Managing In-House Review of Translations

When our clients’ foreign offices review a translation, we always value their input. Their intimate knowledge of their customers, internal processes, vendors and industry terms in their specific market is very useful. As your company’s coordinator for multilanguage translation projects, here are some tips from ASIST Translations that will help you make this process more productive:

1. Most of the time, reviewers are not professional linguists, and are not familiar with the laborious review and double-checking the translation process requires. It is important to emphasize that personal “style preferences” must be avoided. Even the smallest change suggestions typically require review by 2-3 people on the translation side alone—hardly a good investment, if the translated text wasn’t “wrong” in the first place.
2. Like our own translators, editors and proofreaders, your internal reviewers must resist the temptation to add anything to the translated text that isn’t in the English original! Any omissions or ambiguities in the English should be corrected at the source and addressed in all languages where appropriate. This is crucial for multi-language projects. Otherwise, as your company’s in-house coordinator, it quickly becomes unwieldy to manage documents, and each translation could stray from the English meaning in its own way.
3. It is very helpful if reviewers provide you an explanation in English (as a Comment in the translated MS Word file) for every suggested change—indicating exactly what each revision means and why it’s necessary. As you can imagine, this requirement for explanatory comments in English reduces the number of non-essential changes you will receive! Most importantly, being in the loop on how the content is being altered gives you the chance to manage the process before returning suggestions for review, comment and approval by ASIST linguists. Indeed, some comments may suggest improvement that should be made to the English original (and then updated in the other languages).
4. Timing is important. In-house reviews of a translation should be completed in the source Microsoft Word document before page layout, audio recording and so on are done. This is not only more efficient and reduces extra work, but also improves change tracking and consistency in the translation memories that ASIST maintains for your projects.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, studio voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

Castilian = Spanish = Castellano = Español

This is a persistent misunderstanding… Before starting any Spanish translation, having this information handy might be helpful when clients or distributors tell YOU what variety of Spanish is required, without providing any geographical context.

Castilian/Spanish, Castellano/Español are all synonyms for the same language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_given_to_the_Spanish_language

In short, it avoids confusion to call the national language spoken in Spain “peninsular” Spanish or European Spanish.

In many Spanish-speaking countries in the New World, people casually use the term castellano (Castilian in English) to mean “proper” Spanish – that is, not colloquial or a regional dialect, and without a lot of folksy local vocabulary or slang that wouldn’t be understood by Spanish speakers outside of their specific country or region.

One will commonly hear “castellano” used in this sense in Mexico, for instance. It’s sort of like a U.S. speaker saying “the King’s English.” But this is a colloquial usage, and not linguistically accurate.

In some cases, what the client is driving at might be one of the “virtual” Spanish varieties used for translation purposes; for example, “Latin American” Spanish or “Universal” Spanish. These are not really Spanish dialects at all. Instead, in the translation industry they are a convenient way of indicating that the target Spanish variety needs to be comprehensible (to the extent possible) in various countries and might need to include some alternate wordings where differing vocabulary might cause confusion.

Sometimes Spanish speakers outside of the USA may in fact be specifying “Castilian” because they believe (with some cause) that a lot of what they would consider “bad” Spanish or Spanglish is spoken within the USA, and they’re concerned (also with cause) that they might receive this from any translation agency based in the USA.

• Another interesting aspect of the term castellano (Castilian) is that many people within autonomous regions of Spain who speak other peninsular languages such as Catalán, Galician or Basque make a point of calling it castellano. After all, theirs are also co-official “Spanish” languages!

Usually, when “Castilian” Spanish is requested, either:

1. The client really does mean European Spanish as spoken in Spain (and Equatorial Guinea, Gilbraltar, Ceuta, Melilla); or
2. Their own clients or distributors have told them “Castilian” as a way of saying “standard” Spanish that isn’t colloquial or regional dialect— it which case it would NOT be appropriate to translate to European Spanish.

