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.
When we saw the conclusion (implied in the title above) of a news article on Google’s efforts to facilitate translation, we thought it would be interesting to include it in our blog. It seems that Google is working on instantaneous translation software for phones. If you talk in English into the speaker of the phone it would translate it, and produce French, or Spanish, or whatever, in the receiver of another phone.
The Googler working on the project, Franz Och, says it should only take a few years to complete. Franz says the more people that use it, the better it gets.
“Speech to text is imprecise on phones we’ve used. Web-based translation services are also imprecise. Add them together and you have a great opportunity to be misunderstood,” according to the report published in the Business Insider.
11,000-member Association’s Letter to Obama: Technology alone is not the answer
(Alexandria, VA) October 19, 2009 — The American Translators Association (ATA), the largest association of professional translators and interpreters in North America, issued a pointed response to a call for “automatic, highly accurate and real-time translation between the major languages of the world” in the White House’s recent Strategy for
Innovation policy paper. In a letter dated October 2nd, ATA President Jiri Stejskal urged the Obama Administration to “take a long-term approach to language security by investing in human skills and promoting greater awareness of and expertise in foreign languages.”
“Are we against technology? Certainly not,” continued Stejskal. “Most translators use computer tools to speed up their work.” However, “both translation software and qualified human translators are vital to language security,” he noted. “Today all the leading proponents of computer translation recognize that human beings will always be
essential, no matter how sophisticated translation programs become.” The stakes are high: from diplomatic embarrassments to potentially lethal mistranslations in medical device instructions, translation errors create unnecessary hazards, cause misunderstandings, and diminish prestige and good will in international relations, national security and global commerce.
Press coverage of the Obama initiative has confused the issue by creating a false conflict between humans and technology. “This approach misses the point entirely,” noted Kevin Hendzel, national media spokesman for the Association. “Translation software and human translators simply have different capabilities,” he said. “Software is indispensable for ‘gisting’ – translating large volumes of information in cases where immediate access is more important than accuracy – but only an experienced human translator has the skill and cultural awareness to convey every nuance when you absolutely have to get it right.”
“The challenge for translation consumers lies in understanding the proper application of each,” Hendzel noted. “Translation software is like a chain saw. It’s an invaluable tool when you need to chop a lot of wood in a hurry – but you need skill to use it safely, and it’s not recommended for surgery. When you need precision and sensitivity, you need a human translator.”
About ATA
Founded in 1959, the American Translators Association is the largest organization for translators and interpreters in the United States. Its primary goals include fostering and supporting the professional development of translators and interpreters and promoting the translation and interpreting professions. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, ATA currently has nearly 11,000 members working, with proven skill, in hundreds of languages worldwide. To learn more, visit www.atanet.org or call 703-683-6100.
There’s an interesting article on the topic of translation appearing online at cnn.com today. It speaks for itself so we’ll simply provide a link to the article here. The highlights:
Facebook and Google are finding new ways to translate the Web
Facebook favors human translation; Google leans on its computers
Google claims to be the largest translation service online, with 51 languages
Facebook announces a new service to let Internet users help translate site
