How do you spell Portuguese? In English, many people forget to put in that second ‘u’, but Portuguese speakers across the world, whether in Portugal, Brazil, Angola or Macau, are likely to spell it correctly: português.

One reason it’s easy to get correct is because Portuguese spelling, unlike English, is largely phonetic. But what happens in the cases when it’s not? And what happens when words have alternate pronunciations? Are they spelled differently? Should they be?

How to standardise spelling is an issue for all languages, and never a straightforward one. English spelling is a mish-mash of phonetic rules, grammatical rules, etymological rules, and exceptions and variations. Other languages have long adopted more systematic spelling systems: the first official Italian orthography dates back to 1582, French to 1635, and Spanish to 1713.

The first official Portuguese system was much more recent: 1911. It was adopted in Portugal and its overseas territories. But Brazil, which had gained independence nearly a century earlier, wasn’t consulted on the spelling reform, and didn’t adopt it either. Instead it introduced its own official system – similar but not identical to the Portuguese one –in 1938. So Portuguese spelling was standardised, but in two different ways.

Since then, there have been several attempts to unify official spelling across the whole Portuguese-speaking world, and an agreement was finally reached by representatives of 8 countries in 1990.

Various follow-up meetings ensued, and in the end it took nearly two decades before the first country adopted the new system: Brazil, in 2009. The other signatories to the agreement are still due to do so, with a transition period until 2012.

For Portuguese translation providers, this means that there are currently still two spelling systems in operation: one in Brazil, one for the other Portuguese-speaking countries. You’ll still have to specify which to use.

When the new agreement is implemented in all countries, does that mean that translation providers will no longer have to make the distinction? No. Brazilian Portuguese has further significant differences in vocabulary, grammar and syntax. So you’ll still have to distinguish Brazilian from Iberian Portuguese, even when they both finally use the same spelling system.

If you’re a Portuguese translator, you might find the following Portuguese links useful. This simple guide (in Portuguese) outlines the main changes made in the 1990 agreement. More entertaining to read is another guide (again in Portuguese) in which the writer pours scorn on the welter of misinformation surrounding the spelling reform, and tries to set the record straight.

Labels: localisation, Portuguese, translation

Our production manager Sanjoy Roy highlights a common confusion about Bengali usage

The Bengali language is the language of Bengal, right? Well, not wrong – but it’s not as simple as that. In the UK there’s quite a lot of confusion about what Bengali is, so I’ll try to clarify that here.

First, let me illustrate the problem. I live in Whitechapel, in East London, which has one of the highest densities of Bengalis in the country. My father, who was born in Dhaka and grew up in Kolkata, is a native Bengali speaker. But when he comes to visit me in Whitechapel, he can’t understand what the local Bengalis are saying. Yet he has no problem reading the shop signs and street names written in Bengali. What’s going on?

Well, spoken Bengali encompasses a range of dialects, and one of them – the one spoken around Kolkata – came to be considered the standard. Kolkata is the capital of West Bengal, an Indian state. But most Bengalis in the UK are from Bangladesh, not India. The language spoken around its capital, Dhaka, is not much very different from Kolkata Bengali; they’re like different accents of the same language. But the language spoken in the Sylhet region of Bangladesh, where most UK Bengalis are from, is quite different – so different that some regard it as a different language altogether. So that’s why my father can’t understand my local Bengali speakers: they use very different dialects.

But he can understand the writing, and not only because it’s the same script that he uses: it’s the same language. Spoken Bengali has very wide regional variations (neither Sylheti speakers nor Kolkata-Bengali speakers would understand Bengali from Chittagong, for example). But written Bengali is pretty much the same. So Bengalis across India and Bangladesh typically speak their regional dialect, and write in standard Bengali. That means they are literate in the same language, even if they can’t understand each other in everyday conversation.

So if you need a Bengali translation, remember:

• Written Bengali is pretty much standard; spoken Bengali varies much more widely.
• Sylheti dialect may be more appropriate in particular cases, for example to communicate specifically with Sylheti speakers, using speech rather than text.

