Translation companies help bring the world together. From something as simple as a translated street sign to something as complex as international trade documents, our mission at Translation Services International is to help our clients get their products noticed in the global marketplace. The concept of expanding beyond our borders goes hand in hand with American democracy. Throughout our country’s history, we’ve been in positions defending democracy worldwide. When citizens have the opportunity to open their own small businesses, or when companies can expand overseas, it’s a result of two key factors: cooperation amongst foreign nations, and breaking down the language barrier. As the founder of TSI, and also a proud US Veteran, it’s rewarding to see that many of our great global military and political achievements has resulted in increased commerce, trade and expanded markets. It’s these opportunities that have afforded so many of us, TSI included, to thrive as an international business. It was through my time in the Navy that I had an opportunity to serve beyond our 50 states. This allowed me to experience other cultures and learn their languages, ultimately inspiring me to open Translation Services International 29 years ago. We are happy to announce our official certification from the National Veteran-Owned Business Association. We see this distinction, awarded by the 501(c)(3) non-profit group NaVOBA, as an honor and also a challenge - a challenge to continue delivering unsurpassed translation services to our clients across the globe. We are also eager to expand our portfolio to offer top notch services to NaVOBA allies - over 50 American-based corporations who support veteran owned companies like TSI. Benefits of Hiring Veteran Owned Companies
The benefits of being a NaVOBA certified business do not stop with TSI. Numerous industries rely heavily on government contracted work. When it comes to certain state or federal contracts, sometimes there are requirements for the business to hire a certain percentage of veteran certified vendors. By working with TSI as your translation vendor, we can help your company reach this quota so that you retain, or simply qualify for these lucrative contracts. If your company is interested in learning about how we can help your business expand abroad, do not hesitate to reach out. We proudly accept work from all industries and translate into all prominent business languages. Real Estate Translation Services Commercial and residential real estate translations help boost sales. The American dream of owning a home is now attainable to non-english speakers. With middle and upper classes growing across the world, money is no longer the main barrier- it’s language. If you’re a realtor or work at a financial institution offering Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITS), real estate translation services can help you reach a greater audience and substantially increase your sales. The rise of Foreign Real Estate Buyers All across the globe, we have seen a massive increase of individuals and families who are independently wealthy. For example take China, where GDP has averaged almost 10% for the last 20 years. This has led to many Chinese citizens investing a portion of their net worth beyond the great wall, mostly into homes in America and Canada. A portion of the recent housing boom over the past few years is a result of these new investors. Some of them simply buy to have a safe haven for their equity, whereas others are looking to establish a foothold into the American lifestyle and community for either them or their next of kin. When visiting Southern California recently, we had a chance to meet with a real estate firm that focuses exclusively on Chinese nationals looking to buy in America. When discussing their challenges, their main issue was these potential buyers speak little to no English. This highly complicates the process and the firm has many bilingual agents to make interpreting easier. But one thing they did not have was a relationship with a translation agency who can help with the real estate translation process. Real Estate Documents Requiring Translation Getting the proper information to buyers is key. Think about a standard home listing with photos, a description of the home, the neighborhood, and sales terms. As we’ve discussed before in previous articles, machine translations won’t necessarily work in this scenario because terms for “living room” “patio” “pergola” all have different words depending on the region in which you are located. This is one reason why using native translators who understand real estate terms is essential. One of our main points of pride at TSI is we only hire native translators who have localized experience for the target language and industry alike. Other documents that require translation go beyond real estate sales and marketing materials. Once a buyer is interested in making an offer, the process of submitting said offer with applicable bank documents, loan approvals and proof of funds is a whole other challenge - it’s difficult enough processing this as a native English speaker, so just imagine how difficult it would be with little to no understanding of English! Bilingual real estate agents can do in-person interpreting, but when dealing with legal documents, it’s extremely important to get terms perfectly correct. We have a select group