What are some practical tips and techniques that you can apply to help us deliver the best value when translating your content?
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Write content for a global audience, write in complete sentences and avoid concatenating strings.
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Avoid slang, idioms or graphics with any cultural bias that may be difficult to translate.
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Confirm with us if new marketing concepts such as brand names will be the right fit for your international audience.
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Share with us your style guides and branding guidelines for international audience.
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Don’t crowd your content. Style it with at least 30% text expansion room in mind, so localized content can fit in without crowding the localized version.
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Separate content from layout to promote easy integration with CAT tools and minimize layout activities after translation.
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Create translation-friendly graphics and avoid embedding text within graphics.
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Reuse existing terminology across your products, use one term per concept. Minimize creative re-writing to describe the same unique concept with different words.
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Capture terminology when authoring and designing new products and share it with us.
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Provide good reference materials that will boost translators’ efficiency, foster quality and minimize queries.
A translation memory is a translation tool that is used to store and assist with continuously translated content, while a glossary is a guide for translators on how to translate specific terminology for a translation project. A glossary consists of individual terms, whereas a translation memory could store not only terms but phrases, paragraphs, and sentences.
The translation glossary is built into our translation management system, translators can choose the right translation without wasting time with terminology-based questions. Glossary terms are highlighted in translator’s workbench. Clicking on a term displays all the details stored in the translation glossary about this term.
Japanese is the most complex written language in the world, it is written using a combination of two syllabaries (hiragana and katakana) and Chinese characters (kanji). In English each letter represents a consonant or a vowel, but in Japanese each symbol represents a complete syllable. Hiragana is used for inflected word endings, grammatical particles and other words. Katakana is used for foreign loan words, foreign names and for emphasis.
Certified translations include a certificate of accuracy and completeness with attestation, whereas notarized translations include stamp, sign and a public notary statement. In case of certified translation, the agency must provide a copy of attestation certifying all the documents and statement submitted are true and the translator of document is fluent in the respective language. Notarized translations include a stamp and signature by government authorized legal person. In notarized translations, quality of work is not checked completely.
Desktop publishing (DTP), also known as page layout or typesetting, involves replacing a text in one language with the translation in another language, adjusting the layout using computer software such as Adobe Creative Cloud, using fonts and graphics of your choice, to produce documents such as newsletters, e-books, brochures, manuals, case studies, etc.
Translation proxy translation uses a remote server to crawl the content of your website on the host web server, translate that content as static multilingual HTML files, and then cache the translated pages in order to serve them upon request to deliver content dynamically to users on request. In other words, translation proxy is a layer placed between the browser and the original website, through which the visitor sees the original website in a different language.
English is the third most spoken first language in the world behind Mandarin Chinese and Spanish, but English is the most spoken 2nd language, learned later in life, followed by Hindi and Arabic. A person’s second language is a language that is not the native language (first language) of the speaker, but is learned later. Reference: Wikipedia
Gisting is the use of AI to translate content in order to get an understanding of the original content. To do this, translation teams don’t need to go through the industry’s standard translate, edit, proofread process, but configure, run, and export the machine translated output. In other words, the translation doesn’t have to be perfect. In such case, clients only need to understand the general meaning of the source document.
Gisting is an effective way to translate several types of content, such as social media posts, internal communication, emails and letters, contracts, RFPs and other forms. When foreign text is encountered in any of these content types, gisting comes in handy because the translated material doesn’t need to be 100 percent accurate to be useful.
Gisting isn’t a solution when you need a quality translation, especially when the content you’re translating will be direct business facing. In these situations, we advise our clients to select professional translation services by our in-country human translators.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
What is the difference between Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Mandarin and Cantonese?
Mandarin and Cantonese are the two most popular forms of the Chinese language out of more than 200 dialects. Mandarin is the most widely spoken, known as the “common tongue” it has fewer tones than most other dialects (e.g. 4 compared to Cantonese’s 9). Cantonese is the other main dialect. While less people speak it in China, it is spoken in Hong Kong and Macau. It also happens to be spoken quite widely overseas.
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Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong, Macau, GuangZhou, and Southern parts of China in that vicinity.
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Mandarin is spoken in Mainland China and Taiwan.
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Both languages are spoken in Malaysia and Singapore.
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Simplified Chinese is the written language in China and Singapore.
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Tradional Chinese is the written language in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
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Cantonese and Mandarin are written in the same way, though Cantonese favors traditional Chinese characters rather than simplified.
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Cantonese and Mandarin are forms of Chinese.
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Mandarin has 4 tones. Cantonese has 9.
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Spoken Mandarin and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible.
When referring to Simplified and Traditional Chinese, we need to look at what is the written form of the Chinese language per region. An interesting fact is that the spoken form doesn’t always match the written form.