For anyone interested more in Bengali language, here are a few good starting points:

Wikipedia entry on Bengali language
Omniglot on the Bengali alphabet
Indopedia entry on Bengali language

And in another blogpost, I’ll look at some issues we frequently encounter in Bengali typesetting.

Dakha hobe!
[See you again]

Labels: Bengali, dialects, London, translation

The last year has been a hard one economically for businesses throughout the English-speaking world. Translation provides part of a business solution to riding out the recession and emerging with a competitive advantage, I argue in a new article on Buzzle.com.

You can read the full article (or syndicate the text for your own website) on Buzzle:
How Translation Helps Business Survive Recession in the UK

Labels: business growth, overseas markets, recession, translation

Tomorrow sees the annual European Day of Languages. Initiated by the Council of Europe in 2001, this day sees various celebrations of language, diveristy and foreign language learning across Europe every 26 September.

The 27 states of the European Union share some 225 indigenous languages with many more spoken by citizens whose family origin is from further afield. Some 23 are recognised as official languages, and the EU has provided a written and audio sample of each on their Languages in the EU webpage.

To celebrate European Day of Languages, the European Commission Representation in London has made available to schools some 200,000 copies of a language mini guide. The colourful guide is an excellent EDL resource, giving a small example of European languages (PDF download).

You can find more information on the European Union in London here, as well as more on European events and news.

Meanwhile, if you are a teacher, pupil or parent, why not have a look at the EU young translator contest. This Europe-wide competition, called Juvenes Translatores, is open to secondary schools with registration running until 20 October.

Whatever you are doing to celebrate this European Day of Languages, enjoy!

Labels: EU, European Day of Languages, European Union, foreign language, translation

The use and equality of the Welsh language have long inspired passions, and a long-running campaign seems to have reversed its decline. Today, in an apparent partial victory for bilingualism and the equal use of the Welsh language in Wales, the Assembly Commission has backed off plans to scrap the translation of debates from English into Welsh.

The plans had caused widespread outrage with the Welsh Language Board threatening to launch an investigation into whether the move would break the Assembly's own Welsh language scheme. Pressure group Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) also intervened stating:

"It is also a matter of great sadness that Dafydd Ellis-Thomas the Presiding Officer has actively backed this decision since it shows a churlish, colonialist attitude utterly alien for a nation that is striving to create a bilingual future for itself. But we emphasise yet again that our aim at the moment is to seek legal advice concerning this decision since we believe it to be both unlawful and unjust."

Those of us who have ever lived in or visited parts of north and west Wales can have no doubt that Welsh is a living language, used by many as their first choice for saying hello, ordering a pint or doing business. Almost 22% of the population of Wales are Welsh speakers of some kind, and although a smaller number would choose Welsh as their primary language, many switch between Welsh and English according to the subject at hand and the social context.

The director of CBI Wales has written an interesting opinion piece considering the arguments for and against Welsh bilingualism, in which he concedes there is a democratic case for people being able to access documents in the language of their choice. Perhaps not surprising he leans against regulation, but instead profers the idea that business may be missing a trick by not providing Welsh translation.


Photo: orange.co.uk

One company not missing that particular boat is Orange who this month launched a Welsh language mobile phone, the Samsung S5600. Sian Doyle from Orange commented, "This initiative is part of a broader commitment by Orange to provide Welsh speakers with more choice. We already include the Welsh language in our stores via bilingual signage, Welsh speaking advisors and other initiatives. The Welsh market is a vibrant and exciting marketplace".

The phone features not only Welsh menus but also predictive texting in Welsh. Of course there are many features that influence people on which phone to buy, and it remains to be seen how well the first fully Welsh mobile phone fares. But what is incredible is that this recent launch has taken so long to come about.

Another recent adopter of the Welsh language is Google Translate, which features it in their latest batch of additions. Although it must be said: any reservations about such machine translation would apply all the more in a language as sensitive to word context as Welsh, leaving no doubt that any serious application of the language still requires a professional Welsh translator.

One thing is for sure: with a continuing debate, not only regarding the Assembly but whether businesses in general should be obliged to offer a bilingual service, this issue looks unlikely to be far from the headlines for months to come.