of translators who specialize in real estate related subjects. Commercial Real Estate Translations It’s not just potential homeowners looking to buy in to the American dream - commercial real estate has seen a surge as a result of international economic growth. The beauty of a healthy global economy, is that the benefits go both ways. For example, we’ve helped companies based in Singapore open offices in America. They counted on TSI to translate legal contracts to help close the deal. And more commonly, we’ve seen clients of ours expand their business beyond America and open offices overseas. As one would expect, this required a great deal of assistance when purchasing offices abroad. Whether commercial real estate translations or residential, TSI has the experience to ensure your deal isn’t botched due to miscommunication. Contact us for information on your next translation project, or just drop us a line to get added to our mailing list for discounts and deals on translation services. As a translation agency offering language translation services and localization for almost 3 decades, we’ve localized thousands of documents and videos of all shapes and sizes. At least once every few weeks a client searching for document translation services asks, “What is the difference between translation and localization?” In order to answer this, let’s first look into the whole picture. By itself, translation, in the context of language, refers to the rendering of a word, a thought or idea from one language into another. Or more specifically, according to Merriam-Webster, “a process of rendering from one language into another.” Localization is a subheading under the broad term of translation. It refers to translating a document or video for use in a specific location or region. Several countries have more than one official language. Here in America, our closest example is Canada with both English and French as official languages. We can break this down further into countries that have the same official language, but one that varies from country to country, this wikipedia page lists territories where English is an official language. Why Does Language Localization Matter to Business? A company or entity wanting to sell products or services to any of the aforementioned English speaking countries would do well to research the local nuances in order to successfully communicate their interests. This is because of the subtle differences between dialects from region to region. In a previous article, we discussed different words with the same meanings in various versions of English. This is a key example of the importance of localization translation. A Localization Case Study Let’s say you’re living in America and you see this ad about an upcoming art installation. Aside from the cool photo, what pops out to you? Perhaps the spelling of the word “colour?” While numerous English speaking countries use “colour” as the official spelling, the United States isn’t one of them. What message does this send to the customer? It could seem like a lazy translation with no attention to detail in regards to language localization. While an example like this may be okay for a hoity-toity art piece, it surely wouldn’t be okay for a technical document translation. For businesses, branding and communication is key. If that first impression is botched, your likelihood of a potential customer moving on to a competitor of yours increases. But wait- that’s not all… Date, Time & Unit Localization In addition to making sure your written words are correctly localized for your target demographic, you also have to consider localizing numbers, date and time formats, currency, symbols and more. Let’s zoom in on our previous example's details: The date and time is nothing short of confusing to an American reader. To meet American standards, this would need to be localized to 12/28/19 @ 5:30pm- a big difference! While this is a simple example, other instances are more complex- especially regarding metric to imperial conversions which if done incorrectly, could result in product failure, or even a lawsuit should someone use an improperly localized technical translation. Internationalization Last but not least is the concept of internationalization in regards to translation and localization. The definition varies greatly, but in our context here, internationalization is the design and layout of a document or product so that translation and localization can be easily implemented. A simple example here would be if a client needs Spanish translation services, or Chinese translation services, they require more page space in comparison with English because they have more text per sentence on average. Equally important is leaving additional space on product labels to add numerous unit formats, like inches vs. millimeters. Whatever it may be, we are a translation company that has offered online translation services for hundreds of clients throughout the world. Unlike many of our competitors, we specifically use native translators to ensure that your document is localized properly to ensure your client or customer gets the message as you intended. With your new understanding of translation, localization and internationalization, don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us for a free quote on your next project. Of the five following languages, which one has the most native speakers?
