Translation events – June 2015

translation-conferences5-7

ABRATES VI. Brazilian Association of Translators (ABRATES),
Sao Paulo, Brazil

4-5

2nd International Postgraduate Conference in Translation and Interpreting Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland

7-10

5th IATIS Conference. Belo Horizonte, Brazil

12-13

InterpretAmerica, 5th Anniversary InterpretAmerica Summit
Ride the Way: Finding Opportunity in Uncharted Waters
Monterey, CA, USA.

13

Northern California Translators Association (NCTA), Workshop: Getting Started as an Interpreter, San Francisco, CA, USA.

13-14

ProZ.com 2015 international conference Rotterdam, the Netherlands

18

Bridge for Out of Eden Walk: 21,000 Miles of Social Media in Translation. The International Multilingual User Group (IMUG).
Menlo Park, California, USA

Overcoming the Challenges of Agile Localization Globalization and Localization Association, webinar

18-19

Localization unconference, Munich, Germany

18-20

TAO-CAT-2015. Université Catholique de l’Ouest, Société française des traducteurs. Angers, France

19-20

Simposio Hispanoamericano de Traducción Especializada y Nuevas Tecnologías, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

20-21

IJET-26. Japan Association of Translators. York, UK

26-28

Translation Forum Russia. Business Bureau of the Association of Interpreters. Moscow, Russia

27-28

NZSTI 2015. New Zealand Society of Translators and Interpreters. Wellington, New Zealand

29-Jul 1

Game QA & Localization Europe,IQPC, Barcelona, Spain

 

 

Prioritizing your Translation Needs: Quality, Speed and Price

quality-translation

When you have a large – or even small – translation project at hand, there are three factors that you should take into consideration when choosing a translation agency, and they come from the classic quality/speed/cost project management triangle.

In an ideal business world, your goal would naturally be to achieve all three goals, and end up with a top-quality translation, delivered quickly at the lowest possible price. However, in the real world, achieving all three goals equally can pose significant challenges. Let’s see why.

One flaw in this paradigm is the assumption that these factors are of equal importance, but this is a fallacy. In the business world, poor quality is never an option for a company who wishes to keep its clients and grow its business. In this globalized business environment, your company’s written materials – especially its website – are its calling card. And how very important that card is: a 2011 study carried out by Briton Charles Duncombe, who manages online shops in various industries, found that spelling and grammar mistakes undermine the credibility of the company and the trust of the consumer, often in the first 10 seconds the web page is viewed. What’s more, spelling errors can have devastating effects on the SEO, as search engines will not find a keyword if it is misspelled. The total cost of business lost due to these kinds of errors is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, if we agree that quality must be the top priority, where does that leave speed and cost?

Actually, these two factors also affect quality, since a top-quality translation will require finding just the right translator who is available and able to deliver the translation on time. Urgency can negatively affect translation quality, as working under time constraints limits the translator’s ability to carry out effective research for accurate terminology and to polish the translation to perfection. Price, too, can have a major effect on the quality of the translation, as good translators rarely come cheap; they are highly skilled professionals whose skills are in constant demand and they have no need to work at a discount rate.

The bottom line is that if you’re looking for a quality translation, you’ll want a good translator who has been given enough time to deliver the translation you need for business success, because anything less can cost your business far more than the money you save when you prioritize cost over speed and quality. Translation errors can be excruciatingly costly both in terms of finances and reputation.

Times have changed, yet no matter how globalized business becomes, the old adage that “you get what you pay for” has never been truer or more important to your business’s success.

 

When an English Rule Deserves to be Broken – Part II

English grammar rules

Continuing on with our last article, on English rules that deserve to be broken, this time we’re going to take a look at a longstanding “rule” that has dismayed translators, writers and students alike:

Double negatives are always wrong.

Taught since childhood, this rule seems to be a logical one: after all, our Math teachers taught us that “two negatives make a positive”, and this grammar “rule” boasts a long and illustrious history, first turning up as far back as 1762 in Bishop Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English Grammar.

First, it’s worth noting that not all languages consider that double negatives resolve to a positive – including Spanish, Russian and Persian. The Spanish “No lo he visto nunca” (I’ve not never seen him”) simply emphasizes the fact that the speaker has never, ever seen the subject being mentioned, and puts into doubt the logical argument used to support the rule in English.

Second, even those languages that do interpret doubles negatives as a positive often have non-standard dialects where the construction is common, often with ambiguous meaning.

Chaucer commonly used double, and even triple, negatives – much in the Spanish style – for emphasis:

“Ther nas no man no where so vertuous” (“There was never no man nowhere so virtuous”)

Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

If someone tries to sell you a ring made of a material that is “not unlike gold”, does it mean that it is gold?

“This accident is not unlike my dream,

Belief of it oppresses me already.”

Shakespeare, Othello

Finally, double negatives in English can be used as a rhetorical tool in “litotes”, a figure of speech that uses a negative to affirm a positive.

“I will multiply them and they shall not be few”.

Jeremiah 30:19

Obviously, here the meaning is clearly the opposite of “few”.

This device is always used deliberately to emphasize something by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, although context necessarily plays an important part in interpreting it, as in backhanded compliments, as in illustrator Mike Grell’s description of James Bond:

“Bond was not unattractive, but there was a cruelty about his mouth and he was more real than Hollywood has portrayed him.”

In short, some so-called “grammar rules” are neither grammatical nor legitimate rules, and there are circumstances in which others can – and should – be broken.