Labels: business growth, language, translation, Welsh

Google's recent spate of strange logos on their search pages have now been revealed as a homage to author H. G. Wells, whose birthday it is today. All credit to them for highlighting such an interesting author who was often ahead of his time.

Google has been engaged in a more down to Earth battle with Microsoft's interloper in search, Bing. One front in this battle has been their respective machine translation services at Google Translate and Bing Translator.

We have discussed the problems inherent with machine translation before. It may be sufficient to give you a gist of a text, although even then it can be misleading and is best used in conjunction with at least a rudimentary grasp of the language in question. It should never be used to translate text that you want to use to persuade someone else – be it a scientific report, charity campaign or sales text. Only a human professional translator can provide the nuances and background research that such text requires.

However many of us are used to relying on Google for search and more, and are used to getting near perfect results. So it is perhaps unsurprising that Google's recent expansion of languages has been met with uncritical acclaim. Too many articles and reports seem to take the translation at face value. After all, if a non-Japanese speaker puts English text into Google translate, they get Japanese text back and everything appears wonderful. The reality of what that text actually says – the sense it conveys – is unknown.

The hazards involved in this were beautifully illustrated in the BBC's documentary series, The Armstrongs. One episode followed this couple's double-glazing sales efforts in France. They had sought an online translation of their product, and understood the French for a house's glass extension or conservatory to be conservatoire. This is a perfectly good French word, but sadly means something more along the lines of a music academy. The resulting bewilderment on their perspective French clients' faces made for brilliant television but terrible business.


Translation Party: fun but with a serious point

A perceptive post on the Virtualization Journal takes this uncritical public perception to task (in somewhat earthy language), pointing out that using these translation tools requires an understanding of their limitations.

One more light-hearted demonstration of this has been doing the rounds on the internet recently. As TechCrunch reports, Translation Party translates a phrase to and fro to produce amusing results.

A slightly less flippant but equally amusing demonstration of the dangers of machine translation has been provided by the resignation of Google's own president of Chinese operations. Kai-Fu Lee posted an expanation of his resignation and future plans, but sadly Google's English to Chinese translation renders it fairly meaningless.

As with so much on the internet, it's a case of caveat lector – reader beware!

Labels: translation

September has rolled around all too quickly, and our summer's coming to an end ... even though in London yesterday we had that British rarity of a sunny and hot Bank Holiday Monday afternoon!

Regular readers of this blog will know that September is also the month of International Translation Day. The day itself isn't for a few weeks yet, being on 30 September 2009. But following the popularity of last year's International Translation Day greetings card, we've produced one for this year too.

As we explained last year, "The translation day was established in 1991 by the Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs (International Federation of Translators). The date of 30 September was chosen as it is the feast day of St. Jerome (347-420 AD), patron saint of translators, interpreters and librarians. The day celebrates and promotes translation as an essential activity in contemporary society – but one which too often remains invisible and ignored. Each year a particular theme, highlighting a different area of translation, is adopted"

The theme for 2009 is "Working together" and as the International Federation of Translators explains it presents an opportunity to "take a fresh look at why and how it pays to join forces." That's an idea that's essential to me, running a firm that provides translation services across more than a hundred languages! I'll return to discussing this theme in a later post but, for now, enjoy the card and feel free to pass it on to your friends, clients or colleagues.

Click below to download the International Translation Day 2009 greeting card as a PDF:

Labels: holiday, International Translation Day, translation

Here's a little something to put a smile on your face for a Monday morning. One of WorldAccent's studio team recently returned from holiday, having swapped Italian typesetting for the Italian countryside.

As well as bringing back some delicious cake, he took a snap of this amusing sign from the door of his train compartment:



Yes, that English translation really does read:



No, we can't work out how they managed that either. We're just fairly sure it wasn't a native Italian to English translation!

Incidentally, if you are intrigued by the idea of getting the train to mainland Europe (or even further), have a look at the informative and enthusiastic train information site, seat61.com. Travelling by train across Europe may not be the quickest way to get there, but it's a lot less trying on your state of mind (not to mention being the low carbon option).

