The great myth about translation being simply a matter of transferring words from one language to another is definitively debunked in the localisation of marketing collateral. There is a huge number of subtle considerations to take into account, from whether certain...
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Notes from an impromptu lunchtime brainstorm, rendered in blank verse
Between the devil and the deep blue sea does it mean the same thing as Between a rock and a hard place? is the Spanish equivalent Entre la espada y la pared? Entre dos fuegos? zwischen Baum und Borke so how would you translate Entre Pinto y Valdemoro? To be in two...
Rendering Homer
According to the historian John Julius Norwich, the most beautiful line in the entire Iliad comes in Book VII, after the single combat between Hector and Ajax; night is falling, and the herald Idaeus urges them to stop fighting: But night is already at hand; it is...
False friends in business 2: Spanish
Following on from our post on French false friends, here are some words to look out for when translating business documentation from/to Spanish: Firstly, the classics actualmente and eventualmente. Actual means current or present, and actualmente means 'currently' or...
Well supplied with porridge
In his book On The Life and Death of Languages, linguist Claude Hagège talks about Pomo, an Amerindian language spoken in Northern California. This language has a verb which means 'to suddenly introduce words into a song that one was in the process of humming', and...
Best practice: translating market collateral 1
This quote from legendary German chancellor Billy Brandt says it all: “If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen.” Recent figures from Global Reach International Online Marketing support Brandt's prophetic...
The dark side of Google Translate
The inner workings of Google Translate are shrouded in a characteristic mix of Willy Wonka bonhomie and mildly Orwellian obfuscation. Understandably, Google are (is?) keen to keep the details of their revolutionary approach to machine translation under wraps, and...
Poetry is what is lost in translation
A common misconception is that translation is simply a question of transferring information from one language to another, via a sort of linguistic algebra, and that there is therefore such as thing as the 'right' translation of any given text. This is broadly speaking...
Curious Constraints 4: Perec and after
Followers of Perec abound. 'Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes...' This is the opening sentence of Walter Abish's Alphabetical Africa (1974). The first chapter is composed only of words that begin with 'a', the second of words that begin with 'a' or...
Localising Arabic 2: script issues
Arabic is often considered to be the hardest language to localise. This is partly due to the fact that some Arabic-speaking countries still have a way to go when it comes to the development and diffusion of region-specific software and technology. But the key reason...