in several different varieties of Spanish, because "Any business that wants to communicate effectively with the Spanish-speaking audience needs to take dialect into account[...]: 'One size does not fit all'".
Currently there seems to be a real fixation, especially in the US, about translating into regional varieties of Spanish (a customer of ours even asked about "Virginia Spanish", under the impression that the Hispanic population resident in Virginia spoke a distinct variety of the language, presumably different from North Carolina Spanish, Maryland Spanish, or whatever).
However, several excellent Spanish-speaking linguists, from different countries, have pointed out that such differences are mostly in the mind of customers that do not speak Spanish themselves, and that any educated person from a Spanish-speaking country would have no difficulty communicating with people from other Spanish-speaking countries.
An excellent presentation about this was given by Guillermo Cabanellas at last year's ATA Conference in Seattle.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Heaven!
...Or at least the way I imagine heaven to be: an infinite library where, unlike in Borges' "Biblioteca de Babel" one can find, understand and enjoy all books (even those that were written in dead and long forgotten languages, and even those books hat never were written, but could have been).
Well this was a bit short of that: just a wonderful antiquarian bookshop in Mexico City (Librería Madero, in Avenida Madero 12), a few days ago: I'm buying a wonderful copy of the "Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España", which I had been seeking for a while.
Language Standards For Global Business
Interesting press release about the first language standards summit, which was held a few days ago in Berlin.
Among the issues tackled were language standards and translation quality.
The next summit is scheduled for May 29 and 30, in Barcelona.
Practitioners, corporate planners, suppliers, and academics came together and actively shared their views on what they needed in language technology and process standards.
Among the issues tackled were language standards and translation quality.
The next summit is scheduled for May 29 and 30, in Barcelona.
Global Content Management
EContent published a few days ago an interesting article on Global Content Management. Among the highlights of the articles are sound suggestions such as
There are also links to useful sites; for instance after suggesting the above, it links to the home page for Simplified Technical English, where one should be able to find help and guidelines for clear writing.
The article continues with more useful information on translation software (both TM and MT), XML, and other related products.
Although the article is clearly not aimed at translators, but at the users of translation, localization, and allied services, it should also be of interest to most translators.
First and foremost, you must learn to write for translation, which means to write simply, clearly and, above all, to write for reuse.
There are also links to useful sites; for instance after suggesting the above, it links to the home page for Simplified Technical English, where one should be able to find help and guidelines for clear writing.
The article continues with more useful information on translation software (both TM and MT), XML, and other related products.
Although the article is clearly not aimed at translators, but at the users of translation, localization, and allied services, it should also be of interest to most translators.
Translation Industry Career Guide Online
Lingo24, a translation company, has launched on their website an online "Translation Industry Career Guide", apparently mostly aimed at raw beginners ("...[we] would like more graduates to enter translation and the language services industry...").
Currently the online career guide consists of only a few articles, which go from a "micro-glossary" (with definition of a minimal set of terms, such as "Interpreting", "Translation", or "Source language"), to a few case studies. Further articles are promised for the future.
Currently the online career guide consists of only a few articles, which go from a "micro-glossary" (with definition of a minimal set of terms, such as "Interpreting", "Translation", or "Source language"), to a few case studies. Further articles are promised for the future.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
ATA Conference in Seattle
In some ways, it was a better conference than usual: an interesting city, good fish restaurant, some interesting presentations, and the chance to meet again with old friends.
The hotel was not the best, given the number of people that came this year: the elevators were always overcrowded and took forever, and many of the conference rooms were way too small.
As usual, the presentations were a mixed bag: most had either too narrow a focus to be of interest for most people, or were slanted too much towards beginners... for example the presentation on using word macros was, in my opinion, way too basic, as was the one on XML.
Other presentations were much better. Of those that I attended the best was definitely the presentation and seminar on legal translation from Italian into English. Also very interesting and topical was the presentation on "Neutral Spanish" (and why such thing does not exist and is totally unnecessary).
Our own presentation was fairly well received; I did not present very well - I was nervous, and it showed, but Franco did much better in his part of the presentation (as well as in his presentation with Microsoft on MT).
Probably the best part was meeting again with Masaki, our partner that now works at Microsoft: we went twice with him at an excellent fish restaurant: especially the first evening we had an excellent time, the four of us remaining at our table for ours, talking about translation, Microsoft, and the "good old times" at J.D. Edwards.
The hotel was not the best, given the number of people that came this year: the elevators were always overcrowded and took forever, and many of the conference rooms were way too small.
As usual, the presentations were a mixed bag: most had either too narrow a focus to be of interest for most people, or were slanted too much towards beginners... for example the presentation on using word macros was, in my opinion, way too basic, as was the one on XML.
Other presentations were much better. Of those that I attended the best was definitely the presentation and seminar on legal translation from Italian into English. Also very interesting and topical was the presentation on "Neutral Spanish" (and why such thing does not exist and is totally unnecessary).
Our own presentation was fairly well received; I did not present very well - I was nervous, and it showed, but Franco did much better in his part of the presentation (as well as in his presentation with Microsoft on MT).
Probably the best part was meeting again with Masaki, our partner that now works at Microsoft: we went twice with him at an excellent fish restaurant: especially the first evening we had an excellent time, the four of us remaining at our table for ours, talking about translation, Microsoft, and the "good old times" at J.D. Edwards.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Our presentation at the ATA
We gave our presentation ("Translation Quality measurement in Practice") at the 46th ATA Conference, in Seattle.
You can download a pdf version of the presentation from our web site devoted to translation quality: TranslationQuality.com.
You can download a pdf version of the presentation from our web site devoted to translation quality: TranslationQuality.com.
Friday, November 04, 2005
TranslationQuality.com and Translation Quality Blog Now Up
Our new web site, devoted to translation quality issues (at present mainly our work on the measurement of translation quality), is now up.
You can visit it at TranslationQuality.com.
Also active is our new blog, Translation Quality Blog, which we intend as an open forum for questions regarding traslation quality and translation quality improvement.
You can visit it at TranslationQuality.com.
Also active is our new blog, Translation Quality Blog, which we intend as an open forum for questions regarding traslation quality and translation quality improvement.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
ATA conference coming... with our presentation
Our presentation, "Translation Quality Measurement in Practice", will be on Saturday morning, at 8:30.
We have quite a few new things to present after a one year absence, including our practical experience implementing TQI at Lionbridge.
Anybody who is interested in translation quality is cordially invited to our presentation.
See you in Seattle.
We have quite a few new things to present after a one year absence, including our practical experience implementing TQI at Lionbridge.
Anybody who is interested in translation quality is cordially invited to our presentation.
See you in Seattle.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Bulgarian Invents Unique Translation Method
from Sofia News Agency
Very short on details ("Koycho Mitev's invention uses digits to record speech and automatically transfer it into whatever other language") and I'm afraid I'll believe it when I see it.
From what it says here, it might be a variation of a word for word translation: "word = n. 23 in English, n. 23 in Italian = parola".
Very short on details ("Koycho Mitev's invention uses digits to record speech and automatically transfer it into whatever other language") and I'm afraid I'll believe it when I see it.
From what it says here, it might be a variation of a word for word translation: "word = n. 23 in English, n. 23 in Italian = parola".
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