Posts Tagged ‘korean’
Wear Your Clothes
Some mistranslations include correct spelling and grammar, but convey subtle implications only native speakers will notice. Instructions on a Korean flight read, “Upon arrival at Kimpo and Kimahie Airport, please wear your clothes,” perhaps to warn former Braniff passengers who had been told otherwise – “fly naked” – via a rather [...]
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 [...]
Wings Air: Fly is Cheap
Wings Air, an Indonesian airline, has a short, grammatically incorrect slogan that inspires about as much confidence as the Uzbekistan Airways' ad that read "Good Luck." Before an English editor could check the slogan, Wings Air paid to print the words "Fly is Cheap" on signs, aircraft, and airsickness bags. "Fly is cheap," huh? Well, just [...]
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 [...]
World Cup Translation Bloopers Inspire Poetry
The 2010 FIFA World Cup Translation Bloopers have inspired the poem "2010 World Cup Cultural Dunce Awards," by Rachel Hoyt. The poem includes mention of multilingual cursing, FIFA's Slovak/Slovene confusion, the infamous Korean fan jersey, and Socceranto. Follow the link to "2010 World Cup Cultural Dunce Awards" and read more by poet [...]
Microsoft Language Portal Update Includes Office 2010 International Terminology
The Microsoft Language Portal has recently been updated to include International Terminology from Office 2010 in 90 languages. As mentioned previously, Microsoft has produced great free resources for download and/or search that include all of its style guides and glossaries, which can double as translation memory.
Text Expansion & Contraction in Translation
Letter-for-letter translation appears on kids' cereal boxes, but not in real life. In real life, the word count, character count, length, and sometimes even the height of translated text will differ from the source text. Proper preparation can prevent potential problems with expansion. This preparation can include dynamically resizable [...]
Top Languages by Population
In prioritizing markets to target and languages to translate, should you care which languages are spoken by the largest population? Maybe. Maybe not. Looking at the top 12 languages by percentage of world population, you'll see some languages like Javanese and Lahnda (which includes Panjabi) that are rarely included when a company prioritizes [...]