English Chinese 中文 Spanish Español Arabic عربى Hindi हिंदी Answer: Chinese (Mandarin) has 1.2 billion native speakers Spanish comes in second with 400 million native speakers English comes in third with 360 million native speakers Hindi ranks number 4 with about 330 million native speakers, but it’s complicated Arabic comes in last, but like Hindi, it’s also complicated The above figures are estimates and the numbers while close, are always changing. To add to the confusion, languages such as Hindi and Arabic can have such dramatic variations, that people who speak what they consider to be the same language are often not able to fully understand each other. Here we are talking about “native” speakers. If we consider people who speak an additional language, the numbers change significantly. For example, the total number of people who speak English fluently (not necessarily native) increases to more than half a billion, thanks to English being at the forefront of global business relationships. Which language has the most words? Most scholars would agree that English has the most words. However this can be quite tricky to calculate. English comes out on top because it borrows many of its words from the Germanic and Latin languages. It is also constantly creating new words with its emphasis on science, medical and technical inventions. The problem we encounter is, what constitutes a word? And if a single word has more than one meaning should this be considered two words or more? Let’s take the word ‘bear’ for example. Here are a few of its possible meanings. *I couldn’t bear to see that movie again. *She will get married and bear a child. *A bear was spotted behind my neighbor’s house. *The walls were not strong enough to bear the weight of the roof. *Next year that tree will bear fruit. *His excuse doesn’t bear close examination. *I’m not going to bear the blame. *That statement doesn’t bear repeating. *Bear to the left or the boat will hit the buoy. So what happens in the translation process when there is a word in English with no corresponding word in the target language? This takes us to the topic of: “transcreation”. As currently understood and used, transcreation deals primarily with articles and copy written for the advertising industry. It is used to create an understanding of the meaning of the message and not simply a translation of the individual words. Let’s look at some common business slogans that word for word have little meaning in a foreign language, without being transcreated into a slogan that would reflect the meaning in that other language. I will give examples of “transcreation” in the world of advertising in the forthcoming blog. Case Study – A Word is Born Well, it wasn’t actually born the way puppies or fish or birds are born, but rather invented, or just plain made up. In 1947 John Robinson Pierce, while working for Bell Telephone Laboratories, invented an electronic device he named a “transistor”. It replaced many of the functions of vacuum tubes, which back in the day were commonly used in radios. The device transfers an electrical current across a resistor, hence the term transfer + resistor, shortened to transistor. When you go to a global translation website today to find out what this word is called in different languages you’ll find that the following languages adopted the word without changing the spelling: Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Turkish, Catalan, Czech, Romanian, Estonian, Filipino, Hawaiian, Hmong, Malay, Norwegian, Scots Gaelic, Somali, Sudanese and Welsh. Other countries have incorporated the same word, but changed the spelling slightly to conform to their specific pronunciation. Croatian = transistor Slovak = tranzistor Finnish = transistori Hungarian = tranzisztor Polish = tranzystor Romanian = transistor Vietnamese =tranzito I didn’t include the character-based languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. because they use phonetic symbols to express the sound of the spoken word. Since the beginning of human time, families, tribes, villages and countries have created words to define their world, express their feelings, thoughts and ideas. With the advent of the internet, jet travel and international business, the interchange of languages is growing and changing at a rate faster than any other time in history. So what does this matter to us as translation industry professionals? There’s a couple key takeaways from the concept of transcreation and how it relates to our business. First and foremost, transcreation renders computer translations unusable. This is why here at TSI, we never use computer translation applications in the process of our work. Second, it shows the importance of hiring the right translator for the job. For example, when dealing with transcreated words relating to a specific industry, it’s essential to match that project with a native translator well versed in the lingo or jargon pertaining to said industry. Because of our close to 30 years of experience working with very niche markets, our team of translators is ready to handle language subtleties with ease. If you have a need for translation of documents that are unique, don’t worry- we can handle them at TSI. There’s numerous ways to contact us for an estimate. Almost 50 years ago Congress created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance. Since then several countries have either created their own versions of OSHA or they have adopted similar rules and regulations used in the USA. The rules deal with asbestos, fall protection, cotton dust, trenching, machine guarding, benzene, lead and blood-borne pathogens, among other work related issues. Some of our earliest work at TSI was translating OSHA documents 25 years ago for American based companies