Translation is a minefield at the best of times but whereas telling your Spanish penpal you enjoy ‘long walks along the massacre’ can be a tad embarassing, it is nothing compared to the lasting damage to finances and reputation that a business mistranslation can incur. From awkward social faux-pas to accidentally sinking huge deals, even the smallest translation errors have cost businesses money, clients and respect on a massive scale. Below are some of the biggest and most common ‘oopsies’ in the translation industry:

Cultural Nuances

Cultural views are key. In many languages, even something as basic as sentence structure and types of words changes depending on who you’re talking to. This isn’t just politeness – it’s almost a whole new language.

This has caused havoc with many novice Japanese speakers who, upon hearing many names ending in ‘-san’, then add it to their own name – which is very taboo in Japanese culture. Referring to yourself as ‘Mike-san’ or ‘Lucy-san’ is effectively saying ‘I am incredibly important’ and we all know what we think of THAT guy in the office.

There are also literally dozens of honourifics other than -san which convey varying levels of respect. Even not using one is a bold statement, essentially saying that you and your conversational partner are such close friends that you’re beyond that. Within business, it is not uncommon for each individual level of management to have its own honorific (such as ‘bucho’, meaning ‘boss/head of a section’ ).

Using the wrong one is a very embarrassing and insulting mistake.

Understanding politeness and cultural norms is important with any culture, but especially so in East Asia. Always make sure your translator understands the people behind the language or you’ll end up looking like the ‘bucho’ of all idiots.

Direct Questions

Asking questions in a foreign language is always a tricky business, especially in advertising. The California Milk Processor Board should have had this in mind when they launched their ‘Got Milk?’ campaign in Spanish towards the Hispanic market – instead of asking them if they ‘Got Milk?’ it instead accused them of lactating, effectively alienating a $1.3 trillion market.

Let’s see them milk some profits out of that one.

Homophones and Homographs

Sometimes a single letter can make all the difference. Imagine the horror of discovering your hot date with Briar turned out to be a hot date with Brian. Likewise, there is a world of difference between ‘braking the car’ and ‘breaking the car’.

This was a tough lesson for Schwepps when they attempted a marketing campaign in Italy, with a mistranslation of ‘Schwepps Tonic Water’ appearing as ‘Schwepps Toilet Water’ on advertisements.

Delicious!

Literal Translation

This is pretty much the single biggest culprit for translation errors of all sizes. It is the number one golden rule for translators across the globe and the one most amateurs fall prey to – do not translate literally.

Imagine this – you’re about to go on stage for the performance of your life. Your father is with you backstage and he grabs you by the shoulder, leans in and says ‘Break a leg, kid!’. In English it’s an (admittedly odd) positive saying of support. Now, imagine you translated this literally into another language. Instead, your father leans in close and says ‘I hope you get injured, you tiny child!’.

Harsh!

Most commonly, these translation errors occur in direct translation for signage. It is not uncommon to see the sign ‘Do not touch yourself’ in small stores and stalls across China. This is not due to a sharp rise in perverts but is, in fact, a direct translation from the Chinese meaning ‘Please do not touch the items yourself’.

Online automatic translators are the single biggest culprits of this. Avoid at all costs! Pepsi famously learned this the hard way when they launched a massive ad campaign in China, with their literally translated tagline ‘Come alive with Pepsi’ coming out the other side as ‘Pepsi will bring your ancestors back to life’.

All of these translation errors are easy to make, but difficult to fix. The most important thing you can do is leave it to the professionals. As HSBC will tell you of their $10 million fix-up of a botched translation in an ad campaign – cheap translators are very, very expensive. Translate in haste, repent in leisure.

Get yourself a real translation agency. It’ll save you selling toilet water and hurling lactation-related accusations at your customer base. In the world of translation – quality is key.

Author Bio

Mike Parsons enjoys travelling and working with many different cultures. He currently works for Kwintessential.co.uk, a company that cover a wide range of translation services in the UK.

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This is a guest post by Alexander Zeller

Online translation tools commenced with the easily accessible Google Translate, which has now been out on the internet for 10 years, but it seems it hasn’t had that much of an impact on the demand for human translators. Most people believed that once translation tools were developed that would be an end to human translators. This doesn’t mean that machine translation is losing its momentum; it’s more the case that the two methods of translating now co-exist together.

However, the general trend in global business is for more and more businesses opening up their products to many more countries. Experience has indicated that it is of little use marketing a product to, for example, the Russian market unless at least some of the product information is written in Russian.

Terminology Banks

Some of the translation tools which are computer based help translators complete their translation tasks. A few of these are what are called ‘terminology management systems’ where useful terms are stored online in multiple languages so that the translator is only a click away when searching for the desired list of terms. These terminology banks allow translation divisions of an international organisation when allocating translation jobs to human translators that they can be assured that there is a standardisation of terms being used by a group of translators.

March of the Translation Apps

It is expected that throughout this year more apps will be released which will aid faster translations. There is a device that is currently being trialled and that is a translating earpiece. It allows people who don’t speak the same language to understand one another. This could theoretical reduce language barriers considerably.

A device developed and marketed by New York City company Waverly Labs is called ‘Pilot’ and is fitted into the ear. It has an in-built AP which is able to switch between languages. This language translation product is going to be introduced first of all in the main European languages: French, English, Spanish and Italian. The idea later is to load the device with other languages that are widespread, such as Arabic, Hindi, Slavic, Semitic and many African languages.

