Language Translation Blog

Mar 14, Free Language Translation: Computers and Humans at Your Service

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:55:13 GMT

Free language translation is usually low quality if produced by translation software. But it can be reliable and accurate if provided by professional translators. Find out more about these options.

Mar 14, Best Free Online Translator for Russian and Ukrainian Languages

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:49:03 GMT

What is the best free online translator for translations from/into English, Russian and Ukrainian? Here is an opinion of a professional translator, who is a native speaker of Russian and Ukrainian.

Mar 12, Shoemaker's Son Always Goes Barefoot or Monolingual Websites of Translation and Interpreting Companies

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:10:46 GMT

It's interesting that companies that offer services of translation and interpreting from/into many languages often fail to make their own websites available in multiple languages. A new report from Common Sense Advisory reveals that 35 percent of websites of language translation companies all over the world are monolingual. And only two percent of language service companies offer their websites in 20 or more languages. The report, entitled "Marketing Language Services Online," provides a detailed evaluation of 300 websites of translation and interpreting companies based in 48 countries of the world.

Mar 9, Free Online Language Translation and Human Translation for Multilingual Web

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:10:43 GMT

Collaboration of free online language translation services and bilingual humans is a path to the truly multilingual Web. The first step in this direction has already been made.

Mar 8, First Social Network for Translators and Translation Agencies is Now Online

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:22:25 GMT

Langmates.com, the first social network for translators and translation agencies, has been launched online this month. It offers translators, translation project managers and other translation industry experts to connect and communicate.

Mar 7, Marketing in Foreign Language

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 07:31:58 GMT

In marketing efforts, it is not enough to develop and distribute promotional materials in foreign languages. Extra-linguistic knowledge such as culture, beliefs, and assumptions make a big difference. Below are 10 marketing translation tips for successful marketing abroad:

Mar 6, Translation Tips Archives

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:45:08 GMT

Globalization Group, Inc. (GGI), a full-service provider of linguistic solutions, regularly publishes tips for translation customers. Now these tips are available on the GGI's new blog, The Global Edge! The blog also contains other informative resources that will be helpful to translation customers.

Mar 5, Poor Translations and Upset Clients

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:30:42 GMT

You get a translation and realize that it is poor. Your translation vendor offers you explanations that the deadlines have been too tight, your source text has too many ambiguities, there have been no input from you during the translation process, you have not used services of a second translator to edit and proofread the final translation, and on and on. Whatever the reason, GlobalVision Software Translation and Localization Company recommends to apply three remedies: 1. Use the right process 2. Use the right technology 3. Use the right people

Mar 4, Global Businesses, Get Ready for Sales Season in Russia and Ukraine

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:56:29 GMT

In Russia and Ukraine, mid of February to, say, mid of March is the biggest sales season next to New Year sales. People are eager to buy gifts for their loved ones, family and friends on the occasion of St. Valentine's Day (a new holiday for Russia and Ukraine), Defender of the Fatherland Day (former Red/Soviet Army Day) and International Women's Day. It is probably the best time for global businesses to launch sales of new products. Local translation companies, which charge less than their western and US competitors, will readily help to translate any product-related materials.

Mar 3, TIME Magazine's First Issue Published on March 3, 1923

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:29:03 GMT

In its 87-year history, TIME widely covered translation-related topics, from translation software to bible translations to translation bloopers. Interestingly enough, even the premiere issue of TIME, which appeared in print on March 3, 1923, incidentally mentioned translation in the article entitled "Time Brings All Things". Here is an excerpt: "The Concert Mayol, a Paris music hall, advertises a piece called Oh, Quel Nul. For the benefit of Americans and Englishmen, the following free translation is inserted on the billboard: Ladies Shirt Off!""

Mar 2, Bilingualism and Translation Tasks

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:31:53 GMT

Is bilingualism a guarantee of skill in translation? "Yes," think many users of translation services. "No," warn translation professionals, and they have every reason to say this.

Feb 28, Free Online Translator: When Your Business Won't Succeed With It

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:28:33 GMT

These tips are intended to help businesses to determine if and when a free online translator will meet their needs and to promote good practice in the use of machine translation.

