History should be our guide. The United States led the world’s economies in the 20th century because we led the world in innovation. Today, the competition is keener; the challenge is tougher; and that is why innovation is more important than ever. It is the key to good, new jobs for the 21st century. That’s […]
Roots of the Globalization Age
Web and digital media form the roots of the globalization age. They facilitate real-time contact and information sharing, access and transmission among multiple users trespassing time and geographic boundaries. Does this really mean that communication has become easier, quicker and more effective? Which roles do language and translation play in this virtual and globalized world? […]
Do typographical errors affect the quality of your translations?
In order to answer that question, we need to know the definition of “What’s a typographical error?” During my experience doing mechanical QA I found out that some typographical errors are often mistakes that occur during the process of copying and pasting the final translation into a template, like an English template in Quark or […]
Human Qualities for Machine Translation – Will the Dream Come True?
The use of machine translation (MT) has become essential in these times, except obviously in literary translation where euphemisms, idioms and metaphors remain in the human translator’s domain. If there is nothing that can replace human understanding, then there is nothing that can replace the machine in terms of productivity. In the translation industry, work […]
The Japanese Translation Market
When writing a manual for the European market, most companies do not take into consideration the Japanese translation market and the fact that around 70% of Japanese people actually read the manuals when they buy a product. It is important to comply with the EU directives for European targeted manuals; however, it is equally important to […]
Language Requirements For Medical Devices – Asia
As with Europe, countries within Asia have specific translation requirements for computer software, Instructions for Use (IFU), packaging, and other Medical Device and Pharmaceutical labeling. In this ever-changing regulatory and international market clearance environment, it is vitally important for you to have this information at your fingertips. Without it you are unable to proactively properly plan your […]
The Importance of Mechanical Quality Assurance in the Translation Process
The final quality of a translated document depends on many important factors. Two of these happen before the translation process starts: Before any translation is performed, you first need to start with an error free source document. Errors and discrepancies in the source material will propagate throughout the target languages into which you need to translate. […]
It’s all Globish to me
It is estimated that there are four times as many people who now speak Globish as there are native English speakers — about 1,200,000,000. The actual number may be even larger. All of them are trying to use Globish as a middle-ground language. So what is Globish? Wikipedia defines the word Globish as follows: “Globish […]
Specialized Translation: Driving Project Success
When dealing with translators who have highly technical experience and translate very specialized text, you may think that there isn’t much you can do to assist them during a translation project. Indeed, specialized translators know their field very intimately, but there are many tools that you can provide to help them do their work more […]
Going Global With Multilingual Publishing (part 2)
Going Global, Part 2: First some basics: Any document consists of content and layout. The multilingual publishing process consists of recreating a document in the target language that is equivalent to the source document in both content and layout. So, the document translation process has two main subprocesses: content translation and layout adjustment. Content translation […]