Languages are a reflection of the culture in which they are used. Every language has a distinct identity because cultures everywhere are different from each other. This is why excellent language translation providers are also highly learned about the culture of the languages in which they work.
It’s a known fact that language translation is not simply the replacement of words in the original language with their nearest equivalents in the target language. Those who are familiar with language translation know that such a translation process can produce unpredictable and mostly unwanted results.
It’s not uncommon to find the same word having different meaning or effect in a different language. There are several instances of big multinationals ending up with costly marketing mistakes after directly translating their advertising into the target population and ending up meaning something entirely different to what they originally intended. Additionally most languages have their own grammar and structure, and also depend upon idioms and the like to various degrees. Idioms are classic examples of phrases and sentences that appear to be about one thing but their meaning and intended expression is entirely different.
One can also take into account a factor like the degree of politeness used in a language. Take for example, the Japanese, who place a high degree of importance on being polite while Americans generally prefer to be relatively direct about matters. These attitudes percolate into their language and their documents. So a person who is involved in translating between American English to Japanese has to make sure that the translation not only conveys the intended meaning but is also accepted by the reader as comfortably as their original language. Such translations are what we refer to as accurate and authentic in other words a high quality language translation and they cannot be achieved without having substantial knowledge about culture.
There are other factors like humor – what one culture finds funny might be perceived as offensive to another. The same language spoken in different countries can have significant differences, an example being French as spoken in France, and on the other hand as spoken in Canada. These are just some of the many aspects that arise from culture and have a significant impact on the language.
The Kurodahan Press was started in 2002 by a few enterprising language professionals from Japan with the intention of forming a publishing house that would serve the interests of both Japanese and English readers. In its endeavor to bring quality Japanese work to English readers, Kurodahan Press has announced the Kurodahan Press Translation Prize, which will be awarded for the English translation of a given Japanese short story.
This event has been organized to find and encourage translators working in this area. Those who are interested in taking part should check out http://www.kurodahan.com/mt/e/khpprize/ for details.
A site named Translation Party has come out with an amusing new way of playing around with the automated translation service offered by Google. Folks who are looking for serious stuff are forewarned that this is just another way of killing time and nothing more.
Translation Party has a clean and simple interface quite like Google with a key named “find equilibrium”. The user is supposed to enter an English sentence or phrase and hit the key to generate a series of translations. What is unique about this series of translations is that it translates the original line from English to Japanese, which is then again translated back to English. The process keeps repeating till no further change is suggested by Google’s translation service. What one ends up with is a series of amusing translated lines. I keyed in “looking for translation equilibrium” and got a series of mutations which ended with “Please translate the balance”
Translation Party uses Google Translator’s ability to fetch words in the target language which are close in meaning to the ones in the original language. The trouble with Google translator is that quite often in the process of translation it changes the meaning of the original sentence which serves for the fun part of fooling around at Translation Party. Try it out with your favorite movie quotes 
English speakers who desire to have working knowledge of the Arabic language for example in conversing with Arabic clients or business partners should check out a Spoken Arabic translator that has been developed by Sakhr’s Software.
This is a wonderful app designed for Blackberry phones which enables smooth communication between English and Arabic speakers through real time language translation. The Spoken Arabic translator is based upon natural language processing technology for Arabic which allows for accurate translation.
The application is very simple to use. It can be installed in any Blackberry phone. The users can speak in either Arabic or English and the app translates it immediately, the use r can view the transcript in either language and also play it out loud for the opposite party. Its like having a reliable English-Arabic translation expert right in your pocket.
Check out the website of Sakhr Sofware for more information.
We recently added German to Russian translation service at Tomedes. Readers with translation requirements for this language pair are invited to check the best translation quote for their project from the left menu on our website www.Tomedes.com.
German to Russian translation is available for specialized document translation requirement like certificate translation, corporate translation, government translation and many other fields. We already have several professional language translators working for this language pair and are open to adding more. So if you require German to Russian translation, you know where to go for the best quality at lowest price.
I discovered yet another iPhone translation app, it’s only meant for Albanian - English translation and produces pretty satisfying results. It’s called iLanguage and allows the user to translate from Albanian to English and vice-versa quickly and easily. It would specially be helpful to business people and travelers.
Operating iLanguage is as the cliche goes ‘child’s play’, all you have to do is type in a phrase either in English or Albanian and hit enter to be presented with the translated version of the phrase in authentic lettering.
Other helpful features include a quickly searchable history of recent translations and no limits to how much one can translate at one go, whether it is one word or a whole paragraph. Check out http://arcticgerbil.com for more details.
The Health Care Reform legislation which is now pending with the Congress has given rise to a new development. The legislation proposes that doctors and hospitals would have to provide language translation service and interpreters free of charge to patients who do not speak or understand English. Those who fail to do so would be severely penalized.
This has created quite a storm as many people are outraged at the huge cost that would be incurred by health care industry (which is already battling severe financial crisis) for providing these services. Others are of the opinion that such schemes would make sure that a lot of immigrants don’t even make the effort to learn English which is necessary while living in a country which is predominantly English speaking.
The power of language translation has been affirmed yet again. According to Nielsen Insights, Spanish language ad spend in the US is on the uptrend, and has posted profits in almost every major product category in 2008.
The most effective bridge for communicating with an audience is through its native language - speaking in the target customer’s language helps create an emotional bond. Advertisers have already taken cue from this piece of wisdom - ad spending for 2008 demonstrates that although national TV advertising grew at a rate which was slower than previous years, in the Spanish language sector it had increased by about 3%. This increase happened across all major product categories except automobiles. Detailed figures show that the top 10 Spanish language products had grown by 8% compared to previous years. Though the Nielsen article is largely focused on television commercials, the findings obviously have broader ramifications.
Although the US has an increasing population of bilingual Hispanics who can use Spanish and English with nearly equal ease, research shows that even this group has reported better recall rates for Spanish language commercials and even better for those which have been originally been created in Spanish rather than simply translated from English. All of which goes on to reinforce the need for authentic and high quality language translation services.
I just came across this fascinating book (more appropriately a monograph) on language translation and couldn’t wait to share it with you dear readers. Its called “On Translation” and it’s been written by John Sallis.
Mr. Sallis approaches the subject of translation in a unique manner. He takes his readers through a philosophical exploration of language translation through four different perspectives and enables them to discover the richness of the process like never before.
I have always loved reading books and since language translation is my profession, as well as my first love I was really delighted to know about such a study. And as far as I know this is a first for this underestimated field.
I would urge everyone interested in language translation to go ahead and read it. You can also check out the fascinating official blog for the book - http://philosophyoftranslation.blogspot.com.
Conversations with Albanian language speakers can be quite confusing, especially for native English language speakers. I am not talking about people who don’t understand the language at all. Imagine a situation where an Albanian and an English speaker are bought together for interaction, here either the Albanian can speak/understand English, or the English speaker can speak/understand Albanian, both ways they are not fluent.
What I am trying to drive at are the difficulties that can arise between these two people because of the gender specific Albanian grammar which assigns a gender to everything and has no substitute for the English word “it”. So any given thing has to be either male or female, for example a book is called liber and is masculine while a notebook is called “fletore” and is feminine. This can produce confusion, as well some hilarious anecdotes. Consider a situation where the Albanian says “I have put her in the oven” referring to a specific food which is categorized feminine, the English speaker is going to be mightily stumped thinking whether a person is being referred.