who had employees who were not native English speakers. The first job was Latin American Spanish, then Haitian Creole and French Canadian. Later on the number of languages expanded as companies with affiliates worldwide decided to offer the same information and training to their employees living and working abroad. Many of the topics needing translation were and continue to be related to Construction, General Industry, Maritime and Agriculture standards that protect workers from a wide range of serious hazards. Examples of OSHA standards include requirements for employers to: Provide fall protection; prevent trenching cave-ins; prevent exposure to some infectious diseases; ensure the safety of workers who enter confined spaces; prevent exposure to harmful chemicals; put guards on dangerous machines; provide respirators or other safety equipment; and provide training for certain dangerous jobs in a language and vocabulary workers can understand. A common misconception amongst employers is that if they do not have a warehouse or manual labor workers, OSHA does not apply to them and their business. This is not only false, but also opens up business owners to federal government fines and possible revocation of business licenses. It also puts them at risk because employees can file lawsuits against them for failure to follow OSHA regulations. The US Department of Labor has a number of posters in various languages for you to hang in your workplace. While these documents are very helpful, there may be others that only exist in english. If you need OSHA documents translated, here at TSI, we have extensive experience working with this documentation and can help make sure your business is in compliance with federal regulations. Our experienced translators’ familiarity with OSHA language ensures that there’s no confusion for your foreign language speaking employers. Please reach out to us if you’re in need of document translation. Here at TSI, we would love to add you to our robust portfolio of happy clients. Contact us for a consultation or a quote. Many people love to write, but one aspect of writing whether creative or technical is the editing process; rarely is a first draft ever good enough. Anyone who has worked as a copywriter understands the amount of tedious reviews their work needs to go through before it hits the press (or the web). But there’s many times when the quality of writing isn’t up to par for translation. A solid source document is the first and most important part of the translation process. The following three tips are ones that we live by at Translation Services International and serve as a great guide to cleaning up your copy.
1. Purpose? What is the purpose of the document, letter, brochure, manual, video, advertisement, training program, etc.? Typically it depends on the company’s division requesting a quote. Are you selling a product or service, describing the function of a computer program, training someone how to operate and maintain a compressor, informing employees about company policy, etc.? 2. Who is writing? It has come to our attention that quite often, writing assignments are handed off to employees who might not have proper training or experience. This will be illustrated in the continuation of this section. The Internet has many sources to help understand the basics of most writing assignments. For help writing business letters check out this guide from Purdue. Here’s a helpful scriptwriting guide from Column Five Media. There are obstacles involved in video scripts that will be explained in a future article. If the company you work for sells products or services and you are writing the advertising copy, here are 5 helpful tips for advertising copy. It is not uncommon for the documents we receive to have major spelling or grammatical errors. We also see this on company websites, which in turn create a negative image of the company. If they don’t care enough to exhibit high quality writing, a reader might wonder if they care enough about the products and services they are selling. Some errors are simple typos wherein the wrong key is inadvertently typed, while others are basic misspellings. Words that are commonly misspelled are loose for lose, it’s for its, recieve for receive, seperate for separate, embarrased for embarrassed, — — you get the picture. If you feel that spelling is one of the areas where you need help, here is a link to the most common misspelled English words. 3. How to review and proofread a document Writers need to put themselves in the position of readers. A writer may have a vast amount of knowledge in the material they want to communicate. But this can be both a boon and a bane when it comes to communicating their thoughts. Because what seems to be quite clear or easy for them to understand might be totally misunderstood by a reader. Writing coaches suggest the following:
When following these three tips, your copy will be primed and ready to pass of to our agency to commence the translation process. It will save you time, money and ultimately result in a greater experience with the reader. ![]() The debate regarding the origin of language has been going on for several millennia. Within the past few years however, linguists have spread out across the globe looking for evidence of primitive languages. One of the more compelling areas of discussion is the continuing prevalence of languages based on whistling, perhaps whose origins sprang from the imitation of bird songs. Below is a link to an BBC Future article called “The beautiful languages of the people who talk like birds”. What can we learn from this and how does it apply to our contemporary world? Like the people who talk like birds, we as modern day humans tend to alter our speech patterns, vocabulary, and