Category Archives: Language Translation Advice

The Top Translation Companies of 2011

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Posted by Tomedes Translation Expert on July 1, 2011 – 2:50 pm
Filed under Corporate Translation, Language Translation Advice, Language Translators, Online Translation, Translation Companies, Translation Languages, Translation Services, Translation Site, Translation Tools

Hot deal welcomes 2010 - 10% Discount on any translation order.
Use the coupon code "Tomedes10" !


A few weeks ago, the Common Sense Advisory, which is the leading company for LSP market research, released a long research report on the LSP market for 2011. Part of that report included a 9 page section on the top 50 language service providers. The list included their names, country, yearly revenue, number of employees and number of offices. The list was 50 providers deep - which is significantly more than previous years – but a total of 912 translation companies were surveyed for the Common Advisory research and top 50 list.

Surprisingly there were quite a few companies in the top 50 language service providers of the world that had less than 50 employees, and 5 or fewer offices. Språkservice Sverige AB in Sweden has only 40 employees and 2 offices, and it comes in at number 23. The Concorde Group in the Netherlands has 75 employees and 2 offices, and makes the list at 38, and Japan’s Chizai Corporation has 75 employees and 3 offices at number 48. It just goes to show that by comparison with the top of the list, smaller regional translation companies can still make a big impact. It will be interesting to see if these smaller LSP companies move up the list in 2012.

What is not so surprising is the total market revenue percentage from the top 50, versus the percentage of the total LSP market they represent. The large, multi-million dollar LSP companies are not common – the top 50 make up less than one-fifth of 1% of the total LSP market. Out of a total of 25,256 providers worldwide, the 912 who were interviewed account for 3.6% of the total LSP market – and 17% of its total revenue. It’s pretty typical for the top-earning minority in any industry to hold a much larger proportion of market revenues. The remaining 24,344 companies who were not surveyed, or 96.4% of the total market, all contribute much tinier individual revenue percentages. Most language service providers worldwide are small private companies with yearly revenues under $1M – when all combined, make up an immensely splintered market.

What I found to be two of the most noteworthy characteristics about the top 50 providers:
1. Many, or even most, are not direct competitors, because
2. Most of the top LSP guys specialize in one or two services in one of the 3 major branches of language services: localization, interpretation or translation.
Some offer services mainly in technology localization, others specialize in only telephone interpretation, and some offer technical translation within a certain industry - but very few market themselves as a provider of general language services.
To cite some specific examples, Verztec Consulting PTE Ltd of Singapore specializes in business management solutions like conference interpretation, multilingual staffing, multilingual web content management, and other language services for business management type stuff. CSOFT International, which headquarters in China, focuses on multilingual software development and application testing, terminology management and language service technologies. RWS Holdings PLC , based in the UK, focuses almost entirely on patent translation, searches and and databases. Before finding this out, I would never have guessed that an LSP company could be a multi-million dollar giant, just by searching and translating patents.

Which begs the question (or questions, actually): just how many different specialized services can any given LSP company offer? And, secondly: What specialized services seemed to be the most popular and/or the most in demand? So after a little bit of research, here’s what I found:
For the most part, it’s more common for North American LSP to offer general language services across or 1 or all 3 subcategories. Although to be fair, a large proportion of top 50 LSP companies in North America provide services to government entities, like the military, D.O.D.,public welfare and other departments – and, as you can imagine, it accounts for huge chunks of their equally chunky annual revenues.

It’s also much more common for the little LSP guys to offer general translation services, except for in Asian and South Pacific regions. Emphasis on general technical translation is more common around those areas, but even a lot of smaller companies offer specialized services. For instance, some specialize in legal documents, another in automotive, manufacturing and electronics. Technical manual translation specialty services are provided by several Chinese and Japanese LSP companies. MCL Corporation is a Japanese LSP who provides not just specialized services for pharmaceuticals, drug development research and medical articles/books, but they also specialize in primarily Japanese language translations for those documents. So you have companies that narrow their services not only according to industry or document types, but also by language pairs. This is found a lot in Western European companies, too.

