Translation and Language Industry Observations
Translation and Language Industry Observations
By Stacy Shannon A language is more than just a set of words and grammatical rules. It is the marking of an entire culture (or subculture). According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the language we speak affects the way we think. In fact, some linguists went so far as to support this hypothesis that they claim …
Choosing a Language Service Provider (LSP) can be a daunting task. There are so many of them. According to some estimates, there are over 18,000 translation companies worldwide. Search Google for “translation company” (exact match) and you will get 1.3 Million results. Are all of the translation companies suitable for your project? Does every company …
Portuguese is spoken by about 250 Million people worldwide. It is possible for a Portuguese and a Brazilian to be able to converse with each other in an intelligible way. But this only happens with a certain effort on both sides. In general, the two understand each other because both Brazil and Portugal speak the same language. In …
When it comes to countries, bigger isn’t always better. Although Europe’s smallest countries are tiny enough to be overlooked, each of them has a fascinating history and many intriguing attractions to discover, from beautiful scenery to historic cities to excellent museums. Read on to learn more about Europe’s seven smallest countries, the languages spoken in …
Die Sommerferien stehen vor der Tür! – Holidays are just around the corner! If you are traveling to Germany, it may be worth familiarizing yourself with the vocabulary related to accommodation (die Übernachtung) in order not only to improve the booking procedure (die Reservierung or die Buchung), but also to choose the type of accommodation that is …
Scandinavia is a region in Northern Europe which is comprised of five countries: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland. The combined population of these countries is about 27 million. Which is far less than the populations of single Western European countries like Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Russia and the UK. Localizing for Scandinavia means translating …
Yiddish is mainly spoken today by several hundred thousand Hasidic Jews in the USA and in Israel. It is a Germanic dialect which is written using the Hebrew alphabet. Yiddish, which means Jewish, was spoken by several million people before World War II. Yiddish is commonly referred to by Ashkenazi Jews as “Mama Loshon,” which …
Increasing online sales in the German market. How do you do it? Germany is a country with a population of 80 million people, the largest GDP in the Eurozone, full of multi-nationals, SMEs and tech companies and one of the most attractive markets in the EU. Streamlining your website for the German market can pay …
Psst. Looking for translation services? One option is to work with a Language Service Provider (LSP), commonly known as a translation agency. Another option is to work directly with a professional translator whom you have established a relationship with. But there is a third option, which is to post your translation job to a translation …
It seems that nowadays, every big tech company has its own machine translation (MT) system which it uses for both internal and external purposes. Here is a partial list of these deployments: Google. Anybody who spends time on the Internet knows about Google Translate. Google is one of the pioneers of MT and is by …
What is a saying? This is the dictionary definition: a short, pithy expression that generally contains advice or wisdom. If a saying becomes famous it is for a reason. A few catchy words that pack a powerful message, one of popular wisdom. Sayings usually teach us a lesson or moral. Each language has its own …
One of the problems that face translators is that some words have no equivalent in other languages. This can also pose a challenge to people who are non-native speakers of a language, since second language speakers tend to process spoken language through internalized translation. Hebrew is one of the most ancient languages in existence. But …
COVID-19, or coronavirus, is a thing of the past. Or is it? While the numbers of new cases and deaths is thankfully declining, the threat of the deadly virus seems to be lingering in many parts of the world. And even in those parts of the world where COVID-19 is declining, face mask mandates are …