yndigo

Until you actually need one, it’s hard to imagine how many translators and translations agencies are out there. Especially the first time, how can you be sure you’re getting a good translation?

Get a recommendation: Ask a colleague or friend, even better if that colleague is a friend! Chances are good if they received quality [...]

[Read more →]

Translation pricing

When you talk price with someone who’s never bought translations before, there are frequently two reactions: laughter and then shock.
Laughter at the idea that translators charge by the word or that a penny higher or lower makes a big difference. For example, I was interviewed by SmartMoney.com about working with freelancers and the [...]

[Read more →]

Is there such thing as neutral Spanish?
This question has been asked time and time again in translation circles. To many Spanish speakers the very idea is laughable. When people from different Spanish speaking countries strike up a conversation, they recognize, often understand, and sometimes chuckle at, the words and expressions the other uses. But these [...]

[Read more →]

There is some confusion over what a Certificate of Accuracy is, who may issue it and under what circumstances it is required.
A certificate of accuracy is a statement in writing that claims, “I was qualified to do this translation and I believe it is faithful to the original.” It does not claim the translation [...]

[Read more →]

A clear future for machine translation

Machine translation (MT) knows its limits and is targeting internet and technical texts according to Mike Dillinger, President of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas and Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychology, San José State University.
In yesterday’s article in innovations report, Dillinger goes on to explain where Machine [...]

[Read more →]

A controversial quality control tool
An article in The Ottawa Citizen about the French translation of a license plate motto illustrates how back translation as a quality control measure can often fall short.
Back translation is the translation of an already translated text back to the original language. Normally this is done by an independent translator who [...]

[Read more →]

Law firms and globalization

The translation industry has taken on much more than just translation over the last several years. As the world’s economies quickly become one, localization and internationalization services are expanding to keep pace, to the extent that our industry is now known as the Globalization, Internationalization, Localization and Translation industry (GILT). For a [...]

[Read more →]

Handling Rush Jobs

I’ve seen 28,000 words of Russian translated in a 12-hour period; 36,000 words of Spanish overnight; 1.2 million words of French in under a week. From a translator’s perspective, jobs like this should never happen because achieving high quality results seems pretty unlikely. From a client’s standpoint, there’s simply no choice.
Projects of [...]

[Read more →]

Computer Assisted Translation

There’s nothing new here for experienced CAT tool people, as this post is more geared toward giving translation customers a clear idea of what CAT tools can mean for them.
Computer Assisted Translation, or Computer Aided Translation refers to a broad range of tools from the very simple spell-checkers and word-count features to the [...]

[Read more →]

Machine Translation: je t’aime… moi non plus *

Had blogs existed with the advent of the ATM machine, bank tellers would no doubt have spilled many bytes of virtual ink in an effort to disparage them. And then, little by little, a few may have come around to extoll their virtues, claiming that the new machine [...]

[Read more →]