LSP in Europe is pretty diverse, but there were quite a few agencies specializing in law and finance. Specialized technical and technological language services seem to be the big thing, though – anything from software to medical tech to desktop publishing, and even laser technology. One of the most unique LSP agencies is one in the UK by the name of Balthasar Ltd, which offers language services almost exclusively for the HVAC industry: heating/cooling, air conditioning and ventilation – kind of like a blue-collar LSP for VoTech. Pretty cool, actually.

So what’s the point of all this, besides a lot of numbers, percentages and annual revenue figures that don’t have squat to do with your next translation project? By looking at this research we can see what services are growing and which services seem to be the most in demand, as well as what market trends made significant ROI. The research provided a projected annual market growth of 7.41% - this gives every company at least a starting point by which to set company goals. However, Common Advisory does note that companies who set out with the specific goal to increase annual revenue aggressively, usually have much higher growth rates. There are growth rates according to regional market contributions as well, meaning that LSPs in Istanbul will have different growth rate averages than they do in Florida. If nothing else, companies who wish to grow in size, revenue and overall market contribution have 50 LSP companies to look to as exemplary case studies. Its not a new idea for those who wish to be successful to study those who already are.

But the overall theme here is that there is plenty of room for all language service providers: from the top 50 giant companies, to the highly specialized, and of course, the guys with small companies and general services – which are not to be ignored or overlooked. On the contrary, the small companies make up over 95% of the market, and offer more affordable translation rates for individuals and businesses wanting to increase bottom line revenue. If you are looking to cut costs for your business, would you hire services from a giant, multi-million dollar company whose translation rates reflect their size – or a small, modest translation company with very affordable rates and the same competent services? The answer is obvious.

The UN Need for Translators and Interpreters Turns Proactive

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Posted by Tomedes Translation Expert on June 1, 2011 – 2:11 pm
Filed under Language Education, Language Translation Advice, Legal Translation, Translation Languages, Translation Workshops, Turkish Translation

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The UN will have 40% of its translators and almost 35% of its interpreters retire within the next 10 years. It goes without saying that these soon-to-be empty positions will need to be filled. While translators of UN official languages aren’t hard to find, it takes a lot more than your run-of-the-mill freelance translator to fill a translator seat at the UN. Many university educated linguists with highly developed and specialized industry translation skills still often fail the UN translation exams, despite their expertise in language translation.

Because of the approaching conundrum, the UN started signing MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding) with universities in order to develop and implement linguistics programs that will prepare students and ensure enough qualified candidates to meet UN language translation standards, which, as you can imagine, are some of the strictest and highest translation standards in the world. Among the universities that have signed MOUs with the UN are Shanghai International Studies University and Beijing Foreign Studies University in China, The American University in Cairo, University of Westminster in UK, Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, Minsk State Linguistic University in Belarus, Moscow State Institute of International Relations in Russia, and several others in France, Spain, Lebanon, Syria, Belgium and Switzerland.

So what exactly are the UN qualifications for translation candidates? Of the 6 official languages of the UN - Chinese, English, Arabic, French, Russian and Spanish - translators must be proficient in 2 other languages aside from their native or main language, except for Chinese translators, who are required to be proficient in English and Chinese. English translators must be proficient in French and one other language. Arabic, French, Spanish and Russian translators must be proficient in English and one other UN language. Other qualifications include a first-level degree from a university, and passing the United Nations Competitive Examination for Translators.

That doesn’t sound so hard, for translators fluent in 3 languages - right? Well, those are the “official” qualifications, but the exam in and of itself is where most translators fail. The high rate of failure on the exam is the reason that the UN started the university MOUs to begin with, back in 2007. In addition to UN document translation, UN translators usually have specialized knowledge and skill translating difficult texts under tight deadlines, in areas of politics, economics, legal matters, administrative affairs, finance, human rights, and more.

According to the Language Outreach of the United Nations website, if a UN translator mistranslates or skips over even one tiny preposition, it could lead to a terrible and very serious mistake. In order to acquire perfect precision of any given document translation, terminology equivalents are found using standard bilingual dictionaries, comprehensive monolingual dictionaries, other UN documents, highly specialized dictionaries and glossaries, specific subject references and glossaries prepared by the Terminology and Reference Section, and yes, the internet. In addition to their mastery of language translation, UN translators excel in writing, have political knowledge and sensitivity, and a broad understanding and knowledge of international affairs.

