Marketing Translation
Speaking the Right Language
You've spent years honing your brand, ensuring the features and benefits of your products and services meet the exact requirements of your customers. The last thing you need is to ruin all that hard work by having your adverts, brochures, websites, press releases or emails badly translated
It's Funny When Other People Get Translation Wrong...
And it's not just the little people who get 'Lost in Translation', here are a few examples of the big boys getting things disastrously wrong:
· When Kentucky Fried Chicken translated their slogan " Finger lickin' good" into Chinese, it came out as "Eat your fingers off"
· In Italy, a campaign for "Schweppes Tonic Water" translated the name into " Schweppes Toilet Water"!
· When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that "no va" in Spanish means " it won't go"
...we'll make sure it doesn't happen to you
You've got to admit that they are funny, but you don't want to be the one to be laughed at. So, ensuring your marketing material is translated accurately is critical - not just for your company, or your clients, it's vital for your career.
To avoid mis-translation, we only use qualified in-country translators. They know the local market and its customs which ensures that your adverts and promotions have the desired effect when localised into your target language.
Ensuring Your Message is Understood
Translation in itself is not always the answer to your language requirements, in particular where marketing or creative material is concerned. When copy needs to be adapted so it feels as if it has been written specifically for a market, or key phrases such as a play on words or alliteration need to be maintained, literal translation is not the answer.
We pride ourselves on overcoming all of these problems through using the correct processes right from the start:
Your country managers are involved from the start in selecting the right style and voice of translation and direct liaison is maintained on an ongoing basis if that's what you need.
Only translators with previous creative expertise within your industry will be used, this ensures the creative elements of the original copy are not lost in translation and your translated documents returned the way you need them.
We'll build a database of agreed company and industry terminology to ensure consistency throughout your documents.
Our teams of page layout specialists take your DTP files and put the translated copy into your layout.
We can work with all the current industry standard software on Macintosh and PC:
· QuarkXpress
· InDesign
· Pagemaker
· Framemaker
· Microsoft Publisher
· Powerpoint
· Freehand
· Illustrator
· Photoshop
Medical and Pharmaceutical Translation
Medical and Pharmaceutical translation is a highly specialised discipline and should only ever be carried out by suitably qualified translators.
That's why we only ever use specialist translators who are doctors or biomedical engineers, have experience in your particular medical field and have language degrees. These translators are extremely highly vetted and quality controlled.
Why do we use only medically qualified translators for medical translations?
Knowing a foreign language alone is simply not enough. The plain truth of translation is that a text must be understood before it can be translated. We are all confident of our knowledge of English, aren't we? Let us take a small self-test by considering two short sentences sourced from a medical text:
Tympanites and atony of the gastro-intestinal tract are often the first indications of parenteral nutrition, necessitated due to faulty utilisation of oral feeds.
Distention of the congested intestinal layers is possibly a contributory cause of blocked anastamosis or its dehiscence.
Honestly, how much of that did you understand? How easy was it to read? You can speak English ok, but understanding a medical text is a very different matter.
You can now see how a translator without a scientific or medical background would feel when faced with this text. Translators translate from a foreign language into her mother tongue. In other words, a translator should ideally be a native speaker of the language she is translating into. Somebody may possess excellent bi-lingual skills, but hiring her as a translator is a sure-fire recipe for disaster in translation, unless she is also an expert in her field.
Medical and scientific writing has its own turn of phrase. In medical texts written in German, for example, Anamnese is a commonly used word. Dictionaries give anamnesis as the English equivalent - and a translator who relies solely on dictionaries is looking for trouble. Why? Well, medical practitioners the world over never use the expression "anamnesis". They just call it "case history of a patient".
By the same token, hiring a translator with specialised subject skills to the exclusion of language skills is no less prone to pitfalls. For instance, a subject expert may spend many a sleepless night over the English equivalent of Patientengut, a German word best translated as "patient records".
Style, we all know, is the way in which something is said, done, expressed, or performed. Have we ever observed that scientific-technical writing has its own style? To illustrate the point, let us take a concrete example. Faithful to the style of the source language, a translation would read:
Owing to improvements in medical first-aid and rescue services, a steadily increasing number of severely injured accident victims reach clinics in a condition in which intensive therapy may be started.
