Posts Tagged ‘media’
Preventing Mistranslation is Easier than Retracting Translation Blunders
Benjamin Franklin said, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This is true in translation. As illustrated when a magazine ironically added Google mistranslations to an article about translation quality in bold, red print, it is easier to prevent mistranslations than it is to retract mistranslations and fully recover from [...]
“Bugs that Crawl” Tractors
Bad things happen when graphic designers and other non-linguists take it upon themselves to become translators, as illustrated in the recent article "Irony: Magazine mistakenly adds Google mistranslation to article about translation." According to A Short Course in International Marketing Blunders by Michael White, the tractor manufacturer [...]
Irony: Magazine Mistakenly Adds Google Mistranslation to Article about Translation
A regional business magazine added a creative design element to an article I wrote about translation. Ironically, that design included a translation error generated by a machine translation program, and the article, titled “Lost in Translation,” became self-descriptive... Read the rest at "Irony: Magazine mistakenly adds Google mistranslation [...]
Magazine Translation Article Ironically “Lost in Translation”
A magazine's art department added a design element to an article about translation. Ironically, that design element included a translation error generated by a machine translation program. The article "Lost in Translation: Preserving Brand Strength in Foreign Markets," by Globalization Group vice president Adam Wooten, appears in the February [...]
Harry Potter Translation Blunders
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling has been translated into at least 69 languages. Some of those translations have included significant errors. The website CJVlang.com has documented numerous mistranslations in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. The BBC reported that one pirated Spanish translation of Harry Potter included not only [...]
New International Business Column
The new International Business column on DeseretNews.com is authored by Globalization Group vice president Adam Wooten. This weekly column is featured every Friday in the "Business" section. "The idea behind the column is that many lessons on international business, language, and culture can be learned through humorous anecdotes," explains [...]
Israeli Journalists and a Dutch Diplomat
Machine translation is appropriate for some situations and very inappropriate for others, as explained in the article "Machine translation can bring blunders, successes in international business." In (one) instance, Israeli journalists nearly set off an international incident when they sent a list of machine-translated questions to a Dutch [...]
Conference Interpreters Work in Pairs
Conference interpreters should work in pairs so that they can switch off every 30 minutes and avoid interpreter fatigue as mentioned below in the video "A Day in the Life of a Translator/Interpreter." Interpreter fatigue is a very real issue. Studies have confirmed a very real decline in quality after 30 minutes of interpreting. This reality [...]
Motorcycle Translation Bloopers
A small scandal-that-never-really-was erupted when motorcycle racer Nicky Hayden's remarks were mistranslated last week. Hayden had commented that "it is a shame" (meaning "it is a pity") fellow racer Casey Stoner is leaving the Ducati team for the Honda team in 2011. However, his words were translated into Italian and then back into English as [...]
Thick-Skinned Hippo
At least a decade ago on the TV program "60 Minutes," interviewer Mike Wallace asked former Russian president Boris Yeltsin if he was thin-skinned about the press (and public criticism). Unfortunately, the interpreter asked Yeltsin if he was a "thick-skinned hippopotamus." Yeltsin responded sharply, "An experienced journalist like yourself [...]
