Recently I met a fellow translator, who has been working as a professional Albanian translator since many years. He illuminated me on a few important facts about the Albanian text translation requirements which might prove to be helpful for you dear readers.
Though Albanian is a native language of Albania and Kosovo, its speakers are spread throughout the world and there are as many as 3 million Albanian speakers living in North America and Europe alone. These people frequently require professional Albanian text translation services for example English to Albanian and Albanian to English translation. Furthermore, the worldwide population of Albanian speakers is almost 6 million which raises language translation demands up by several notches.
Albanian language has been significantly influenced by a variety of languages including Greek, Latin, Slavic, and Turkish. Its script has been derived from the Latin alphabet. Overall the language which belongs to the family of Indo-European languages is a distinct language by itself. All this goes towards making Albanian document translation a delicate and challenging process, so don’t opt for that automatic translation service which has garnered great reviews. It just cannot assure you an accurate and easily readable result.
Obviously I don’t need to tell you where you can find the best Albanian language translation deal. 
I came across a very nice piece of news today and just had to share it with you dear readers. The story is about Nora Punales who works as a receptionist with the Anderson Police Department. Punales who is 53 started working on a temporary basis, she was happy to get the job in the first place, but could never have imagined how pleasantly things turned out.
As matters stand, Anderson has a rapidly growing Hispanic population but the police department did not have any fluent Spanish speakers. At the best they had a few officers with limited Spanish skills, consequently communication with the locals was fraught with difficulties. That was till Nora Punales joined, she is now the only one now who speaks both English and Spanish fluently and helps the department communicate clearly with Hispanic visitors and prisoners on a daily basis.
Punales on her part is very happy that she gets to work as a receptionist, as well as the resident translator and interpreter. Apart from the regular responsibilities of answering the phone, filing and answering various queries of visitors, she spends about 40-45% of her time putting her translation skills to use. The Hispanic locals have become a lot more comfortable coming to the police department with their issues, in fact many of them ask for Nora Punales straightaway. She has proved to be so valuable to the police department that inspite of the fact that she was hired temporarily, the Anderson police department have been able to raise a sufficient amount of money to extend her job for another year.
Back Translation is the process of retranslating a document from the target language to source language, to verify how accurate the process of translation has been. The back translation is usually is carried out by a translator other than the original translator of the document, whose expertise is atleast on par with the translator of the original document.
Back translation is commonly used by organizations that are heavily involved in research and product testing; typically these are biotech companies, pharmaceutical companies and survey organizations and the like. Such companies frequently require to localize their content for their target users. However the risk of losing/mutilating information in translation is ever present. A literal translation never works, because there are many factors that need to be accommodated in the process of translation, for example an original document may have words for which there are no literal equivalents in the target language, sometimes it may happen that a so-called literal equivalent might have a completely different meaning/effect than originally intended.
This is where the experience and personal judgment of a translator comes into play where he/she fashions a translation to make it as authentic and consistent with the original as possible. However this also means that when the document is back translated it would not match with the original. But that does not mean that the original translation was inaccurate. This is why back translation is not always reliable especially for verifications between source and target languages which have significantly different characteristics.
So are there alternative ways of verifying language translation? The answer is yes. We need to understand first that back translation as a method to verify translations was started long back. We have come a long way since then and it’s prudent to have an effective translation strategy in order to ensure accurate and high quality translation.
- Firstly, all translations should be managed effectively right from the beginning i.e. the creation of the original content. Any errors in the source content can cause heavy losses further down the localization process.
- Use of translation memories is fairly common nowadays, they are an asset and should be managed intelligently. The organization should develop a proper strategy for managing translation memory which should include collection, maintenance and scrubbing. Apart from translation memories, it’s also important to maintain terminology guides for various target languages.
- A quality control process should be established to ensure that all the steps required for the translation management strategy are properly implemented, including the selection of translators who are not only skilled in the required languages and knowledge areas, but also have a solid understanding of the target market.
Incorporating all the above elements effectively into a translation strategy would ensure much better results than any amount of back translations.