Labels: funny, holiday, Italian, translation

It's not just words that sometimes need translating across the globe. A study this month has concluded people from different cultures read facial expressions differently.


Research on these cultural differences, carried out by a team largely from Glasgow University, showed that East Asian observers found it more difficult to distinguish some facial expressions.

"We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions," said Rachael Jack. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favour the eyes and neglect the mouth. This means that Easterners have difficulty distinguishing facial expressions that look similar around the eye region."

Interestingly this difference in focus is also reflected in emoticons – the textual portrayal of a writer's mood commonly used in emails and text messages.

Western emoticons primarily use the mouth to convey emotional states, e.g. : ) for happy and : ( for sad. Eastern emoticons use the eyes, e.g. ^.^ for happy and ;_; for sad. So a quirky brochure design that revolves around a smiley in English might need a total re-think for the Chinese translation.

The final word on this goes to the research team, who wrote:

"In sum, our data demonstrate genuine perceptual differences between Western Caucasian and East Asian observers ... From here on, examining how the different facets of cultural ideologies and concepts have diversified these basic social skills will elevate knowledge of human emotion processing from a reductionist to a more authentic representation. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation."

Labels: Chinese, translation

The champagne corks weren't quite popping but the French and German finance ministries were no doubt pleased with themselves last week.

The news that both economies have emerged from recession was welcome, leading French economy minister Christine Lagarde to comment "These are obviously very positive numbers, which have surprised us and made us quite happy."

The front page of last Friday's City A.M. also adopted a positive tone, stating "European pair lead recovery", hinting at a view of a wider recovery across the Eurozone.

Less heralded was the news that Portuguese-speaking Brazil is also now no longer in recession having grown by 1.5% in the second quarter. Along with growth from China and Japan, this means that six of the world's top 10 economies are now out of recession.

Meanwhile in the UK, the picture seems more bleak. Discussing the outlook and success of Quantitative Easing in his eclectic but always insightful and intelligent blog, Newsnight's Paul Mason says:

"Even with 0.5% interest rates right through to 2011 and the full £175bn still in circulation until then, the Bank of England is predicting inflation will undershoot the 2% target for CPI. That means we should expect interest rates to be low for at least that long. It also signifies the recovery is going to be pretty appalling: weak and fragile."

So much for the economics, what does this have to do with translation? Apart from professional translation being effected by the wider economy, I've argued before on this blog that translation can be part of a business survival strategy and that the global recession is not playing out evenly.

As Business Secretary Lord Mandelson points out:
"Different economies will show different patterns of behaviour. But the key point is all these economies rely on each other; 55 to 56% of our trade is with the rest of Europe. So when [they are] recovering that is good news for our manufacturers and our exports here."

The French or German economy may not be booming but if they are pulling ahead of the British, some businesses – not least SMEs – may well wish to revisit the idea of translating a product brochure into French, or translating their website into German. This could not only open up new markets for them, but mean busy times ahead for those of us in the professional translation business!

Labels: business growth, French, German, recession, translation

Look up figs in a dictionary and it will describe a fruit or the tree that produces them. In translation and localisation the word has a quite different meaning. FIGS translation is simply an acronym describing French, Italian, German and Spanish translation.

This combination of languages opens any document or product up to a wide range of potential users. Turning to the strangely ever-useful CIA World Factbook, some plain economic facts bring this home all too clearly. Germany alone is the world's 5th largest economy with an estimated 2008 GDP of US$ 2.8 trillion, more than a quarter greater than the UK's equivalent output. France, Italy and Spain are 8th, 10th and 12th respectively on the same scale.

The numbers are even more staggering, with a combined GDP of about that of the United States, once you add in some of the other countries and regions where these are primary native languages – Austria, Mexico, Argentina, French-speaking Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, Venezuela, the list goes on and on. There are also large numbers of people around the world who speak one of the FIGS languages as a foreign or second language.

As the FIGS languages use the Roman alphabet, they are relatively straightforward to use in a range of typefaces and on the web. This, combined with their large audience, makes these languages a popular choice especially when considering translation for a west European market. Many companies and organisations wanting to expand their reach are making use of FIGS translation and localisation services for their products, websites and documents.