accent based on our neighbors and local community. This explains the evolution of the American accent versus British, Scottish, Kiwi, etc. But accents usually don’t alter how we translate the written word. Just like speech, there have been slight adjustments in sentence structure and spelling throughout the course of the english language. For example, the word “color” as we would spell it in America is different that what the folks on the other side of the pond write which is “colour”. Now how did this come to be? With this one- it’s political. Noah Webster (yes, of dictionary fame) was a famous lexicographer who, when America was establishing herself as an independent entity from England, developed updated spellings of certain words to make them more unique. Color is one of these. Grammarly.com dives in even deeper here. As the owner of a translation company, it’s subtleties like this that are extremely important when understanding where your client’s final product will land in the world. Spanish in Spain is drastically different than Mexico or Puerto Rico. It’s these little subtleties that make a translated document read “native” as opposed to “foreign” and one of the reasons we strive to use translators whose native tongue best fits our client’s needs. Good luck doing that with a computer! Considering the popularity of emoticons, emojis and animojis, who knows- perhaps someday we will be translating those as well. Learn more about Translation Services International and the services we offer. I’ve often heard clients ask, “What’s the most important thing I need to understand about translation? Is it the size of the project or the difficulty of the language or the country where the document will be used, etc.” The short answer is, none of the above. In a few words, translation involves converting the source language (eg. English) into a target language (eg. Chinese). I use Chinese as an example because it is one of the fastest growing languages in our field of work and it comes with specific issues that will be discussed later on. The answer to the main question is the source language. You’ve most likely heard the expression “garbage in, garbage out (GIGO).” Although this typically relates to the scientific and mathematical world, it also has significance when it comes to translations. Making Sense Out of Nonsense I’m not writing about nonsense in a pejorative or derogatory way, but rather to indicate writing that is not understandable. It’s like reading a paragraph, a sentence or even a phrase and not knowing what the writer is attempting to convey. This happens more often than not, and for this reason, among others, at Translation Services International we thoroughly proofread every document that comes in. If we are given a document in English that for whatever reason we can’t understand, how could we possibly expect a translator, whose native language is not English to understand it. That’s why it is imperative and absolutely necessary for us to take the time to make sure that we don’t have garbage or poorly written documents going into the process. What are the causes of bad source documents?
In this business there’s no room for garbage in, garbage out. If we don’t understand it, it doesn’t get delivered to our team of translators. For those reading this blog who are writers and want to hone your proofreading skills, I’ll be adding a section called, “How to prepare your documents for translation into any and all languages.” Feel free to reach out for a quote. ![]() Idioms, a common form of everyday speech, are often found in formal business language. They exist is all major languages and often have as bizarre a meaning as they do in English. Let’s take the familiar idiom, I’m pulling your leg. Of course almost all native English speakers know it means, I’m kidding you or I’m joking with you. The common translation in Spanish is, Estoy tomando tu pelo. Which translates as I’m taking your hair. It makes sense to Spanish speakers, but a word for word translation into English would have us stymied. Because of this, we carefully read all documents we receive for translation checking for idioms, slang, grammar, unique terminology and any phrasing that might create an obstacle to the translation process. Here is a short list of common idioms we have encountered in the past few years. Of the six examples, only one “At the drop of a hat” comes close to the Spanish meaning. We encourage our clients to try and avoid idioms whenever possible as they may lead to misunderstanding that might confuse not only the translator, but the intended target audience. Here is an in-depth list of idioms. The following link explores the differences between slang, idioms and figures of speech, all which come into play in the translation process. Finally, this link showcases some of the more unique and off times humorous cases of idioms. At TSI, we have extensive understanding as to how idiom translation works, especially considering our team of highly skilled translators are native speakers of the output language. Please reach out via email, phone or our contact page for more information on our services or if you need an estimate. Here are two simple phrases to make a point. “You will find the books on the table.” “On the table, you will find the books.” Here we have the exact same words, but in a different order. Obviously they are both correct, but it’s interesting how many people will insist on their choice as being the correct version. This is very common and something we deal with everyday in our review process. We always make it a point to mention this to our clients prior to starting a new project or establishing a new working relationship. The preferred word in one country might not be the preferred word in another.
