In previous articles, we have already talked about how cultural gaps impact translations. (Article: How to Correctly Interpret the Japanese) When cultures are very different, they produce what we might call “cultural translation”, i.e. when in the source text contains an element that is culturally unfamiliar or extremely opposed to the target culture. That is [...]
Archive for November, 2010
Cultural Differences in Translating Arabic
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010How to Choose the Right Translation Agency
Monday, November 29th, 2010When a client has a translation project, the most common action taken is to request a couple of budgets from agencies on the market. And then? How does it analyze them? Always go with the cheapest budget? Always choose the quickest turnaround? It is not a good idea to choose only by taking into account [...]
Thanksgiving Day
Friday, November 26th, 2010The origins of this popular festival dates back to an incident in 1621, when American Pilgrims celebrated the first “Thanksgiving” to express their gratitude to God and the Wampanoag natives to achieve their first successful harvest on U.S. soil. Since then, in the United States, the celebrations took place on the same date, the fourth [...]
Spelling Reform of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010“The Greek I will be called ye.” That’s how the story about the new spelling of the Royal Academy of Spanish Language was titled in El Pais. This reform will receive final approval in late December and will be addressed, among other issues, at the next meeting of the representatives of the twenty-two Academies of [...]
How To Correctly Interpret Japanese
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010In a context where the impact of Internet communications is infinitely vast, and in spite of the huge technological advances in terms of translations, no system or device has yet been developed that emulates the accuracy and intent of a human interpreter. Why, then, with so many challenges made, has technology not been able to [...]
Formal Language and Comprehension in Translation
Friday, November 19th, 2010Our daily dilemma in translating legal documents is ensuring that the precise legal language is easily understood by the reader. Legal phrasing leaves very few choices of terminology, because they have a single name. What happens is that each country is sovereign and therefore in a translation project there are different legal systems involved, so [...]
What is GlobalSight?
Thursday, November 18th, 2010GlobalSight is an open source Translation Management System (TMS), used to manage, translate and deliver projects for translation, editing, proofreading and storage, among others. This system was developed in Java programming language and uses a MySQL database. It also supports computer aided translation and machine translation. The main features of GlobalSight are: * Custom workflow [...]
Audiovisual Translation
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010Audiovisual translation (AVT) is developing the translation activity in a context characterized by the interaction of text (whether oral or written) with sound and image. Within this type of translation, the two most popular areas are the dubbing and subtitling, where the use of one or the other depends on the different markets. For example, [...]
Interpreters at the G-20 Meeting in Seoul
Monday, November 15th, 2010Last week was the meeting of the Group of Twenty (G-20), in Seoul. In this two-day event, 25 Heads of State and representatives of various international organizations gathered to discuss currencies and other pending global issues. Since the official languages of this event was Korean and English, the Organizing Committee of the G-20 summit in [...]
Cheaper is not always easier
Thursday, November 11th, 2010Have you heard the slogan “cheap and easy” when referring to certain products and services? When it comes to translation services, cheaper is not always easier. When you decide to use a translation service, searching for the cheapest provider is not necessarily going to make your life easier. While price will often be a determining [...]