Feb 26, New Russian Magazine for Language Learners

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:38:46 GMT

The first issue of Lingvin, a new Russian magazine for those who study foreign languages, appeared in November 2009. This magazine is distributed free of charge. It can be read via one's browser or as a PDF file. The magazine is mostly in Russian. It is devoted to regional geography and language learning. It offers many interesting materials to language learners - mostly to English language learners - including translations of popular English songs, short stories and selections of jokes. Traditions and languages of other nations are also covered by this colorful magazine. Thus, the February 2010 issue of Lingvin contains the following materials: Romantic Journey to France, Declaration of Love in 40 Language, Italian in Poetry, Studying French near Castle Ruins, Female-Male Dictionary, Language of Flowers.

Feb 23, Meedan: Promising Start to Eliminate English-Arabic Language Barrier

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:01:23 GMT

After three years of research and development, a new website, Meedan, has been launched this week to facilitate collaborations and understanding across English and Arabic languages and cultures. To achieve its goals, the website relies on a community of creative technologists, designers, professional journalists, translators and editors, as well as on an English-Arabic machine translation engine that enables human post-editing of machine translation output. With Meedan you can share news and opinion in the English and Arabic languages; translate articles and comments posted by other users; join bilingual conversations about politics and business, technology and arts; make friends with people who speak a different language.

Feb 21, Being Helpful to Translation Customers

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:32:20 GMT

Though it seems that the translation industry proves to be recession-proof, translation companies face price cutting challenges and a wave of fierce competition. In attempts to keep existing and attract new customers, translation companies now readily offer discounts and publish tips for customers on how to reduce their translation expenditures. Here is a critical overview of such tips and a suggestion of actions for translation suppliers to take to be really helpful to their customers.

Feb 18, Your "Getting Quality Translation" Checklist

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:32:44 GMT

A checklist intended to help translation customers to get a translation of the required quality.

Feb 17, Values of International Mother Language Day

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:07:54 GMT

On February 21, 2010, the world will mark the 11th International Mother Language Day first proclaimed by UNESCO in November 1999. Languages are vital to the identity of nations and individuals. They absorb culture and wisdom accumulated by nations over centuries. The objective of the International Mother Language Day is to recognize linguistic diversity, ethnolinguistic rights of people, the importance of national languages and multilingual education.

Feb 15, Word and Text Images with Wordle

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:13:54 GMT

I've just came across a site that makes it possible to create free images of groups of words. To make an image, you should enter any text or the URL of any blog, blog feed, or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed into a form provided on the site. I've created the following image based on my blog. You can easily create your own images. The site says: "Wordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

Feb 14, English to Ukrainian Translation: Making Lexical Choice

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:35:55 GMT

Proper lexical choice is an important part of the English to Ukrainian translation process. What should be kept in mind while making this choice? First of all, context.

Feb 12, Haitian Creole Translation Help Provided Free of Charge

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:00:32 GMT

T-System, Inc. provides free trauma documentation templates for both adult and pediatric use and free bilingual (French/English) triage and medical history questionnaires to healthcare personnel who help in Haiti. More info: http://www.tsystem.com/haiti *** New Haitian Creole iPhone application with emergency medical terms is available for free from Byki and Transparent Languages, Inc.

Feb 11, Translation Industry, Ethics, and Confidentiality

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:22:02 GMT

Unfortunately, translation companies and translators not always follow the principles of ethical business behavior and not always care about confidentiality of their customers. For example, a translation project manager can send mass email messages with confidential documents to many translators in search for a translator who will do the job. Or a translator can subcontract a confidential translation job to a colleague without letting the customer know about this fact. Therefore, to be on the safe side, translation customers, who have sensitive documents for translation, should sign a confidentiality agreement with a translation company and should make sure that the translation company has singed similar confidentiality subagreements with the translator who will translate these sensitive documents.

Feb 9, Ukrainian Language: Facts and FAQs

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:53:48 GMT

Quick facts on the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian poetry, FAQs about Ukrainian

Feb 9, Useful Phrases in Many Languages

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:14:48 GMT

The site offers free translations of useful phrases in 100+ languages subdivided into the following categories: Greetings and small talk; Language difficulties; Special occasions; Emergencies; Time expressions; Idioms; 'Useful' phrases.

