Posts Tagged ‘french’
Cheap Translation Kills
Not all mistranslations mean the difference between life and death, but some do. Some cheap translations can actually kill. See the following examples from the article, "'Airline pulp' and bad translations that can crash a plane," by Globalization Group vice president Adam Wooten. ...a 2008 helicopter crash in France... was suspected to be the [...]
Google Translate has great uses, disastrous misuses
Google Translate and other free online translation tools can be great for instant, informal translation. When expectations are properly set, particularly for low-value text, unedited machine translation can be quite useful. However, when a user overestimates machine translation capabilities, the results can be confusing at best. When one online [...]
International symbol, icon blunders can be avoided
Some of my European colleagues still remember when the old Macintosh operating system of the 1980s used a trash icon that Apple’s European users confused for a postal box. Why was the icon confusing? People across the globe have different cultural ideas and assumptions about what things are supposed to look like. In other countries, trash cans [...]
‘Airline pulp’ and bad translations that can crash a plane
Southern China Airways once distributed a snack package with the mysterious-sounding label “Airline Pulp” and no other description. Yum – sounds tasty! This mistranslated label will probably not get the airline nominated for any airline food awards, but it could be worse. Some in-flight mistranslations will make you laugh, but others will [...]
Poll: Top Translation Blunders of 2010
Translation blunders made news throughout the year 2010. By translation blunders, we are not referring to urban legends like President John F. Kennedy's alleged slip-up saying "I am a jelly doughnut" - that never happened. Nor are we referring to Dave Barry's satirical claim, "The CEO of Toyota appears before a congressional committee and [...]
Localizing Humor
According to the article, "I don't get it: Humor lost in translation," it can be difficult to translate humor from one language or culture to another. Translators can sometimes find equivalent jokes that will be funny in the target language, but here are a few resources to help identify country-specific humor and jokes: Reader's Digest, "The [...]
Product Label Translation Omissions
An omitted translation can be as embarrassing and wasteful as a bad translation. See the following example from a package of wooden plugs featured on the very popular FAILBlog.org. Contact Globalization Group to receive a free quote for product label translation.
Language Use by Region
What are the top 10 languages by population in New York and other states? Where are the most Armenian speakers living in the United States? The U.S. Census used to track and report the number of language speakers for virtually every language in every state and county. This data was very useful for companies planning localized multilingual [...]
Language and Country Codes
Many multilingual websites are organized using subdomains and subdirectories based on language codes or country codes. These are usually ISO codes. See the following example that Google gave for a French website in Canada using the alpha-2 code for the French language: French language code subdirectory: www.example.ca/fr French language code [...]
Language and Country Names List
English speakers expect that a link to an English language/country option on a website will be listed in English, not translated into another language. Otherwise, how easily would an English speaker find a link to English content if the language name were written in Asian, Cyrillic, or Middle Eastern characters? Or how easy would it be if the [...]
