A significant number of people may have had contact with a professional translator or a translation agency – we sometimes need to translate important documents or simply want to know the content of an old family letter written in a foreign language. The role of a translator is commonly understood. But what exactly...
A well-known philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky said once that there is one human language, and we all speak dialects of it, which is why it’s hard for us to understand each other. Although it was a general observation, it’s particularly accurate when in comes to English. There are a couple of main...
Translation mistakes are painful, though sometimes amusing. But usually, they are simply irritating. Whether we talk about a mistake on a website or a clumsy translation in a book, mistakes always disrupt our reception of content and have a negative impact on a consumer, user or reader experience. They also alter the experience of...
The terms “translation” and “localisation” are often used interchangeably; however, they are technically not synonymous. Localisation has a broader meaning, as it “involves taking a product and making it linguistically and culturally appropriate to the target locale (country/region and language) where it will be used and sold”[1]. In translation studies and – broadly speaking– in...
To err is human, and just as any other human activity, translations are not free of mistakes. And since some of the blunders are exceptionally funny, they often become the talk of the town. Even in the pre-internet era, one could happen upon some humorous compilations of such slip-ups in newspapers or other...
A project manager takes care of the client, while also accepting dozens of new assignments on a daily basis, estimates the cost of a given project and looks after the proper conduct of every stage of working with files – although it seems to be a lot, the mentioned activities are only the...
Do you run an online store? Is your business all about creating content for your customers? Or maybe your sales figures aren’t satisfying enough? (They always could be better, the sky’s the limit!) Maybe it is high time you crossed the border, expanded your business and attracted new customers. There are surely a lot...
One of the companies we work with is a well-known board and card games manufacturer with branches all over the world – e.g., in the USA, Australia, Germany and Poland. In the course of our cooperation – that has been going on for more than four years now – we have completed over...
In one of our previous texts we described tools that we employ to streamline locatheart’s localisation process. A large part of those is Trados, a CAT (computer-assisted-translation) tool that is the gold standard for translation industry. One of its most helpful features is the use of translation memories (TMs): “databases of all past projects,...
There are several routes leading to the translator profession – winding alleys walked by enthusiasts or experts in specific fields, as well as steep mountain trails climbed by philology students during their long education. Is one path better than the other? What awaits us at the end of the journey? Can the destination...