Oscar winner 2010 - Best Foreign Language Film

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Posted by Tomedes Translation Expert on February 4, 2010 – 10:43 am
Filed under Language Translation Advice, Translation News, Translation Stories, Translation Tea Break

Hot deal welcomes 2010 - 10% Discount on any translation order.
Use the coupon code "Tomedes10" !


It is not another Oscar prediction. It is pure science. As I work for the leading translation service, I just love foreign languages and watch new foreign language movies regularly.
However, in order to know which foreign language film will win the Oscar in 2010 or in any other given year; you don’t have to actually watch the films.

Well, this year the nominees are “Ajami” from Israel, “El Secreto de Sus Ojos” from Argentina , “The Milk of Sorrow” from Peru, “Un Prophète” from France and “The White Ribbon” from Germany.
Without knowing anything about the films, I can say that the winner will be “Un Prophète” from France.

Here are the reasons:

1. 83% (46 out of 55) of the winners in this category in the history of the Academy awards were films from the European continent. Since last year a Japanese film won, it is not likely that there will be again a non European winner this year.
2. French films took 9 awards while Germany ones took only 3 since the first 1947 award.
3. French films have a higher winning /nomination rate - 26% compared to 20% of Germany ones
4. Germany had won the Oscar in 2006 while France had not won it since 1992.

Will my science work? We will see soon. Meanwhile, back to working on http://www.tomedes.com .

P.S. My personal favorite is “Ajami” – An outstanding film.

Avoid Spanish translation errors

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on January 22, 2010 – 10:00 am
Filed under Language Translation Advice

Hot deal welcomes 2010 - 10% Discount on any translation order.
Use the coupon code "Tomedes10" !


The rapidly increasing Hispanic population in the US and many other parts of the world has led to an increase in demand for Spanish translation services. Many global businesses are trying hard to expand into the Hispanic market and are taking assistance of professional language translation services to communicate with potential customers in their language. But many of these companies make the mistake of relying upon automatic or free translation services or hiring inferior human translators. This quite often results in embarrassing errors which deal a deadly blow to the interests of the company that is trying to make inroads into the Spanish market. Following are some examples of Spanish translation errors that some companies have had to deal with.

A reputed American milk distribution company with a famous campaign “Got Milk?” tried to market its products in Mexico. It tried to repeat the success of its existing campaign, but the Spanish translation of the campaign that it ended up promoting read “Are you lactating?”

A T-shirt manufacturer based in Miami wanted to target the Spanish population. It produced T-Shirts that were intended to have the phrase “I saw the Pope” which should have been “el Papa” but unfortunately the translated version in Spanish read “la Papa” which meant “saw the potato”.

A beer company in the US with the successful slogan “Turn it Loose” tried to translate the same into Spanish but the translated version came out as “Get Diarrhea”.

A US airline tried to market its new leather seats with the slogan “Fly in leather”, but the translated version in Spanish read “Fly Naked”.

Going over the above instances you can imagine the immense embarrassment that the companies in question had to suffer along with business losses. However such situations can be easily avoided by availing Spanish translation services from professional providers. They would not only provide you high quality translation services but also give you with best suggestions/alternative for complicated translation problems.

How global businesses can assure effective translated content in 2010

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on January 20, 2010 – 10:00 am
Filed under Language Translation Advice

Hot deal welcomes 2010 - 10% Discount on any translation order.
Use the coupon code "Tomedes10" !


The World Wide Web has created many new channels of communication which are available to all types of businesses. Any business can now connect to its target customers in highly innovative and effective ways. However communication relies on language and those businesses that operate on a global level need to communicate in the varied languages of their customers. Common Sense Advisory has found out through extensive research that over 50% of Internet users who made online purchases preferred to buy from web sites that presented information in the language they understood. Global businesses have largely realized this fact and have started translating their content for the benefit of their customers as well as employees. However in order to use language translation services optimally one needs to take the following steps.

