Category : Translation

How do you translate “Language Guy”?

Full disclosure time: I call myself the Translation Guy, but I’m no translator. I just run a translation company. Well, I don’t really run it. I’ve got this fantastic team of people who actually run the company. I just take clients and prospects out for drinks and fancy lunches. (Someone’s

How do you translate “Language Guy”?

Full disclosure time: I call myself the Translation Guy, but I’m no translator. I just run a translation company. Well, I don’t really run it. I’ve got this fantastic team of people who actually run the company. I just take clients and prospects out for drinks and fancy lunches. (Someone’s

How many languages do you speak?

On the cocktail circuit, when I tell people I own a translation agency, 1-800-Translate, the next question is “How many languages do you speak?” Now Charles Berlitz, also a famous translation company owner, used to say that he spoke “36 languages with varying degrees of fluency.” What does that mean?

Spanish Translation and the Hispanic Market

Spanish translation is easy, until you get to the hard parts. I’ll get to that in a minute. The good news is that it is one of the most commonly used and translated languages in North America. The Conference Board (one of our clients) reports that the number of Hispanic

ISO-metrics Part 1.

Our decision to become ISO 9001-certified was not reached lightly. Hours of review and planning, careful cost-benefit analysis, integration with corporate strategy, all those elements were not sufficient to reach that decision. Our clients made us do it. Actually just one. They offered guidance and encouragement, but pithy and to

Many eyes keep danger at bay

There is an old Navajo saying, (at least I think it’s Diné Bizzad), “Many eyes keep danger at bay”. And not only is it a good way to keep coyotes off your sheep, the same is true when you want to make sure your translators are not running astray into

Translation Word for Word

Translators could work a lot faster if they translated word for word. But sad to say, that’s not the way translation works. It’s the little nasties like syntax and style that stand in the way. Those are some of the things that make machine translation so bad (and translators so

Translation Waters Run Deep

As translators, we hate to admit it, but translation is only part of the foreign language communication process. Language Management is the method used to make sure that the translation process delivers a well-crafted translation as quickly and inexpensively as possible. So Language Managers become the ringleaders for the entire

Dove Droppings

I promised that I would try to make this blog interesting. In that spirit, it’s only right to begin by quoting obscure translation poetry. Actually, I guess it’s not too obscure, since it appears to appear in a zillion postings on the Web (just did a Google search). So let’s