After all, whether you are trying to win someone's business or convince them of your point of view, there is no substitute for a stylish, well written translation in their native language. Everyone should give a fig about that!

Labels: FIGS, French, German, Italian, localisation, Spanish, translation

Thanks to one of our readers for pointing out this news story about York council coming under fire for relying on online machine translation.

There's a couple of funny examples but there is also an underlying serious point. If you want to communicate details and nuances of your services in a foreign language, the often rough and ready translation provided free online might not be good enough or, even worse, can make you a laughing stock.

There really is no substitute for professional translation services provided by a human being!

Labels: foreign language, professional, translation

Along with much of the rest of the English speaking world, the WorldAccent office has not been immune to the lure of the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. For the uninitiated, crime novel "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was a massive hit last year. The second in the series "The Girl Who Played With Fire" has just come out in paperback and has instantly become one of the hot reads of the summer.

Larsson was an interesting character, being both a crusading journalist himself and noted for tackling extreme right and racist groups. He wrote his books in his native Swedish and they have enjoyed great success in Sweden. But sadly he died before the books could be translated, and so could provide no guidance in shaping the English text.

Glancing at the translation credit in the front of the book – to a Reg Keeland – made us wonder about the responsibility involved in this project. The Swedish translation certainly felt professional, maintaining a sense of the Swedish setting while using some elegant English turns of phrase and native colloquialisms. Now it has emerged Reg Keeland is a pseudonym, and as with many a large translation project, there were some twists and turns in the process. You can read more in the interesting interview "Reg" gave his local paper in Seattle...

Labels: literature, Stieg Larsson, Swedish, translation

Sometimes it really is worth being confident in your translation. Say, for instance, you are major world statesperson meeting your Russian counterpart in front of the world's press. If you decide to give them a "reset button" to symbolise your commitment to starting afresh, you really want the Russian text to say something along those lines.

How Hilary Clinton must wish her advisors had taken that on board before they got her to present Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a big red button labelled with the Russian word "peregruzka", meaning overcharged rather than reset.

Jokes and puns are notoriously difficult to translate into a foreign language. There is no guarantee that a clever play on words in English will work at all if translated literally. Even if the Clinton team had used the word they later claimed they were aiming for (“perezagruzka”), the joke would have been clumsy in Russian.

The other aspect that seems to have escaped those charged with making this button is that Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Of course, it is possible to transliterate Russian words using Roman script. But if you are making a good will gift for a foreign government, it would seem de rigueur to use their alphabet. We certainly would have been happy to provide Obama's administration with a Russian typesetting service!

Having not had the help of a professional Russian translator, Clinton got herself into even deeper water when the mistake was pointed out. Lavrov pointed out (in fluent English), “This says ‘peregruzka’ which means overcharged” leading Clinton to joke in reply, “We won’t let you do that to us, I promise.” Err, no, Secretary of State, the word means overcharged in an electrical sense, not in the sense of charging too much money.

All of which goes to show, if you want to convey an important message in another language, check the wording with a native speaker or even better, engage the services of a professional translator who combines that linguistic knowledge with writing skills. Otherwise you might end up the butt of the joke.

Labels: Obama, professional, Russian, translation, typesetting

I’ve mentioned before that I am a big fan of Charlton Athletic football club and the past few weeks have been a real rollercoaster for us fans. For a while I thought my separate worlds of football and Arabic translation would be brought together as Dubai based Zabeel Investments made an “indicative offer” to buy the club. Following the take-over of Manchester City by the Arabic group ADUG, it's no wonder fans' thoughts turned to Fantasy Football transfers we could expect to see arrive at the Valley.

In the end the deal did not go through as Zabeel are looking to concentrate on investing in property and tourism nearer home. It all made me think about how, in this time of world economic gloom, oil rich Middle East companies look set to try to diversify.