There are many factors to evaluate translation quality, depending on the vertical market, type of translation, etc. Three of the most important elements of translation quality are technical accuracy, consistency, and a vendor’s willingness to implement feedback.
Factualization is customizing content for each locale in order to provide the most appropriate content (e.g. adjusting prices and currencies, checking product availability, adding locally relevant phrases, etc.).
On-screen text refers to source text that appears in a video such as animated text, titles or text that appears as part of a graphic. In order to localize on-screen text, please send us the original project file from the video editing software used to create the original graphics.
A content management system (Web CMS) is a bundled or stand-alone application to create, deploy, manage and store content on Web pages. Web content includes text and embedded graphics, photos, video, audio, and code (e.g., for applications) that displays content or interacts with the user. A Web CMS may catalog and index content, select or assemble content at runtime, or deliver content to specific visitors in a requested way, such as other languages. Web CMSs usually allow client control over HTML-based content, files, documents, and Web hosting plans based on the system depth and the niche it serves.
Most linguists translate about 1500 words per day. This is followed by proofreading, quality checks and reviews by the project manager. An advanced translation service of a 5 pages Word document will have 2 business days turnaround time.
For shorter turnaround time on big translation projects, we can assign multiple translators and perform additional reviews to ensure a good quality translation.
We work with all common localization file formats. Translated files are delivered to clients in the same format as the original source file formats.
We work with native translators based in their countries of origin for the relevant target language. For example, when translating a document from English to French, we would select a French translator located in France. Linguists are selected to work on a particular project based on their experience in the specific domain and number of years of experience in translating the relevant type of content.
Please fill out a quote request and attach the files as a zipped file. You can also simply send us the files by e-mail as a zipped file if the file size is less than 10 MB. For bigger files, we can create a secure FTP access for you to upload files to or you can share the files using any cloud file-sharing service such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive, etc.
If you are a translator, reviewer, proofreader, voice actor and would like to join our experienced pool of linguists at Translations Planet, please fill out the linguist application form. We will treat all personal information that you give us as strictly confidential and will not make such information available to third parties, unless obliged to do so by law or legal process.
Of course, we’ll be glad to help you out. To begin with, simply send us the URL of the website. If known, please mention pages to be excluded from translation if any (e.g. blog page, newsroom, etc.). We will discuss and finalize the scope of work with you and arrive at a suitable translation process and workflow for localization or your website. Read more
Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new.
What is the the most appropriate level of formality when localizing into Korean?
We are generally using two levels of formality when localizing into many of the Western and Slavic languages. For instance, “вие” (formal) and “ти” (less formal) are used to translate the pronoun “you” in Bulgarian. Also, “vous” (formal) and “tu” (less formal) are used to translate the same pronoun in French. In Korean though there are seven levels of formality. Each level expresses different levels of respect and courtesy. Depending on the audience you should use the most appropriate one when translating into Korean. Let’s take a look at how each level is used. We’ve listed the levels of speech below in descending level of formality.
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Hasoseo-che (하소서체) – This is the highest formal speech level to show the greatest respect for the person we are addressing. Traditionally used when addressing a king, queen, or other high officials. Today it is only used in historical dramas and religious text.
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Hasipsio-che (하십시오체) – This is a very respectful conversational style known as the “formal polite”. Also called hapsyo-che or 합쇼체, this is a common style of speaking. It is used when speaking to elders, strangers, among colleagues in more formal settings, anyone with a higher social rank. Also, it is often used in business communication, public speaking, and broadcasting.
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Hao-che (하오체) – This is a “semi-formal” conversational style which is used to address people that are in a lower or the same social position. Today it is spoken only by older people. It could only be found in some historical dramas.
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Hage-che (하게체) – This is an outdated conversational style also known as the “familiar” because it is used by people who are the same age or lower. It is used in novels, occasionally between adult male friends, by older people to address younger people or in-laws in a friendly manner.
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Haera-che (해라체) – This is a formally impolite conversational style. It is called the “plain” style and it is one of the most commonly used forms. This style is the equivalent of the third person when used in writing and quoting. It is used in grammar books, newspapers and magazines, indirect quotations. Also, between close friends or relatives of similar age, and between adults and children. However, this conversational style is not commonly used in conversation.
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Haeyo-che (해요체) – This is the most common polite conversational style. When learning Korean as a second language it is common to learn this style because it is simple and has the proper politeness for everyday conversations. It is used between strangers and colleagues, and when addressing the elderly.
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Hae-che (해체) – This conversational style is known as “intimate” in English. This is an informal, casual form of speech with no added degree of respect. It is called Banmal “반말” in Korean. This level of speech is only used with extremely familiar people. For instance, between friends, family and young people. It is also used to address children.