• Spanish in Europe has some basic grammatical differences from any New World Spanish variety, including the well-known use of the second-person plural pronouns and verb forms (vosotros). In the New World, these are generally only seen in archaic, poetical or biblical styles. There are also many other important differences in vocabulary, preferences for sentence construction, and compound verb forms. Pronunciation is also very different, and this is of crucial importance when recording voiceover narrations for e-learning, video, PowerPoint, Flash, etc. A large proportion of European Spanish is intelligible to well-traveled New World speakers, but they will definitely recognize it as a different Spanish variety. Especially in non-technical text, European Spanish sounds more “foreign” to American Spanish speakers than British vernacular does to USA English speakers, for example.

As always, if clients let us know exactly WHERE the Spanish translation will be used, our expertise can help them choose the most appropriate target language variety.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service interpreting and translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, studio voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

Language Facts for Arabic Translation Projects

Arabic-Speaking Countries

Current estimates indicate that 360 million people speak Arabic—including those who speak it as a second (or third) language. As of 1999 (according to the Ethnologue site) about 221 million people spoke some variety of Arabic as their first language.

Arabic is among the official languages in 24 countries. In some of these countries, Arabic is a minority language and more than language has official status. (By way of comparison, English figures among the official languages in 55 countries, versus 29 for French, 20 for Spanish, 10 each for Russian and Portuguese, and 7 for German.)

However, Arabic is the sole official language in only 8 countries.

Egypt is home to the largest number of native or second-language Arabic speakers (92 million), followed by Algeria (35 million), Morocco (32 million), Saudi Arabia (28 million), Iraq and Yemen (24 million each).

In the Americas, there are 3.5 million native or second-language Arabic speakers in the United States, 12 million in Brazil (where there are more people of Lebanese origin than within Lebanon itself), 6 million in France, 3.5 million in Argentina and 1.1 million in Mexico. ASIST Translations frequently produces Arabic translations and voice-over recordings that are directed towards Arabic speakers within the United States, for medical, government and corporate clients.

Arabic Translation: Target Varieties

Ethnologue lists 30 varieties within the Arabic macrolanguage. Modern Standard Arabic is usually the target variety when translating to Arabic for audiences from a wide variety of national origins. It is derived from Classical Arabic, which is still in use for religious and ceremonial purposes, and includes a large proportion of archaic grammar and vocabulary. In most Arab countries, proficiency in Standard Arabic (also known as Literary Arabic) is directly related to educational level; at least 101 million Arabic-speaking are not considered fully proficient in Standard Arabic.

Spoken Arabic for Voice-Over Narrations

Spoken accents within the Arabic-speaking world vary dramatically. When recording Arabic narrations for video, interactive training, education, etc., it is extremely important to identify your core target audience—and then use voice talent whose accent will be most acceptable to the largest number of people. It is also important that professional Arabic linguists on your translation team know how to optimize scripts for the spoken word. In particular, the studio voice-recording process will be facilitated if the translated script indicates vowel pronunciations very clearly—even when this would not be strictly necessary for a print-only document. Additionally, when proper names or technical terms from the source English text are transliterated to Arabic (i.e., approximating the original pronunciation using the characters of the target language), it is important that a native English speaker be involved in the studio recording session to assist voice talent with accurate pronunciation.

Arabic text and computers

Written Arabic uses the Arabic alphabet. It is a cursive script and written from right to left. Arabic is the second most-frequently used alphabet in the world (after the Latin alphabet). It includes 28 basic letters that all represent consonants, plus optional symbols to indicate vowels. Many computer programs don’t support right-to-left languages at all (and support for right-to-left languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi must be enabled in the control panel of Windows). Even among programs that do support Arabic script, artifacts can occur when Arabic text is taken from one program to another—not to mention between Windows and Macintosh platforms! (This is also the case with the Perso-Arabic script used for Farsi and Dari.) For instance, Arabic letters have a basic form when they stand alone, and then change shape according on their position within each word (initial, medial or final), as well as connections to letters that precede or follow them within each word. Additionally, certain pairs of letters get joined together to form a single ligature (sometimes obligatory, sometimes optional; practice varies according to country and personal preferences). It is absolutely essential for your final layout, video or interactive module to be reviewed by a native Arabic linguist. Font errors can be very easily overlooked by non-native speakers!

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, studio voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

ASIST TRANSLATIONS: Language Services for Electronic Media

ASIST Translation Services can help you create e-learning, interactive, audio and video content for multiple languages and cultures.

