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Jan30
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The Sunday travel section of the local paper focused on Japan, and rightly so. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. It was beautiful, clean, and hospitable. I'm not looking for a reason to complain, and I've said earlier that it's hard to find a bad translation of Japanese to English on the web, but at the local level they are still prevalent and amusing. I did some deep poking around today and found this little collection of gems. They're from the wesbite of the Ikenotaira Hotel in Nagano, and more particularly from the page about their thermal baths:
- To use hotel hot spring before check-in, please do the check-in procedure at front desk.
- Swimsuit or trunk worn is needed in the mixed bathing areas. (Rental swimsuit: 300 yen)
- Hotel resident is free of charge to use hotel hot spring.
More disconcerting is the way the Japanese have gone overboard in their embrace of American culture. One article from the Sunday paper shows a Japanese boy wearing a a t-shirt that imitates the typical American phys-ed standard issue workout shirt, but his says "Luck Central" and "Posh Pail Div." That's no translation; that's stringing catch-words together in a freakish and failed attempt to sound American. I have seen Japanese shirts that said (in English) "Yachting Beach Champion" and "Master Competition Surf". It's spam--fashion spam--that's what it is.
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Jan30
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When is a job too small to merit concern for a high-quality translation? Never. Even when you are just asking a bilingual friend or associate to do the work, then ask another bilingual friend or associate to review it for quality.
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Today's "Good Translation" is the delightful homepage of Sairam Tourism, an apparently well-established and obviously well-polished tourism agency with a main office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Sticking to the translation aspects, the English is nearly flawless in spelling, word choice, and form.
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Jan27
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Translators for Kirundi and Kurdish Sorani are needed right away.
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There's a duty-free zone in northern Chile called the Zona Franca de Iquique. I've checked out the English version of their site, and I'm not sure if it's a good translation or a bad one. The overall impression of the site, in English, is that there are few if any errors in spelling or grammar, but that it is so awkwardly constructed as to be disturbing.
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Jan26
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There's a sweet little site called Bookings to help you get a hotel in Italy. For the most part, their English text is very good, and they are to be applauded. But for fun, check out the link to the San Marco Palace Hotel in Venice.
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Jan25
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Expert simultaneous interpreters can reproduce over 90% of the meaning of a speech in the target language. Even so, why risk loss of meaning? Why not translate the speeches (and other conference materials) in advance?
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Comments in the plenary session of a large interational conference are given in any of several languages, and interpreters make them instantly available to listeners in the other languages. But by the following morning, almost as if by magic, the previous day's activities are also available in hard copy (and in many cases, electronically as web pages or files) in all the languages. How does it happen?
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Jan23
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A few translation faults, especially in the midst of academic language, make the whole work seem a little, well, creepy. If you want to write for readers of another language, turn the translation, or at least a review thereof, over to an educated speaker of that language, and one unaffected by extended proximity to the source language.
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The English "GO" button is being translated in various ways. Spanish Web users may become accustomed to "IR" in the same context, but I hope they don't.
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Jan17
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America is getting older without producing its own workers fast enough to replace retirees.
For translators, it means more people living together in the same communities and speaking more languages. In other words, more work is coming.
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Jan12
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I was scammed out of more than $4,000 US by--I have come to learn--the oldest scam in the book, and I want everyone else to know about it. It has several names. I call it the "bad check" scam. In my case, it went like this:
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In dealing with clients, you can't ask too many questions. Do yourself a favor and ask all the questions up front: audience, payment arrangements, delivery options, included costs, etc.
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Jan 5
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Hallmark scores well in a review of Spanish-language e-cards. Another site (best forgotten and banished from the Web) does not.
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The Chevrolet home page has a link to "Español" that leads to some well- and thoroughly-translated pages describing the vehicles, their prices, and some of the advertising words and slogans. There is a good Owners' Center (Centro del propietario) all in Spanish. Still, many of the links from the Spanish site lead to pages in English. The outreach to the Spanish reader is only skin deep, for the most part. Subliminal message? Buy elsewhere, Foreigner.
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This is the first in a series of explorations of Corporate America's ability to reach the foreign-language reader. I chose Quixtar, the Internet-savvy, multi-level marketing offspring of Amway, because I know that they recruit Hispanic representatives and pride themselves on their translations of literature and training materials into Spanish. Let's see how their website is doing.
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I received a comment from someone wanting to know how to become a "certified" translator. A good question merits a precise and helpful reply. Without any desire to offend, I give this precise answer; to become a certified translator, get someone to give you a certificate. Now for the helpful part.
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Recently I was alerted to an entry at Search Engine Journal telling of Ask Jeeves addition of translation tools. I decided to check it out for myself. The results are mixed. Fortunately, they are also very humorous. Let's have a look.
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Jan 2
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TranslationMaven welcome you to 2006 and wishes you success in overcoming the language barrier. No matter where you are, you live on a globe that has completed another circuit around the sun and is roughly 10 days past the solstice. ...
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