Yesterday, I attended part of “The Swedish Grammar Day” (Grammatikdagen), a national event presented by language consultants in Sweden and the Swedish teachers of Sweden. Grammar is oftentimes thought of as boring, but these people are trying to change that. Why do we need grammar? We use grammar to systematize our language and to be able to discuss our language.

I loved to read and write when I was growing up. I was always carrying a book around, and used to write novels with my friends. Grammar and spelling came naturally to me, and I can usually see when a sentence looks wrong, or if a word is spelled wrong. I did not need grammar more than for the reasons mentioned above. I grew up in a small Swedish speaking town in Finland, with a very peculiar dialect. The dialect was used for speaking with people, but in school we had to use “proper Swedish” and all our media was in proper Swedish. So in a way, I grew up with two languages. Finland is also a bilingual country and we had to start learning Finnish from third grade in school, even though hardly anyone spoke it where I lived. In fifth grade, we started studying English and I have gradually added languages during my education, up to a total of six languages. When learning other languages it is very useful to know the grammar of your own language first, in order to be able to distinguish it from the grammar of other languages. You learn to systematize the languages. So, with my love for languages, my love for grammar grew.

I discussed with some Swedish language consultants yesterday, about being a language nerd, and we concluded that we really can say we are language nerd if we love to read this magazine called “Språk”, which discusses the development of the Swedish language and grammar. We think it is fun to discuss the intricacies of the Swedish language. That is nerdy! I am officially a language nerd and proud of it. It is good to be a language nerd if you are a translator. Are you a language nerd?

Check also:

• Fun Swedish Words Absent from the English Language
  
• My Focus on Improving My Writing Skills in Swedish
  
• 6 Tips for Writing English for a Global Audience

After working many years for a number of good translation companies, I have frequently been asked to evaluate other translator’s jobs. This is partly due to the fact that they need more Swedish translators on the team, partly because they know and trust the quality of my translations, and therefore trust me to evaluate other Swedish translators. Sometimes the clients or other translators ask me what I look for when evaluating other translations. Based on my experience in evaluating other Swedish translations for Language Service Providers and my experience as a grader for the Swedish certification exam for ATA, I have compiled a list of points that I consider during my evaluations.

First I read through the whole text to get a general feel for the quality and style.

Then I compare the translation to the source text and look for omissions.

After these two initial tasks are done, I start going through the text sentence by sentence and follow these guidelines:

1. Are there any typos, misspellings, omissions or grammar errors?
2. Numbers and measurements – Are the numbers and measurements transferred appropriately for the target language? Are the conversions correct?
3. Consistency – Are the terms consistent throughout the text?
4. Fluency – Does the text flow in the target language?
5. Comprehension – How well did the translator comprehend the source? Does it show that the translator has expertise in the subject area?
6. Accuracy – How accurate is the translation of the terms and concepts?
7. Style – Is the style of the translation consistent with the style of the source? Has the translator used proper idiomatic language for the subject matter?
8. Audience – Is the translation appropriate for the intended audience?
9. Non-translatables – Are names and trademarks preserved correctly?
10. Diacritric marks – Has the translator used commas, exclamation points, semi colon etc. properly for the target language. The use often differs between the source and target language, at least for English and Swedish.

Based on these guidelines I can then make a general judgment of the translation quality and also give specific examples to the client, plus recommendations to the translator.

Check also:

This is my final post in the series on software localization. There is a lot to think about when translating and localizing software and making mistakes is easy. Here are 4 mistakes to try to avoid:

1. Neglecting the length of translated words, which would require redesigning the software to fit the foreign language version, losing time and money.

2. Disregarding localization for specific countries/regions and their particular elements (special characters, date format, number format, address strucutre, postal code length and structure, calendar format etc.)

3. Not using simple, concise text that is familiar to most people and users of the software

4. Not providing clear and accurate text in the target language, making the instructions and commands nonsensical or hard to understand.

Happy translation and localization year to everyone!