- Translate narrations and onscreen text to any language
- Place translated text into video and interactive media
- Proofread onscreen text after placement
- Foreign-language voiceovers:

• Provide voice talent for dubbing videos and interactive pieces to other languages
  
• In-studio auditor ensures accuracy and inflection in voice performances
• Record voiceovers in our digital (Pro Tools-based) studio
• Edit narrations and dialog to match picture in video files
• Cultural consultation regarding language variety and spoken accent

- Collaborate in the planning of media projects that will be optimized for globalization

• Optimization and disambiguation for translation purposes
• Cultural perspectives on content, vocabulary
  
• Language support issues for specific authoring and design software

- Page layout, formatting in any language, including double-byte and right-to-left languages

ASIST routinely provides voice-over recordings for multimedia and computer-based training (Flash, AuthorWare, etc.). Narrations can be delivered as WAV, MP3 or any other required audio file format. Frequently, we deliver separate audio files for each segment, enabling interactive authors to align each scene, then adjust the timing of graphics as necessary in order to allow for larger word counts in most translations.

We can also dub videos to many different languages. For clients with in-house video editing capability, the ideal method is to export a digital video file. We use that as the onscreen reference while recording and editing translated narrations and dialogs. ASIST returns a WAV file that is already conformed to source video project. Once this translated narration is dropped in at 0:00 in the video timeline—everything lines up from beginning to end.

• In order to avoid a rushed pace in dubbed video, it helps to leave some extra padding between paragraphs or scenes in the original English version. With enough editing and/or time compression, we can make anything fit! However, this can sound rushed, especially if the translation must accurately reflect all nuances of the original English content, with no abridgment or paraphasing for time permitted. (In fact, creating a “looser” version of the original English program for dubbing purposes is a strategy that globalization-savvy content producers incorporate into their project plan.)

ASIST translates for all types of Web content. We have translated large sites supporting dozens of languages, including Russian, Chinese, Japanese and various others that don’t use Latin characters. Proofreading before the client goes live with the formatted content is one of the crucial services that ASIST provides. Even in languages using Latin character sets, longer string length, line break issues and diacritical marks can be problematic if they are not reviewed by a qualified linguist.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

Content ≥ Form: Translation Guidelines for Technical Writers

As a technical writer participating in a multilingual project, the greater your understanding of the translation process and cross-cultural issues in general, the better equipped you are to deliver content that is optimized for multiple languages and cultures. This article highlights a few of the most important considerations when you pre-flight your technical writing for global delivery.

Think Metric. The United States is one of the few countries in the world that hasn’t standardized on the metric system. Providing metric equivalents in the source text helps you ensure consistency and make your own decisions about appropriate units of measurement per the International System of Units (SI), and determine the significant number of digits for each conversion. Beware, however—some things should not be converted, such as wrench sizes and plumbing fittings, for example.

Think Global. Just a few examples… Not only do many countries use different voltages than North America, but the electrical connectors are also different—so your conscientious “3-prong, grounded outlet” advice may not apply to the overseas model of the product. Another common oversight: if toll-free “800” numbers won’t work outside the USA and Canada and you don’t provide alternate phone numbers, how will clients reach Customer Service or Technical Support?

Avoid Catch Phrases and Wordplay. Occasionally spicing up technical text with subculture references or vogue expressions for your own culture can make it more engaging for general audiences. However, these often won’t translate to other languages, and leave translators grasping for near-equivalent expressions—or worse, stilted renditions in the target language. Even trickier are the idiomatic constructions that, as a native speaker, you wouldn’t even think twice about when reviewing text prior to translation. For example, for some translators, “ramp up” or “throttle back” might be more error-prone than “gradually increase” or “decelerate.”

Know Which Regulatory Agencies and Certifications are Relevant. Some end users in the European Union might know what the North American term “UL-listed” means, but for them only the CE marking has similar regulatory importance for health, safety and environmental certification. Similarly, while approvals by the FDA, USDA, other United States authorities may be of some interest, similar regulatory bodies probably govern these fields in your target markets. When possible, list all regulatory approvals and certifications in your source English document (both in the US and elsewhere) to ensure that they appear in every translated version.