This morning I woke up in a nostalgic mood… I was especially thinking about the time I started working with Tomedes. It’s been long since then, and all of us, that is our site Tomedes.com, every one working here and even our customers have learnt and grown in the meantime. I cannot speak on the behalf of others but I have learnt so much here at Tomedes. This is why I couldn’t help myself from writing my very own Tomedes review.
We started out with the aim of building a site that would transform the way professional translation services are provided around the world. Not only did we want to become the most comprehensive translation service company but also the most dynamic, accessible and affordable. We aimed to become what we fondly refer to as the one-stop-shop for all language translation requirements, for anyone, anywhere in the world.
It gives me great pleasure to look back and affirm that we are on our way, with the same enthusiasm and gusto with which we began and it’s been a terrific journey. We have achieved a lot since we began and are now offering language translations in over 200 language pairs and a host of beneficial services which are not found anywhere else, at least not together, because we have taken great pains to study almost all types of existing translation services and bring their best aspects to Tomedes. Our path-breaking new features now include “Name Your Price” which has been eagerly embraced by our customers.
The journey is far from over, in fact I would never want it to get over, we at Tomedes believe in setting new targets as we achieve previous goals. And I know that I will have a lot more wonderful stuff to write about when I embark on my next Tomedes review.
SDL, the British translation firm has reported a 10 percent rise in its revenue for the second quarter. It was helped in achieving this by the weak pound. A closer review of the situation reveals that sales, when calculated at constant currency were down by 14% and 6% in translation services and technology respectively.
Company sources at SDL which provides translation services to blue chip companies like Microsoft, Dell and Honda said they have been facing reduced demands lately. The reason being that the big companies like the ones served by SDL are usually first to go for cover in negative conditions like the ongoing recession. Most of these companies have delayed launches of new services and products, reducing the need for documentation and translation services.
SDL’s bosses believe that the company has handled the financial recession very well and they are quite positive about the future. In fact, SDL has made several acquisitions including that of XyEnterprise so that they can create a software package for managing the translation cycle. Moreover, the coming months promise significant improvements as companies get back to work aggressively.
Lionbridge Technologies Inc. has declared that it suffered a 22 percent year-over-year drop in the revenue for second quarter. However company sources have referred to the improved sequential performance within the same period which is an indication of better business in the later half of the year.
The translation technology company based in Waltham, Mass, reported that its revenue for this year’s second quarter stood at $98 million, down from $125.5 million for the same quarter last year. Losses amounted to $248,000 which translates into less than a penny for a share, while in 2008 the company achieved a net profit of $908,000, which meant 2 cents per share. Though some of the losses can be attributed to restructuring charges linked with the 325 layoffs that was announced in March. The charges amounted to $1.6 million.
CEO Rory Cowan has said that Lionbridge Technologies Inc. will continue in its efforts towards reducing fixed costs and improving profitability. He added that inspite of the recession Lionbridge has been successfully creating and maintaining long-term business relations with well-reputed global organizations and they look forward to steadily improving business in future.
Came across a very interesting new gadget on the Internet. It’s called the Trinvo talking translator. Its an amazing tool which helps you learn how to speak instantly in a language not known by you! The Trinvo talking translator serves as an assistant which translates words spoken by you to any of the 12 other languages that it supports right now.
This little magical tool has an inbuilt dictionary with a database of over 2,500 words, as well as 750 commonly used phrases in 12 different languages. The languages supported by Trinvo at present are English, French, German, Italian, Arabic, Turkish Chinese (Mandarin), Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Japanese and Spanish.
For those who are persistent, Trinvo also helps in learning the languages that its supports. It can used as a personal multilingual teacher which helps the user learn new foreign words and phrases. It comes equipped with a 3.5 mm jack which can be connected to a headphone.
Interlecta published its latest Text Translator for the BlackBerry on App World recently. This application is meant for translating sms, email and text on BlackBerry, and going by the number of downloads in the days after the launch it seems that the application is already quite successful.