In the United Arab Emirates alone, there is currently around £200 billion worth of active construction projects while the Dubai International Financial Centre aims to massively expand the financial sector with tax, rent and regulatory breaks. Meanwhile the Palm Islands are a massive real estate and tourism development - the largest land reclamation project in the world, increasing Dubai's shoreline by 520 km. All of this has made the United Arab Emirates one of the fastest growing economies in the world, with some estimates putting GDP growth in 2006 at a staggering 35 percent.

The vast sums of money are not restricted to the Arab world as business opportunities are sought out around the world. So we see Barclays bank raising £7.3 billion from Middle East investors. Other famous names that have seen an influx of Arabic capital include P&O, Aston Martin and Madame Tussauds.

In these times of doom and gloom news stories, it's no wonder that such growth, investment and let's face it, plain cash, is catching people's attention and many other companies have their eyes set on pulling in some of that investment.

All of which probably goes to explain why we have been inundated with Arabic translation and typesetting over the last few weeks!

Labels: Arabic, business growth, football, overseas markets, recession, translation

Another day, another story of the dangers of non-expert translation. Officials at a Welsh council needed a road sign translated from English to Welsh, and unsuspectingly used the Welsh response to their email request.

Unfortunately for them, and to the hilarity of local Welsh speakers, the response was actually an automated "out of office" response.

As Dylan Iorwerth of Welsh-language magazine Golwg commented, "When they're proofing signs, they should really use someone who speaks Welsh".

We couldn't agree more!

Labels: professional, translation, Welsh

In what way are language celebration days like buses? You wait for ages and then two come along at once! After last week's European Day of Languages, this Tuesday marks International Translation Day.

The translation day was established in 1991 by the Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs (International Federation of Translators). The date of 30 September was chosen as it is the feast day of St. Jerome (347-420 AD), patron saint of translators, interpreters and librarians. The day celebrates and promotes translation as an essential activity in contemporary society – but one which too often remains invisible and ignored.

Each year a particular theme, highlighting a different area of translation, is adopted – with this year's being "Terminology: Words Matter". As the Federation put it, "the specific need is for words that matter, words that describe a previously identified concept and that contribute to the clarity and effectiveness of communication in a given field of expertise, environment or community."

As a small celebration of this year's International Translation Day, here is a greeting card for you. Feel free to also pass it on to your friends, clients or colleagues:

Labels: International Translation Day, translation

It seems like every day there are new headlines of doom, gloom and forthcoming recession. Whilst the American recession has perhaps had less of an impact on the global economy than it would have done in the past, the overwhelming evidence of global recession casts a grey cloud over small businesses.

Earlier this month, an OECD report suggested that Britain's economy would fare worst amongst those of the G7 in the last two quarters of 2008. This gloomy message was reinforced yesterday when the European Commission also predicted that the UK would fall into recession in the second half of this year.

The web is flooded with "recession help" sites. It would seem that everyone wants to put in his or her piece on how to avoid economic doom, and I’m afraid I’m no exception! But here I want to consider one way of keeping company finances healthy that is often overlooked: translation into one or more foreign languages.

Although the downturn is global it’s by no means uniform – for a small outlay you can tap into an international market, effectively "recession proofing" your company. Even near-by in Europe, you can find more reasons for optimism. France and Italy, for example, look set to be spared recession, while Poland is considered to have one of the fastest growing economies at present, with an annual growth rate of 6.0%.

On top of that, the weak pound may have been painful during our summer holidays – but it makes UK goods and services attractive to global consumers.

It seems almost paradoxical to expand in order to avoid recession, but business strategist Richard Denny disagrees: "When the going gets tough, business owners should step up their sales and marketing activity rather than cut back". And what better way to do this than to break into a market less burdened with downturn?

Labels: global, recession, strategy, translation

Let’s face it – this summer of sport belongs to the Spanish. Nadal at Wimbledon, Euro 2008, Sastre in the Tour de France... it’s been a great season for the country of Spain. But this is a country divided by different cultures, foods, even languages. As Independent journalist James Lawton notes, Spain is best described as not a country but a "cohesive nation".

Take, for example, Catalonia. Laws enforced after the fall of the Franco regime (which itself followed a bloody and divisive civil war) require that Spanish language be taught in state schools for 3 hours a week maximum – the same as English and other foreign languages. More than nine out of 10 people in the region can now speak Catalonian.