Disambiguate. Consider creating a term glossary specifically for the translation teams. As you receive queries while translating one language, be sure to add these explanations to your list. That way, more questions are answered beforehand as additional target languages are added. Often, queries from translators will uncover items that should be reworded in the English original to eliminate any possibility of misinterpretation.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service interpreting and translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide technical translation, interpreting, proofreading, studio voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

Translation to Chinese: What kind of “Chinese”?

The most-common Chinese language varieties requested of ASIST are Mandarin, followed by Cantonese (also known as Yue, Gwong Dung Waa, Yueh, Yuet Yue, and Yueyu). The written form of Mandarin can use either Simplified or Traditional characters, depending on the target audience, while Cantonese generally uses Traditional characters. If you are planning for a Chinese translation, here are some basic guidelines to keep in mind.

Spoken Chinese

While it also applies to a large group of linguistically related dialects, Mandarin usually refers to the Standard Mandarin variety as spoken in Beijing. The name Mandarin literally back-translates as “northern speech.” This is the official language of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan (a.k.a. Republic of China), and is also one of four official languages in Singapore.

In China, Cantonese speakers are mainly concentrated in the province of Guangdong (previously known as Canton in English) and Guanxi. It is also spoken in Macau—where it is an official language, along with Portuguese. Cantonese is also the traditionally dominant language in Hong Kong used in education, government, business and the media, although Mandarin is also a co-official language there. “Standard Cantonese” usually refers to the Canton-Hong Kong dialect.

There are also large Cantonese-speaking communities in Southeast Asia, Canada, Australia and the United States. The majority of the Chinese-Americans well into the 1980’s could trace their ancestry to the Cantonese province of Taishan; consequently Cantonese was prevalent for many years in the US. As the demographics among Chinese immigrants have shifted over the last 50 years, Mandarin has steadily increased in prominence as the lingua franca among overseas Chinese.

Written Chinese

Presently, two distinct systems of characters are used for writing Chinese: Traditional and Simplified. As the name implies, the Simplified form decreases the number of strokes required for many (but not all) characters. A finalized version of this system was made official in the People’s Republic of China in 1964. Use of Simplified characters is the norm among Mandarin speakers in mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia and in the United Nations. Additionally, writing in Simplified characters is also gradually gaining popularity among other overseas Chinese.

In contrast, Traditional characters are used for written Cantonese in Hong Kong and Macau, and written Mandarin in Taiwan (where use of Simplified characters is disapproved). Many overseas Chinese communities also tend to use Traditional characters, especially Cantonese speakers and families who emigrated before the mainland’s changeover to Simplified during the 1950’s and 1960’s.

There is also a “romanized” version of written Chinese that uses Latin characters to approximate Standard Mandarin pronunciation. Hanyu Pinyin (or simply Pinyin) was adopted by the ISO as the standard romanization for modern Chinese. Aside from its main use for teaching phonetic pronunciation to non-Mandarin speakers, Hanyu Pinyin is also sometimes used for entering Chinese text into certain computer systems that don’t support Traditional or Simplified Chinese characters.

What To Do?

If Mandarin Chinese is requested, and your principal target audience is worldwide or mainland China specifically, it will most commonly be written using Simplified Chinese characters. However, for “Chinese” speaking audiences within the USA, it is important to check beforehand. It is not unusual for both Mandarin and Cantonese to be required. For example, the San Francisco area has separate radio and TV channels broadcasting in each language, and various American television networks broadcast programming in both languages. For written Chinese, a significant portion of Chinese-Americans may be more familiar with Traditional rather than Simplified characters.

ASIST offers translation, interpreting and voice recording in Mandarin and Cantonese, plus many other languages throughout China, Asia and elsewhere.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service interpreting and translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, studio voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

Translating Page Layouts: Top Ten Tips

The team at ASIST Translations has a wealth of experience, adapting our client’s design and page layout projects to many different foreign languages. Here are a few tips we have learned along the way, that will help streamline the process of translating your page layouts to other languages.

