Here’s an open invitation to send us your photos, snapshots, and other digital imagery of you and/or your colleagues attending industry events, conferences, or just everyday “in the trenches” shots. Include a description and we’ll try to publish it on our blog. It’s free publicity (and kind of fun) so just send them on in to info@affinitytranslation.com!
Just attach your files to an email along with a description. We’ll send you an email confirmation when they’re posted.
Each week we receive a number of resumes from qualified translators worldwide. We wish we had work for each translator that contacts us. Most often the availability of translators is greater than the demand for services from of our current clients.
Still we keep each and every resume we receive for future reference. Each translator’s background is unique and there might be a special project that comes along that requires a certain specialization. For those occasions and as a general policy we keep every translator’s contact.
Here’s what we like to see in emails received from translators:
1) First of all, we do prefer to receive emails rather than telephone calls. A written communication provides a record we can keep permanently.
2) Translators can help by including their primary language combination(s) in the subject title. That lets us immediately know how to sort the email, even if we don’t have time to read the contents right away. If it’s somehow unclear then there’s a risk that we’ll mishandle the message and it’s not filed correctly.
3) When we review resumes, among the things we look for is of course the translator’s experience as a translator, such as what types of projects have they worked on before. We also like to see that the translator has invested in modern translation technology/software. We’re also interested in their rates for the categories of services they provide (e.g., translation, proofreading, transcription, et. al.).
When the first potential project comes up and we contact a new translator (usually by email), a quick reply is important. Projects are won or lost sometimes due to response times with clients.
I admit it. I don’t know that much about language. I’m relatively competent in my native language of English, but that’s about the extent of it. So it doesn’t make sense that I’m the director of a translation company. Or does it?
Fortunately our company has many professional translators that know a great deal about language, their respective native languages and at least one other. In fact they’re experts. We seek them out, and they in turn come to us regularly.
As a translation company we’re mostly in the business of marketing translation services, managing projects that our clients entrust to us, and then getting out of the way of our translators and letting them do the language part. It’s a formula that’s worked well for Affinity Spanish and our clients for several years now.
I’ve taken some time off from writing blogs but am now committed to posting more regularly. See you soon!
Our blog is not a political one but we can’t help but notice the indications of the US becoming more and more a bilingual country. The ad below was developed in connection with the current California senatorial campaign.
It’s hard to remember when we first started to hear about the political power of the US Latino vote. Yesterday I was spending some ‘quality time’ with my laptop in a neighborhood fast food restaurant while my daughter attended her Girl Scouts meeting nearby. In my informal survey that included both restaurant employees and customers, English was definitely not the dominant language.
Affinity Spanish as a company makes no political endorsement of any candidate. The ad below is presented as an interesting cultural artifact that touches on language.
A group called ‘Enduring Voices’ has announced the discovery of a language known as Koro. Koro is reported to belong to the Tibeto-Burman language family. Koro shares some vocabulary with other languages spoken in the region but shares more features with languages spoken farther east, such as Milang and Tani.
In the news release, the group described their discovery as bittersweet since of the approximately 800 people who speak Koro, few are under the age of 20, meaning the language is endangered. The project reports that a language becomes extinct every two weeks. By 2100, it is estimated that more than half of the 6,910 languages spoken on earth will vanish.
Here’s an interesting little video that’s worth a few minutes of your time. We try to follow its premise, that of ‘crossing the line’ to give a little more to our customers each day and week. It’s our goal and we believe that much more often than not we’re successful at it. Again the video is worth a look.
A question came up recently on how to handle the translation of a marketing tagline. The client asked for guidance about whether the English tagline should be translated into Spanish or not, and if so how. The tagline in English reads “Smiling for GenerationsSM“. The following comment was provided by the translator:
Similing for GenerationsSM is a creative expression which I recommend not to translate. The word Generations is the key here. If we translate it into “Generaciones” we should keep the intended meaning, but we lose the brand meaning which you want to maintain as it is.
Also it does not look OK in this case to go hybrid and to translate something like: “Sonreir durante GenerationsSM”
So I believe there are two possible solutions:
1) To keep in original
2) To propose a new tagline preserving the brand component.
I personally prefer point 2, so in that case consider the translation below. The basic issue here is that the word “Generations” has the SM (service mark) symbol, which should be a sort of proprietary brand name. If we translate the tagline into “Sonreir durante Generaciones” of course we would preserve the best intended meaning, but we should be translating the proper name (unless the SM symbol is removed). I recommended not to translate it not because of the word itself, but due to the marked name. At any rate, if the customer still wants to translate the tagline, no doubt the best would be:
We wonder whether this Google Trends measurement of searches on the phrase ‘Spanish translation’ suggests business for translation companies is increasing?
Then again would optimism be tempered by the following search activity measurement on ‘translation services?’ Despite the arguably mixed messages we tend to be encouraged.