The nature of content that is being translated

An organization has many different types of documents. They can include product documentation, knowledge bases, training material, company policies, blogs, emails and user forums among many others. Each of these type of content needs specific treatment. For example creative content like advertising material needs to be translated with a lot of care by professional human translator that are specialized in the field. Matters like product name and tag line need to discussed and altered suitably when required to suit the target market. On the other hand there are certain types of content which are not very critical and can be translated using high quality language translation software. But one should have a language expert review such a translation before sending it out.

Making you translated content searchable on the Internet

Information present on the Internet is found by users with help of search engines. You will need to ensure that your translated content has been optimized with suitable keywords. You cannot depend upon free translation services for translating such content as that might not provide the right keywords and your content wouldn’t appear high enough in relevant searches.

Protecting your content from automatic translation

Nowadays free translation plugins are available with most web browsers and users can get content translated from almost any language to any other language instantaneously. However this can be detrimental for certain types of content that do not translate well through automatic translation. In such cases you can make use of a “NOTRANSLATE” tag which will instruct Google’s crawler that the page is not supposed to be translated automatically. This ensures that Google does not provide its automatic translation option for such pages.

2010 translation trends

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on January 6, 2010 – 10:00 am
Filed under Language Translation Advice, Translation Musings

Hot deal welcomes 2010 - 10% Discount on any translation order.
Use the coupon code "Tomedes10" !


Yet another year has gone by, welcome to 2010 dear reader, my best wishes to you for a happy and prosperous New Year. Overall 2009 was good for the language translation industry as in spite of the recession we managed to notch up better results than many other major industries which went reeling from the shock of recession and are still recovering.

The New Year comes with fresh challenges; moreover as the economy recovers there will be more opportunities for the language translation industry. 2009 saw a buildup in awareness about the importance of language translation among people from different industries. They started taking interest in the business opportunities that would open up for them if they used language translation services and expanded their business into prospective overseas markets. This awareness will now likely lead to positive action as various business organizations roll-out their expansion plans in which language translation services would play an integral role.

Niche translation is also likely to see more development in 2010. Over the past year more people came to know about the importance of specialization in translation. Now niche translators or translation professionals working within a specified knowledge area or with less popular languages are coming into their own. We can now frequently find specialized translation services like game translation, medical documents translation and legal translation along with translation to and from languages like Tagalog, Catalan and Pashto which are spoken by small groups of people and mostly restricted within small geographical boundaries. It’s just the beginning of the year and at Tomedes we have already bounced back from the holiday mood and geared up to take our language translation services to new heights. Keep watching this space for more.

Spanish translation in 2010

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on January 4, 2010 – 10:00 am
Filed under Language Translation Advice

Hot deal welcomes 2010 - 10% Discount on any translation order.
Use the coupon code "Tomedes10" !


Spanish translation services have grown from strength to strength especially in the US where the Hispanics make for the largest group whose native language is not English. Moreover, according to the Conference Board Hispanic families are poised to increase at a much faster rate than other groups in the United States. Consider some figures - in 2008 there were 44 million Spanish speaking families whose combined purchasing power was $870 billion. This is projected to grow to $1.3 trillion by the year 2015.

Professional translators and those aspiring to make a career in language translation cannot afford to ignore these figures. Specializing in providing Spanish translation services could just turn out to be the key to your success in 2010. If you are already working as a Spanish translator you should look into ways in which you could improve or enhance your services. For example, you could specialize in specific domains and dialects – although majority of the Spanish speakers living in the US come from Mexico, taking into account the fact that Spanish speakers are found in many different parts of the world would help you appreciate the importance of different dialects in which Spanish is spoken around the world.

Fortunately, learning Spanish is relatively easy, the language is fairly easy to understand and learn, and there are many learning options available, you could learn it in a class, through private tuition, and even online. You could also learn Spanish in Spain where some well designed programs are available that will help you gain mastery over the language and at least a few of its important dialects.

Why language translation companies are a safer bet

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on December 18, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Language Translation Advice

Hot deal welcomes 2010 - 10% Discount on any translation order.
Use the coupon code "Tomedes10" !


The language translation industry has a fair share of freelance translation professionals as well as document translation companies. There do exist many talented freelance translators who guarantee outstanding results at desirable rates, but we generally recommend translation customers to opt for translation services companies because most freelancers work on their own and that can create a variety of limitations. Translation companies on the other hand work with varying numbers of professional translators which enables them to provide language translation for range of language pairs and in specific knowledge areas. They are also better equipped to handle high volume translation projects and urgent deadlines.