1. Word counts in translated text frequently increase by as much as 25%. Be sure to leave enough “white space” in your layout to accommodate this.
2. Indicate exactly which version number of the page-layout (DTP) program you’re using, and whether the document was created on Macintosh or Windows.
3. If linked graphic files contain text requiring translation, be sure to include them along with the layout, in editable form! Also indicate which program (and version) was used to create these secondary files. As with the main layout itself, bear in mind that if your English callout text barely fits inside a figure, the translated version probably won’t unless resized.
4. Be sure to always include all required fonts when submitting a project for translation to a foreign language. Also be aware that some fonts don’t support all the diacritical marks required for certain languages; Central European languages in particular can have this issue with many of the more “decorative” fonts. Obviously, many Asian languages will require specific fonts, and ASIST will alert you of this accordingly.
5. Use actual paragraph formatting to create hanging indents and bullet lists, rather than placing returns and multiple tabs on each line to simulate the same effect! Because line breaks and hyphenation in the translation won’t correspond to the English anyway, eliminating such unnecessary characters saves time and money in the creation of your foreign-language layouts.
6. Any review of a translation by in-house personnel (in your foreign office, for example) should be made on the MS Word file using the "track changes" feature—before any translated text is formatted within your layout.
7. The ASIST team needs to know the preferred and permissible options for making your translated text fit. For example, are there any corporate or regulatory requirements, minimum point size and line spacing, or any graphics that absolutely cannot be reduced in size?
8. Be sure to review your content prior to translation. Our translators can help you identify any contact information that may require changes for the international version; for example, mailing addresses or toll-free numbers that wouldn't be valid for customers outside the USA and Canada.
9. Some design and desktop publishing programs don’t properly support Asian fonts or right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. In some cases, once the final translation has been approved we can convert the text to outlines so that you can still open the layout file. Obviously, if your company is going to create many translated documents, support for non-Latin fonts may be an important factor for choosing the program that should be used for creating the layouts in the first place.
10. Tables can be especially tricky, because of the greater length of many translated terms. Leaving plenty of extra column width—or even breaking the information into two separate tables if necessary— can avoid reducing the translated text to very small point sizes.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

Translation Tips from ASIST Translations

• In many languages (but not all!), the use of points and commas to separate decimals and thousands within numbers is reversed compared to US English. That is, instead of 1,000.01, they write 1.000,01. This is true for most Spanish varieties, for instance; except for Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico and the United States itself. As part of the process of creating your translations to and from any language, ASIST Translations guides you through this and similar issues. Number formats are just one of the reasons we always ask, “Where is this translation going to be used?.”

• Toll-free “800” numbers only work within the US and Canada! If you don’t provide an alternative phone number for international callers, you have effectively made it impossible for people in other countries to contact your customer service, ordering or sales departments by phone. Not such a great idea!

• Not all computer programs accept non-Latin alphabets. Right-to- left alphabets (such as Arabic and Hebrew) and so-called “double- byte” languages (Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, for example) also can be problematic with many DTP programs. There are various strategies for overcoming this (including conversion of all text to outlines); be sure to consult with ASIST Translations if you suspect this may be an issue. Incidentally, these character-set limitations are even trickier when translating touchscreen displays or control panels on machinery!

• Various incompatible video formats are used throughout the world (mainly NTSC, PAL, and SECAM). Be aware that, after creating a dubbed or subtitled version of your marketing or training video in another language, you must also create DVD or videotape copies that are converted to international formats other than NTSC (used in North America). Hint: using web or CD-based video instead (for example, in MPEG, WMV or QuickTime format) allows a single version to be used in the entire world.

• English is a relatively compact language. When text is translated to other languages, character or word counts can be significantly higher, by as much as 20–30%. When creating the English original for your multi-lingual documents, be sure to leave some extra space (or plan for font sizes being reduced somewhat), so that the content will fit onto the page.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, voice recording and media production, localization of e-learning, interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

ASIST Translation Services

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service translation agency, offering translation, consecutive and simultaneous interpreting, DTP or page layout, localization, proofreading, foreign-language voice talents for dialog and voiceover, audio-video recording, and multimedia production services in countless languages and dialects.

The headquarters of ASIST Translations is located in Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Please feel free to contact us for more information.

www.ASISTtranslations.com