ASIST Translation Services [articles]: foreign language

Showing posts with label foreign language. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

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:

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.
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.
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).
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

Monday, October 5, 2009

Translating to “Mexican…” Spanish?

According to the Ethnologue Web site, in addition to Spanish, 290 living language varieties are spoken within Mexico. This includes between 87,000 and 100,000 people who speak Mexican Sign Language. Eight percent of Mexico’s population speaks one of many native-american languages. When creating Spanish translations for use in Mexico, it is important to understand that much of this country’s unique Spanish vocabulary reflects Mexico’s cultural diversity, and the influence of other languages that co-exist with Spanish.

To name just a few of the larger language varieties—other than Spanish—that are spoken in Mexico:

1,749,000 — Nahuatl language family
740,000 — Maya language varieties (southern states)
444,000 — Zapotec language family
418,070 — Mixtec language family
367,000 — Mazahua language varieties (México, Michoacán)
272,000 — Totonac language family (Puebla, Veracruz)
252,000 — Otomi language family
190,000 — Tzeltal language varieties (Chiapas)
185,000 — Mazatec family
134,000 — Chol language varieties (Chiapas and Sabanilla)
122,000 — Huastec varieties (Veracruz, San Luís Potosí)
120,000 — Me’phaa language varieties (Guerrero)
97,000 — Chinantec language family (Oaxaca)
95,000 — Tarahumara language family
90,000 — Mixe family (in Oaxaca)
79,000 — Tzotzil language varieties (Chiapas)
59,000 — Popoloca language family
42,000 — Chontal language varieties (Tabasco, Oaxaca)
40,000 — Mayo (Sonora , Sinaloa)
40,000 — Plautdietsch (German language; Chihuahua)
40,000 — Purepecha language varieties
38,000 — Chatino language family (Oaxaca)
36,000 — Tojolabal
28,000 — Amuzgo language family (Guerrero, Oaxaca)
25,000 — Tepehuan language family
20,000 — Huichol (Nayarit and Jalisco)
15,000 — Cora language varieties (Nayarit)

Considering the incredible linguistic diversity of this country, it is hardly surprising that Mexican Spanish (like many other varieties of Spanish spoken around the world) regularly uses so many words originating from languages already spoken in that country before the arrival of the Spanish in the early years of the 16^th century.

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

Friday, October 2, 2009

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.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

Friday, September 4, 2009

Spanish Translations for Business

When translating from English to Spanish for business purposes, it is essential that the team of translators working on the Spanish translation be familiar with customary business language!

You may be surprised to learn that many freelance Spanish translators don’t come from a business background. Consequently, they may not be familiar with nuances and style conventions in commercial correspondence. When this is the case, you run the risk of receiving translations that can be overly literal, stilted, or be written in an excessively informal tone.

A professional translation agency uses teams of qualified linguists who have been tested for their knowledge of contemporary style conventions—including business language in both English and Spanish. Experienced translators know whether a given bit of jargon or business idiom should be translated, stay in English, or be substituted by some equivalent expression in the target language.

Business Spanish tends to be slightly more formal than contemporary English correspondence; for example, going to greater lengths to make requests sound less like commands. Greetings and closings also tend to be somewhat more formal, even slightly old-fashioned sounding when they are literally translated back to English. In short, there are style conventions, just as in any other language—and no matter how strong a person’s linguistic qualifications, these are no substitute for real-life experience with modern business correspondence.

Be sure to work with qualified, professional translators, whose field of expertise includes business as well as your particular technical field.

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

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

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.

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.
Indicate exactly which version number of the page-layout (DTP) program you’re using, and whether the document was created on Macintosh or Windows.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

Monday, August 31, 2009

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

Thursday, August 27, 2009