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Dec29
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I don't want to focus too much on one part of the world for bad translations, so I'll leave the fertile field of Asian websites and spend a moment in South America. Let's look at the English website of Luz del Sur, an electrical utility that provides power and light to a large portion of Lima, the capital city. Overall, the site is quite good, with only nagging little things to remind the reader that it wasn't translated by a native speaker of English. But, why bother the reader? If the English version of the site was created to inform potential investors from the English-speaking world, it should be in correct English. If it was meant to satisfy the second language interests of Peruvians, still it should be in correct English.
No website created for English-speaking readers should say:
"For fourth year in a row, Mundo Ecológico opened its doors to the community in 2000 at the extensive district of Santiago de Surco, where thousands of visitors showed up, thus accumulating more than 150,000 visitors since the first set in motion."
There are at least six errors in that one, long sentence. Once again the lesson: have a native speaker do it. If you can't find a friend to do it for free, pay somebody. it doesn't cost much.
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Dec29
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I need your help to find statistical measures of the efficiency and thoroughness of translation, whether by human or by machine. One would have to assume that translators, armed with dictionaries, glossaries and machines, and with time to do it right, could and should approach 100% effeiciency (in transfer of meaning) every time.
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What happens when you need to go from, let's say, Chinese to Armenian, and can't find a Chinese-to-Armenian translator, but you can find a translators to go from Chinese to English and another to go from English to Armenian? Does this 3-language process have a name? Has anyone done any research into it's effectiveness?
Is it ethical to offer to translate odd language pairs when you know that the work will be done by two translators via an intermediate language? Does the client need to be told? How do you review the finished work for accuracy? Do large agencies ever use this 3-language process?
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Dec28
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There is an Italian-based translation agency in urgent need of a translator who can handle Krio, a dialect of Yoruba. The message didn't state if they wanted Krio-English or something else, or what the subject matter will be. It is...
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Dec26
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There are no hard and fast rules--that I'm aware of--for the inclusion of a translator's name in a printed piece of translated work. Here are some guidelines I have picked up over the years.
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A multi-translator project requires a review step in order to synthesize the various "voices" or styles of the several translators.
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There are circumstances where the translator can add input to texts before they are written, including possibly improving the translatability.
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Dec23
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Where should a translator turn to find the most work, over the long haul?
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Dec17
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In translating dialogue to make subtitles, the translator must reproduce the impact as well as the information. So a very loose translation may be much better than a rigid one.
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Dec15
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Can anyone help me find a thorough and up-to-date history of machine translation and computer-assisted translation?
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Dec14
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Today KnowMoreMedia.com, (KMM, for short) a business blog network and parent/host of this blog, launched its official company website. A press release was featured prominently on PRWeb.com, a leading news site for business matters on the Web. Before the end of the day, an Italian Web monitoring site has commented on the press release and the site, in Italian. KnowMoreMedia is eager to know what was said. How can they find out? Let's count the ways.
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Dec13
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With the recent return of my son from Cambodia, it has been easy to point out some miserable and humorous attempts at translation into English from that country. But I want to be fair, so I went looking for Cambodian...
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We're all aware that technology now offers to replace translators. Go to the Babel Fish Translation site, the most widely known and popular of the mechanical translation sites, and you will find no disclaimers or warnings about the need for human intervention or the dangers of inaccurate work. It just offers to translate a block of text in 36 language pairs (mostly the high volume, European languages). The results are mixed and NOT GOOD.
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As I was searching the Web recently for information about translation service agencies, I discovered an interesting phenomenon. It seems that the major agencies (or, those that appear at the top of Google searches) can handle translation into and out of almost every imagineable language! I ran searches for "Bantu translation", "Xhosa translation", "Dari translation", "Sinhala translation", "Tagalog translation", "Malayalam translation" and got all the same agencies every time. How is that possible?
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Dec 8
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I recently came across the site www.MedinaShop.com, a site that sells traditional Moroccan handicrafts, including furniture, jewelry, and cookware. For the most part, the translation in English is quite good. The requirements are minimal; most products are shown with their name and cost, and little else. I checked out the FAQ and "Quality Charter" (whatever that means) pages and found them to have very few translation errors, and nothing that interrupts comprehension. Then I got to the "General Terms of Sale" and ran into trouble. I offer the most offensive part here.
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Dec 5
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Wikipedia provides a list of all the languages that the Harry Potter books have been translated into, and the names of the translators that did the work. Is there anyone out there who has read any of the HP books in translation and can give us a review? Especially helpful will be those comments that compare the translated work to the original text in English.
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With this post I'm opening a place for you to report good translations found in print or on the Web. I don't mind self-promotion; if you're a good translator and want to pat yourself on the back, tell us where to see your work. Also, if there's a work or site you admire, let me and the other readers know.
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With this post I am opening a forum for your experiences with big translation firms and localization agencies, good and bad. Let me know what you thought of the process of employing the agency, how you selected them, how they communicated, their professional conduct, their guarantees, and the results of the transaction. Especially let me know how you, the client and non-speaker of the target language, felt about putting your materials into their hands.
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Dec 1
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We just print what we find. Any criticism is of translation quality, and not site content. An Italian site says "they will know how to bewitch and to surprise You, his customers and the friends."
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