Posts Tagged ‘media’
Customer Complaints Lost in Translation
"Customer Complaints Lost in Translation" is an article by Globalization Group vice president Adam Wooten, published in the July 12-18, 2010 issue of The Enterprise, "the premier business paper in the Utah region." Read a PDF copy of the complete article here, or subscribe to The Enterprise here.
Don’t Trash Your Message
Symbols and icons often require translation. Years ago, some European users confused the cylindrical, U.S.-centric, Macintosh "trash" icon with a postal box (email). Similarly, Sun Microsystems found previously that email icons in SunView confused non-U.S. users who had never seen a red flag used to indicate whether or not a postal box had new [...]
Download Translation Memory
As mentioned in previous tips, three tools that help a company maintain translation consistency at different levels include glossaries, style guides, and translation memory. Glossaries help maintain consistency at the term level, translation memories help maintain consistency at the sentence level, and style guides help fill in the gaps by [...]
Youtube Subtitle Translation
Youtube recently combined automatic translation with its automatic captioning feature. Automatic voice recognition technology is not 100 percent accurate. So, when that inaccurate technology is combined with inaccurate machine translation, you may sometimes see laughable errors much like those that result from playing the telephone game (also [...]
No Pass for Gas Translation | Kazakh Translation Error
Two weeks ago, Kazakhstan Today ran the following news story on the English version of its website: Passing gas is Kazakhstan's property Astana. March 12. Kazakhstan Today - The head of state, Nursultan Nazarbayev, assigned to work on transfer of passing gas to the state ownership at the meeting with the regional akims concerning realization [...]
11-yr-old Hero Interpreter Praised by Paramedics
An 11-year-old boy is being praised by paramedics for acting as an interpreter after he and many others were injured in an Arizona bus crash. The bus was traveling through Arizona on its way from Zacatecas, Mexico to Los Angeles, California, so many of the passengers spoke Spanish but did not speak English as well as this boy, Óscar [...]
Stinky Swedish Product Names Lost without Translation
In the fifties and sixties, there was a Swedish car magazine named "Fart." "Fart" is a Swedish word meaning "speed." Although this likely caused no problem in the magazine's home country, rumors abound that this was quite embarrassing when the writers would travel to international car and racing events. Fifty years later, another Swedish [...]
Avatar Invents Na’Vi Language
Paul Frommer, a professor of linguistics at the University of Southern California has invented an entirely new language called Na'Vi. The language was created for James Cameron's new blockbuster movie, Avatar, much like Elvish was created for J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy and Klingon was created for Star Trek. Learn more about the [...]
Educating the Media about Translation and Interpretation
Read more about how to politely educate the media about the difference between translation and interpretation on the T&I Business Blog.