Interlecta has developed the Text Translator specifically for business people and travelers who frequently require to lead and translate their emails and other correspondence on the fly. The company has incorporated features from many of its existing translators to make it much more functional. Right now the app is only available for the BlackBerry Bold and Curve 8900, however it is expected that the company will soon release a version which works on other models as well.
Check out Interlecta’s site at http://home.interlecta.com to check out their translation applications for Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android and J2ME platforms. The company is also actively working on developing language translation apps for desktops, chat environments web, and social networks.
The United States military is struggling to get the required number of professional translators in Afghanistan. During their operations in Iraq the military did not face this degree of difficulty in getting Arabic translators because Arabic translators though rare, are relatively easier to get compared to Pashto translators who are required in Afghanistan. Moreover the conditions in Afghanistan are considerably different than Iraq. The translators have to be physically strong and sturdy as they are required to march long distances with heavy backpacks along with the troops.
The figures are also not very inspiring, with United States having approximately 8,000 Pashto speakers most of whom are elderly men, children and women. The military is offering salaries as high as $200,000 which has led some unscrupulous recruiters to fill the positions with people who are not physically capable for the physically demanding job.
There are some language difficulties as well, some translators are not familiar with the local dialects spoken in Southern Afghanistan. Moreover, people in Afghanistan are limited by a general lack of education and prevailing illiteracy which further reduces the availability of translators from the country.
Iraq on the other hand fares much better, a significantly higher number of translators are available for the job. Since the money is good, many linguists are learning Iraqi dialects as well. They are all the more so motivated by the belief that better opportunities are on the way for those working in Iraq. There is promise of jobs for non-Iraqis that are less dangerous in nature.
As a solution, the Department of Defense is in the process of creating a Civilian Linguist Reserve. In this program, linguists with the required skills and security clearance would get a monthly fee for being available to the military during emergency requirements.
Across Personal Edition
This application provides a full range of translation functionality and is especially useful for freelance translators.
The Across Personal Edition makes it easy to control processes, re-use content and maintain a high quality level. The end user’s advantage is that the application quickens the process of delivering high quality translations and also reduces workload by a satisfying degree.
Across Personal Edition offers the following features -
- crossCheck - A quality management tool.
- crossDesk - A multi-format editor that can work independent of document format.
- crossSearch - A research tool that helps connect with terminology resources available on the Internet.
- crossTank – Serves as translation memory.
- crossTerm - A terminology system. Serves as the central platform for all types of corporate language resources
OmegaT
OmegaT is a free translation memory program developed for use by professional translators. It offers the following features -
- External glossaries
- Fuzzy matching
- Match propagation
- Simultaneous processing of multiple-file projects
- Simultaneous use of multiple translation memories
- It’s compatible with other translation memory apps (TMX)
- Supported document file formats include: Plain text, HTML and XHTML, XML - Microsoft Office 2007, OpenOffice.org, MediaWiki – Wikipedia and XLIFF – Okapi.
- It also supports Unicode (UTF-8) and non-Latin alphabets
- Supports right-to-left languages
OmegaT+
OmegaT+ includes the following features –
- Translation memory,
- Full and partial matches,
- Search engine,
- Glossary function,
- Support for a variety of document types and translation projects that are presented in a simple and easy to use style.
OmegaT+ 1.0 is still in development, the latest development version being 1.0.M 2.3. It has been tested on real translation jobs over a substantial period of time and has proven reliable.
WordFisher
WordFisher aids in translation project management. Benefits and features include -
- Automatic creation of a simple folder and file structure
- Document indexing
- Enhanced Search and replace functions
- Ability to create a bilingual table that contains matching sentence pairs contained in the source and target files. These tables can be used as translation memory.
- Glossary management - New entries can be added to glossaries without actually leaving the document being worked upon. Glossary creation is simplified with the Quick Alignment and Glossary Builder modules with which glossaries can be built simply by aligning a document and its translation followed by selection of corresponding terms.
- The source and target documents can be aligned at any time and synchronized.
- Consistency Check is a unique feature that allows translators to check within a group of aligned files and know whether or not the required translations were consistently used in a project.
- Trados support