Feb 8, Secrets of Russian Words

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:11:21 GMT

Today is the birthday of Lev Uspensky (1900 1978), a Russian writer, an author of novels "Scent of Lemon" ("Запах лимона", 1928), "The Pulkovo Meridian" ("Пулковский меридиан", 1939), "The 60th parallel" ("60-я параллель", 1955). He is especially famous for his linguistics books about the Russian language addressed mainly to young Russian readers: "A Word about Words" ("Слово о словах", 1954), "You and Your Name" ("Ты и твоё имя", 1960), "Name of Your House" ("Имя дома твоего", 1967), "Secrets of Toponymy" ("Загадки топонимики", 1969) and other. These books will be interesting and helpful also for translators from Russian and for advanced learners of Russian. The link below points to freely available books of Lev Uspensky in Russian.

Feb 6, Translation Project Managers: Who are They?

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:50:18 GMT

A translation project manager is a person that monitors and controls translation projects in a translation agency. He/she is a "bridge" in communication between a customer and a translator. He/she receives a project from a customer, assigns the project to a suitable linguist, and sends the translated project back to the customer. It is a demanding job that requires many talents: ability to handle multiple tasks, ability to work even in the highly stressful working environment, ability to be in accord with translators. This job requires insight, quick reaction, patience, politeness and more. In her video, a translation project manager from Sweden will tell more about this job...

Feb 4, LSI Foundation is Going to Provide Translations to Charities

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:41:17 GMT

On February 2, 2010, Linguistic Systems Inc., a US-based leading translation company, has announced about the formation of the LSI Foundation, a non-profit entity that will provide translation, interpreting and other language-related services to charities. "Organizations that are in need of language services for pro bono legal cases and other humanitarian causes, for educational purposes for third world countries, or other charitable needs should contact the LSI Foundation at (866) 654-5006."

Feb 1, Developers of Machine Translation Software Help in Haiti Earthquake Relief Efforts

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:30:50 GMT

In response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the Haiti earthquake, Mobile Technologies is working on a speech-to-speech translation system, Jibbigo, for English into Haitian Creole translations. In order to be able to build and train this system, researches at Mobile Technologies need written translations from English to Haitian Creole (at least 10,000 sentences) and speech recordings in Haitian Creole (at least 10 hours). They invite Haitian Creole native speakers who would like to participate in the development of this system contact haitian.translation @ jibbigo dot com. More info: http://www.prlog.org/10505420-researchers-at-carnegie-mellon-submit-jibbigo-translation-system-to-crisiscamp-haiti.html *** Scientists at the Language Technologies Institute of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science have publicly released the Haitian Creole language database they've created in the 1990s. The database has been made publicly available to help machine translation developers rapidly develop translation tools needed by health care professionals and relief workers who are helping to overcome the Haiti humanitarian crisis. More info: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-01/cmu-cmr012710.php *** Microsoft has already used the data provided by the Language Technologies Institute to supplement Microsoft's free Bing Translator and other Microsoft Translator powered services with the Haitian Creole translation option. Also, free Google Translator tool now allows its users to translate to/from Haitian Creole. More info: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Bing-Translator-Now-Supports-Haitian-Creole-133045.shtml *** ECTACO Inc. has released the first commercial English - Haitian Creole speech-to-speech medical translator. However, according to the information on their website, this tool is rather expensive. More info: http://www.speechguard.com/medical.html

Feb 1, Official languages of the XXI Olympic Winter Games

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:54:46 GMT

Each Olympic Games are held in two official languages of the Olympic Movement (English and French) plus the third language, which is the official language of the host country. The XXI Olympic Winter Games (February 1228, 2010) and Paralympic Winter Games (March 12-21, 2010) will be hosted by Vancouver, Canada. Official languages of Canada are the same as official languages of the Olympic Movement. So the 2010 Winter Games will be held in two languages only, English and French.

Jan 29, Free Online Translation Services: Beneficial if Used Properly

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:53:09 GMT

Some people have a negative view of free online translation services. However, these services can be beneficial if used with understanding of their limitations and abilities.

