Articles and tips about the translation industry

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:

• After the document is completed, read the first sentence and pause. Think about what that sentence means. Imagine that you are the reader with no knowledge of the subject matter. Is there anything in that sentence that might not be clearly understood by the reader? If the answer is yes, revise it and then read it again until the information is clear and precise. Then go on to the next sentence and repeat the process. This may seem quite time consuming, but it’s worth the effort. When the document has been completely proofed and revised to your satisfaction it’s time for the final step. Have a co-worker or someone not familiar with the subject matter read the document and report back to you what exactly they understood. If there are issues, they will become apparent.
• Another interesting way to proofread a document is to read out of context. That is, read the very last sentence. Then read the penultimate sentence and so on until you reach the beginning of the document. Not only will this method help to recognize problems with content, but it will also help to identify spelling or grammar errors.
• As a final step, check the spelling and grammar using the spell checker on your computer. Although this is not perfect solution, eg. (form and from might look correct to a computer program) it will find those no so obvious errors that somehow escape human recognition.

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?

• Authors who do not understand what they are writing about. The spelling and grammar might seem OK, but the writing just does not make any sense.
• The author fails to proofread his or her own writing or pass it off to another person to proofread it.
• The author relies solely on a spell-checker as a final proofing tool. Just because everything is spelled correctly doesn’t mean that the writing is correct. Look at what happens when someone writes ‘from’ instead of ‘form’. The spell-checker doesn’t know which word the writer intended to say. We see this more often than not with words such as ‘know or now’, ‘lose or loose’, ‘its or it’s’, ‘plain or plane’, ‘lye or lie’. There are hundreds of examples. Just recently we were given a video script to be translated into six languages. The video was describing a piece of heavy equipment used in the construction industry. In one scene, the narrator had to pronounce the name of the equipment that was OROPS. The instructions in the script said (ANNOUNCED O-ROPS). Well, everything was spelled correctly, but it didn’t make any sense. So after proofing the script, we went back to our client and said, “did you mean PRONOUNCED?” Of course the answer was yes.

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.
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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.