Translation clients can by all means hire the services of freelance translation providers if they know them well and are sure of getting satisfactory results, but those who would like to go for document translation companies can use the following tips to get the best results –

  • Get online; you will get more options and better rates.
  • There are probably hundreds of good quality language translation companies online which offer their services globally. The first step to narrowing them down involves zeroing in on those that provide for your specific requirements for example specific language pairs, dialect and translation subject areas among others.
  • After the initial shortlist you can go ahead and check the rates that various translation companies would charge for your project, the time estimate of delivery and quality assurance. This is easily available as most reputed translation companies would be able to provide you with instant translation quote.
  • Contact the customer support of the companies you find promising, once again, most translation companies serious about their work would have a proper customer support team in place. Here you can discuss the nitty-gritties of your project in detail and then make a decision on which translation company would be best for your purpose.

A Dummies Guide to Language Translation and Interpretation

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on December 17, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Language Translation Advice, Translation Musings

Hot deal welcomes 2010 - 10% Discount on any translation order.
Use the coupon code "Tomedes10" !


Nature of the job

Although both language translators and interpreters work with languages, the work requirements in both cases are different. While translators work on translating written content, interpreters work on spoken language, readily translating speeches/conversations between two parties. Being bilingual in both cases is not enough; every language is guided by a distinct set of grammatical rules, vocabulary, alphabet, style and culture. This necessitates that translators and interpreters have a deep and intimate understanding of their language pairs.

Qualifications

A relevant college degree can be helpful but is not a necessity. Trade organizations like the American Translators Association offer a variety of certifications which are considered by language translation firms and clients, thus adding credibility to the resume especially in the case of freshers.

Pros & Cons

Those who work as freelancers enjoy the benefit of choosing the amount and kind of work they want to take. Unreasonable deadlines are not unheard off especially in the present day 24×7 work culture. While translators working as fulltime employees of language translation organizations maintain regular business hours in most cases. Full-time employees get additional benefits including retirement-savings plans and health-care benefits depending upon the policies of the companies where they work. Freelancers have to take personal responsibility to plan out the same.

Earning

Translators and interpreters frequently work as freelancers. While translators are generally paid according to the number of words they translate; interpreters get paid according to the number of hours they work. Then there are also those who are employed with language translation companies or language translation departments of specific organizations. Earnings can vary according to the expertise, experience and area of specialization in terms of language as well as field or subject. Wise selection of language pair and niche area can provide substantial returns. Talented freelance language experts with a keen business sense have been known to earn in 6 figures. On the other hand translators/interpreters working as full-time employees in various types of organizations earn from $40,000 to $60,000.

Outlook

Translators and interpreters can expect better pay and more jobs as their demand is continuously increasing. According to the US Labor Department the demand for interpreters and translators would increase by 24% through 2016.

Technical translation – Requirements

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on December 11, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Language Translation Advice, Translation Services

Hot deal welcomes 2010 - 10% Discount on any translation order.
Use the coupon code "Tomedes10" !


The world has shrunk so much more with the increasing proliferation of the Internet. We are living in fortunate times where information about progress in any part of the world can readily be made available everywhere for the benefit of the masses. Since our age is characterized by rapid progress in technology, a considerable amount of new information revolves around technological stuff. Now such information cannot be translated by a translator who is only an expert in the required language pair. Technical translation is a highly specialized job and its requirements change according to the needs of the project.

Technical translators should be evaluated on the basis of the given translation project. They should have thorough knowledge of the subject area of the translation and should also be good at research. Technical content can easily become unreadable and boring, while an expert in the subject and the language can easily turn out translations of technical matter, he/she cannot ensure that it is easy to read and interesting. This is important if the targeted readership of the translated document is going to be large and comprised of laymen, like in the case of manuals for various gadgets and software. It is not only important that the technical translator understand the terminology, he or she should also be adept at selecting terms that not only convey the meaning of the original but are also simple. This is why while working on technical translations it is always recommended that one work with experienced translation providers with a track record of turning high quality technical translations in their language pair/subject area.