Jan 28, Language Guesser for Translation Buyers

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:38:35 GMT

A language guesser is a helpful tool in many areas of science and engineering where preliminary identification of the language used is necessary. Translation buyers can take advantage of this tool too

Jan 26, Russian to English Translation and Translation Expansion Factor

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:14:03 GMT

For translation buyers, the translation expansion factor (the increase in the word count) in Russian to English translation can be a means of quality control and a criterion for choosing a translator.

Jan 25, Translate Words, but Mind False Cognates

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:31:51 GMT

Translate words: cognates and false cognates in Russian-English translation. False cognates are misleading and tricky because they can be interpreted as true cognates.

Jan 22, Get the Russian-English Dictionary You Need

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:05:43 GMT

A good Russian-English dictionary is a valuable asset for translators and learners of English or Russian. Reviews of such dictionaries can help to choose the necessary book. Here are some reviews.

Jan 22, Какой русско-английский словарь нужен именно вам?

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:54:22 GMT

Хороший русско-английский словарь является ценным подспорьем для переводчиков и людей, изучающих русский или английский язык. Здесь описаны хорошие словари.

Jan 16, "Language Issue" in Ukraine and 2010 Ukrainian Presidential Elections

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 10:51:21 GMT

According to the Constitution of Ukraine adopted in 1996, the only official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian. However, about 50 of citizens of Ukraine, especially in eastern regions and in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (ARC), speak Russian and do not want to switch to Ukrainian. By the way, the ARC has three official languages: Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar. However, most if not all of the Crimean official documents are written only in Russian. It seems that the Crimean government completely ignores the other two official languages of the ARC. At different levels of the society, there is a strong support for the idea of the official recognition of the Russian-Ukrainian bilingualism, that is of making Russian the second official language. In the 2010 Ukraine presidential election campaign (the elections will be held on January 17), the "language issue" again is used as a playing card to sew up as many votes as possible. http://www.tryukraine.com/society/ukrainization.shtml - Ukrainization: Issues and Arguments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language_in_Ukraine - Russian language in Ukraine

Jan 14, Lowering Translation Fees

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:04:28 GMT

We try to pay as little as possible for everything, including translation services. But if we want an adequate translation, we can't cut corners. However, ways to reduce translation fees do exist.

Jan 13, Допомога у перекладах. Якщо потрібен адекватний переклад.

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:13:44 GMT

У сфері перекладів є свої правила і стандарти. Дізнайтеся ці правила, щоб одержати переклад потрібної якості.

Jan 11, The 2009 Literary Translation Prizes

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:08:41 GMT

Seven Translation Prizes (administered by the British Centre for Literary Translation and the Society of Authors) for 2009 will be awarded today, on January 11, 2010, at King's Place in London, with winners in Arabic, Dutch, German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

Jan 11, Awards for top 5 translation errors of 2009

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:08:41 GMT

The first annual Jelly Donut Awards were given by Accredited Language Services, a US-based translation company, for the top 5 translation, interpreting and localization errors made in 2009.

Jan 9, Free Translation Online: Improper Usage Patterns

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:55:48 GMT

The significant usage of free translation online by web users in areas that have not been anticipated or have been deprecated by providers of this service has given rise to a number of new problems.

Jan 6, Non-Latin domain names will come online in 2010

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:52:17 GMT

In November 2009, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) began accepting requests from representatives of different countries for new country codes in Russian, Chinese, Arabic and other languages. Thanks to a decision of the ICANN board, the first web addresses written in non-Latin characters will come online in 2010. These new web addresses can be in almost any language. So you will be able to use your own language for an address of your website.

Jan 5, Funny Translations

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:46:12 GMT

Some mistranslations (e.g. in legal and medical fields) cause a lot of problems, tension and stress, some are just funny translations. Here they are to amuse you!

Jan 4, Free Russian translation

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:02:30 GMT

Free Russian translation of basic phrases and common words, transliteration of English names into Russian, and instant machine translation.

Jan 4, Email Glossary

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:02:30 GMT

This email glossary is a compilation of basic phrases in English, which are used in email correspondence, with the translation into 40 languages.

Jan 4, Free Ukrainian translation

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:02:30 GMT

Free Ukrainian translation of basic phrases and common words, transliteration of English names into Ukrainian, and instant machine translation.