This wide variation from region to region in Spain is particularly important to bear in mind with Spanish translation, in terms of both language and culture. For example, tapas (small dishes of food including chorizo and Serrano ham) and Cava (local champagne) are two things that come to mind when you think of Spain, along with the less palatable bull-fighting. Yet of these ‘Spanish’ delicacies, Cava is only produced in Catalonia, and tapas is a Basque tradition.

When it comes to business translation, one rule is key: “Speak your readers’ language”. That is a language that changes from person to person, region to region – not just country to country. Nowhere in the world is this more apparent than in the “cohesive nation” of Espaňa (and that’s before you even consider the variants found within Latin American countries). However, for now, division within the country lies largely forgotten. As stated by Madrid-based political analyst David Mathieson in The Guardian: “Football has united Spain”.

Labels: Spanish, sport, translation

Language is universal. Or so they say. In fact, sometimes language can feel anything but consistent. When it comes to translating for business, it pays to have a professional translator.

Some businesses would do well to note this. Even brand names are not exempt from the need to research thoroughly before breaking into a new market. For example, the Chinese translation of Coca Cola was initially printed as ‘Ke-kou-ke-la’, on account that it sounded similar to the original (this is known as transliteration). It transpired that ‘Ke-kou-ke-la’ actually meant either ‘bite the wax tadpole’ or ‘female horse stuffed with wax’, depending on the dialect.

Many versions of this cautionary tale abound on the internet. It was the result of a competition gone horribly wrong according to Chinese Wikipedia, with even Coca Cola's own historian conceding there were issues with these early Chinese translations. After a more careful translation process, considering the meaning as well as the sounds of words, Coke came up with "Ko-kou-ko-le", which translates, somewhat more appropriately, as "happiness in the mouth".

One typical downfall for businesses attempting to span the international markets is flagged up in the Institute of Translation and Interpreting guide to successful translation [PDF]:

"Avoid culture-bound clichés. References to your national sport may well fall flat. Ditto literary/cultural metaphors. Tread carefully with references to parts of the human body, viewed differently by different cultures."

This warning could have saved then-Prime Minister Tony Blair from an embarrassing cultural translation blunder in 1998, when he told a group of Japanese business men that the British Government intended to go "the full Monty" in terms of strengthening the UK economy. This cultural reference was met with blank faces: the film had not yet been released in Japan. Furthermore, the notion of the British Prime Minister stripping off to cheesy music is an image that would probably not rest easily with the hosts’ cultural sensitivities…

The problem with translation is that the term is all too often taken to mean literally translating word for word into the desired language – in reality some things will always be, in a somewhat cliché truth, "lost in translation". It is only through professional translation that you can ensure that this loss is kept to a minimum. Professional translators keep up to date with terminology, jargon and colloquialisms across a variety of subjects.

What's more, translation is a skill. It is not enough to be bilingual, just as speaking English doesn't automatically make you a great copywriter (myself being an exception to the rule of course!). A good professional translation needs to be written gracefully and capture the real meaning of the source text.

Labels: professional, translation

Welcome to the newest addition to our WorldAccent website. In this blog, I intend to talk about more than just professional translation. Of course, as a director of a translation company I have plenty to say on that topic, both from a strategic and a day-to-day fundamentals point of view.

But I am also an adopted Londoner of some 30 years. I am frequently captivated by the variety of thriving communities within London, their history and intermingling of languages.

What's more, here at WorldAccent we view language not as separate but as a part of the wider world. Our everyday experiences both shape and are shaped by the language we use, and I hope to reflect some of this wider picture.

Translation is the key to language, and language is something that I personally find fascinating. I never cease to be amazed by its sheer diversity. I am always impressed, not only by the methods employed to translate these languages by our professional translators, but by the rapid switching between languages in the office around me.

Welcome to my blog, optimistically entitled "Making Sense". I hope to bring you something interesting and fresh, and I’m sure that's possible – after all, language is never stagnant.

Labels: language, London, translation

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