Not long ago we were translating a technical document that had the word, ball bearing. The document was going to be distributed in various countries in Latin America. We chose a translator from Colombia who was an engineer with more than 20 years of experience translating technical documents. His choice was rodamientos. Our client sent the translation to company offices in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica and received the following versions of ball bearings: rodamientos, cojinete de bolas, cojinete de municiones, rodillo, balines, rulemanes, and bolas de metal. Our client couldn’t afford to send 7 different versions of the document, so we settled on cojinete de bolas, which perhaps was not preferred, but well enough understood by all. Typically this is not a major concern with technical terminology. A hammer is a hammer; a nail is a nail, etc. I used this example as an illustration. However, when dealing with topics such as food, clothing, etc., regionalisms often come into play. For more information see: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Regionalism+(linguistics). Although regionalisms vary from country to country, in our experience Spanish has the widest variation. There are 21 countries where Spanish is at least one of the recognized official languages. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_Spanish_is_an_official_language For a broader perspective of language variations see: http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/countries_by_languages.htm Our almost 30 years of experience in the translation industry at TSI is proof that we can get your documents translated properly, and unlike other companies, we use real human translators who speak the language natively. Reach out for an estimate if you're in need of document translation of any kind. In our almost 30 years of translation services for our vast amount of clients, we've come across many different hurdles, especially in the world of technical terminology translations.
In a few words translation means conveying words, ideas and intent from one language to another. Words are the building blocks of any spoken or written language. In and of themselves, they have very limited meaning. Even one word added, deleted or replaced in a phrase can dramatically change the meaning or intent of the message. For example, the following 7-word phrases have just one different word, but a world of difference. “See the books on the table”. “Move the books on the table.” This may sound elementary, but it indicates intent. The first intent is passive, while the second is active. It’s absolutely crucial for a translator to understand the intent of the client. Is the client trying to inform, persuade, enlighten, alert, advise, etc.? As machine translation (using computers to translate) grows in popularity, it falls short and is generally quite inadequate when trying to decipher intent. A computer will recognize thousands of words, but it isn’t able to get into the mind of the writer or speaker. For an in-depth comparison of human vs. machine translation see: http://www.anecsys.com/2015/04/human-translation-vs-machine-translation/. If you’re trying to read an email from a long lost cousin who speaks another language, or you only need to get a general idea of what is written, then by all means try one of the common online translation sites such as https://www.translate.google.com/ or https://www.babelfish.com/. Quite often, especially when dealing with advertising or marketing, intent is not clear. Coca Cola has a well-known campaign called “Coke is it!” The intent, of course, is to sell their product. But how does one translate this? And how does one translate this with style? These are just a few of the things translators deal with on a daily basis. Here are a few more examples of Coke slogans. “Ice-cold sunshine.” “America's favorite moment.” “Passport to refreshment.” “Coke knows no season.” “For people on the go.” “It's the real thing.” “Coke adds life.” “Life tastes good.” “Make It Real.” “Open Happiness.” “Taste The Feeling.” and "As it should be." Send any of these slogans to a dozen different translators working with the same language pairs and you’ll get at least 6 different translations, perhaps more. And, they will all be correct. If you're in need to technical document translations, or any other form of documents like HR translations, or Amazon page listing translations, feel free to reach out for an estimate. Here at TSI, our job is to make yours easier. |
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Francis Semmens is the founder of TSI and author of all blog posts with a focus on translation for clients and translators alike. Archives
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