Pilot May Take Place of Google Translate

Apple fans love iPhone accessories so the Pilot is expected to be a winner as it has many smart language features. It works by using speech recognition so the person using one can hear and understand what another person is saying because the conversation gets translated into the user’s native language. Being what is called a wearable device it brings together this much loved feature with machine translation. It is quite possible that Apple fans will soon be deleting their Google Translate apps in favour of the Pilot iPhone app instead.

Apple is promoting the Pilot app well before the launch by giving away a free app every week. The actual launch date has yet to be decided. So far there has been unprecedented support for the product and crowd-funding is being sought to help in producing it and releasing it out on to the market.

Author Bio:

Alexander Zeller is a project manager and translator working with The Migration Translators in Australia, providing legal, medical, business, marketing, technical and website translation services in over 130 Languages.

This is a guest post by Albert Brown

Why translation services needed?

In general perception, global economy doesn’t come to our mind when we consider interpretation services. We normally think of it as somebody having a thorough knowledge of the root and destination languages, who helps others to understand some different languages and let the communication process flow between two or more people. Translation service has a huge contribution in helping people to overcome the language barrier. But did you know it also plays a significant part in boosting the global economy?

For a company preparing to step into the global market, translation service is a must to function properly. Companies may be doing business on a giant scale in and around their local area but when they want to expand out, they’re almost unknown in their target market and require a lot of hard work to get themselves introduced. Interpretation services bridge the gap between these companies and locals of the target country.

Without language services, it is impossible for a company to improve its own financial standing as well as contribute towards the global economy. To make a footprint in the global market, it is the first and foremost criteria for a company to join hands with a good translation service provider. It greatly enhances the client relationship along with helping it strengthen its position in the global marketplace.

Issue on the translation of economics

In today’s world of information society and globalization, when global economy mainly depends on the distribution and production process along with communication and information, language services play a key role. Banks and other financial institutions operate in various languages to increase their customer base. Multinational companies release documents in various languages for the sake of service expansion and to reach every corner of the global market.

With the increasing growth of “LCCS” or “low-cost country sourcing” where a company imports materials from the countries with lower production and labor costs like Brazil, China, India and Eastern Europe to decrease operational costs, the need of translating franchise agreements, contracts, financial documents, company documents and associated documentations is growing rapidly. Interpretation services occupy a centralized position in the prospective cross-border “M&A” (mergers and acquisitions) which mainly depends on effective and efficient exchange of information between all the involved parties responsible for the transaction.

For addressing this, many research avenues are created that are connected to economic and technical translation services and the challenges related to it. Unlike other subject-related translations like technical translation and legal translation, economic translation has become an uncommon topic of special issues of TS (Translation Studies) journals. As an outcome, economic translation research is spread over various publications and aims at some chosen isolated issues. Such language services mostly focus on the economic terminologies.

Why is translation so important in the global economy?

Translation applications act like important resources for both the translators and normal people and the sale and design of these apps and various web-paced platforms are a flourishing segment in the language industry. A translation project creates numerous job openings distributed among various platforms.

Many language services companies that manage high volume translation projects employ not only translators but graphic/formatting artists, proofreaders, project managers and administrative staff who look after the project requirements. Hiring of such professionals is done by scouting for talent across the globe. All of this jointly contributes to a flourishing translation industry, which is forecasted to reach $37 billion by the year 2018 throughout the world.

Advice on language service

Communication languages usually undergo a change along with a change in the global business mode. Economic development has significantly impacted the popular communication languages used for international businesses.

Accordingly, it has developed the popularity of admissions in various second language courses in universities and colleges. Though it’s difficult to talk about the exact way that would help someone learn a language as his/her second language, such learning does help to enhance the overall employability for sure. Spanish, French, Mandarin, Arabic, Chinese, American Sign Language, Russian, German and Portuguese are some of the languages worth learning.

Before going out to learn a new language, some important factors need to be taken into consideration. These include your future plans after learning the language such as availing a job in a global business, working overseas, becoming an interpreter or opting for a job in the government sector.

How translation improves the economy

Economic growth of a country depends upon various factors. One of the most significant factors that contribute to the economic development is the total count of industries that manufacture quality products or provide quality services. It has been observed that a country with developed economy helps the services and industries to grow rapidly.

Thus, industrial development and economic development are dependent on each other. The translation industry, especially the business and technical translation services sectors, have developed rapidly over the last few years. This sector has excellent growth opportunity, especially in the countries where each day a new business avenue is opening up in the market and opportunities are overflowing as a result of globalization.

The local markets too are flooded with foreign products and a significant number of foreign countries are rendering their services in these local markets. It has been observed that in a developed economical condition, the cross-border exchange is not merely restricted to products and services. Rather, it extends to a significant amount of cultural exchange as well.

This exchange is directly connected to economic development. After all, more economical development means more cultural exchange. Interpretation services play a key role in bridging the gap between two cultures, thus helping in the exchange of literature, knowledge, services and products and much more.

Author Bio:

Albert Brown, passionate writer & translation consultant. He is fond of reading about different cultures & traditions being followed across the world. He loves visiting new places and learning different languages. Reading and writing about the importance of language and its variations is something that keeps him busy during free time. Guiding people about the right source is something he is known for. Find out more about Albert’s company – Translation Excellence here.

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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.

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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!