After correction for style by a qualified subject and language expert, the same sentence would read:
Advancements in medical first-aid and rescue services have made it possible to immediately administer intensive care to an increasing number of severe cases of accident victims who are brought to hospitals.
Need we say more?
Regardless of the subject area of your documentation we are able to provide translation for 140 languages in a timely and cost effective manner.
Here are some of the areas we have previously translated documents for:
· Anesthesia
· Biostatistics
· Cardiology
· Dentistry
· Diagnostics
· Electro diagnosis
· Endoscopy
· Endocrinology
· Medicine
· Prosthetics
· Toxicology
Technical Translation You Can Trust
When translating technical documents it's essential that all the terminology is translated correctly. Taken to an extreme, technical translation can literally be the difference between life and death. I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but imagine if a slight misinterpretation in an installation manual meant that wires were connected incorrectly.
That's why it's absolutely necessary that the translators working on your document have proven expertise in your field.
Using the Correct Language
For a translator working on a railway engineering text, for example, a plain and simple train transforms into a Pandora's box of terminological mix-ups:
· Overhead line or contact wire?
· Pantograph or current collector?
Finding the right technical name for train parts can be a daunting task even for a translator with an engineering background. Why? Because a current collector in electrical engineering becomes a pantograph in railway parlance.
A translator may boast of excellent language and engineering skills, but would be literally at a loss for words, unless they are familiar with technical jargon in both languages. To complicate matters, there are regional differences in names: A freight car in America becomes a wagon in England; a railcar refers to a diesel multiple unit (DMU) in Ireland.
Glossaries and Translation Memory
These examples for railway translation show that getting translations right isn't as easy as it may seem. There can be significant differences in English terminology between seemingly similar fields. To ensure that the correct language is used we will work with you to agree translated glossaries of terms specific to your company or industry.
We'll also use translation memory to ensure that paragraphs and sections of text which are repeated throughout your documents are re-used by our translators. Translation memory helps to increase quality and turnaround of your translations. It also helps with cost as previously translated text is charged at a reduced rate.
Quality Controlled Specialist Translators
Whether it be aircraft, construction, agriculture or any other specialist subject, technical translation must be perfect. That's why we only use translators with a proven track record and solid technical understanding when working on technical documents.
We work with over 6,000 in-country translators from around the globe, giving us access to every conceivable type of industry specific knowledge All our translators are thoroughly checked to confirm their technical expertise.
We will always work with you, and where possible your in-country reviewers, to ensure that the style and knowledge of the translators involved meet exactly with your requirements.To ensure that the translations we deliver to you are as accurate as possible, we ensure that at every point in the translation process, quality checks are built in.
Translation for Advertising
, A global market needs a multilingual appro, , ach to advertising and branding and that's where effective and accurate translation services are needed
Translating your brand
Every industry and subject has its own peculiarly terminology and getting this right is very important for advertising and branding where communicating the right messages is vital. Our project managers will work with you to ensure that our translators use the correct terms and descriptions consistent with your branding. We can even translate your brand guidelines and pass them back to you to sign off before we begin the translation of your documents.
This set up phase will ensure that you are fully happy that your brand values are protected in the translation and therefore will be fine when your advertising hits the streets in your target country.
Translating directly into your design
We pride ourselves in being able to work with any type of file format. So if you have a brochure designed in QuarkXpress, a billboard in Adobe InDesign, an XML feed into your website or you have a bespoke content management system, your translation will be delivered in the exact format you need.
Translation Memory to save you time and money
So that your translations are as accurate as possible we use translation memory. This works by "remembering" passages of translated text in your advertising and offering those translations to the translator when it sees a good match. Overtime this builds up and becomes more and more efficient and accurate. On top of all that it also means that we can hit tighter deadlines and save you money.
150 Languages and over 14,000 professional linguists
Whatever languages you need translating, we have the professional linguists who are right for you. With over 14,000 professional translators on our data base, we have someone for every type of subject. So you don't need to worry if your advert is for hair products in Hungarian or soft toys translated into Swedish, we have the experts who'll help you.
