Christmass?

If you do spend money on big posters and window displays during the festive season, at least make sure you have it proofread before printing! Mary Christmass everyone!

Gay shop window?

This particular high-street shop better not use the same window display for their branches in Scandinavia! They have used the letter ö from the Swedish alphabet, not realising the message could now be quite offensive in Swedish... Be careful using our extra letters if you don't know how to use them, I'd say!

Bed weather?

I'm always fascinated by the rolling "Breaking News" text that is at the bottom of the screen during BBC news bulletins. Just yesterday the text said that rescue efforts in Indonesia following the volcano eruption had been affected by "bed weather". There a are many a morning that I wake up and think it's "bed weather" too, and contemplate just staying in bed rather than braving the wind and the rain outside, but I didn't think rescue services were afflicted by this as well...

Nokia. Connecting People... in different ways

Taking my new mobile handset out of its box, I glanced at the text printed on the box and noticed the different translations; first the English version, followed by the German version, the Spanish, the French, the Italian, the Swedish and so forth. Just comparing the tagline "Designed the way we work" with the various equivalent translations demonstrates the challenges a translator faces every day. Do we translated word-for-word; completely re-write and risk loosing the original meaning; find the equivalent in our language or, simply, leave the English version? "Designed the way we work" is apparently "Professionell. Elegant. Effektiv" in German. In French it's "Adapté à notre façon de travailler" and in Swedish? Well, the translator decided to leave it in English! And the Italian translator decided the same. The one language which was missing, and quite surprisingly so, was the Finnish version - for some reason they chose not to feature the language of Nokia itself. Just out of interest I would have liked to see it in Finnish... perhaps the original version?

Press releasing

A press release announcing the launch of our new website can be read here.

English is enough?

Last month the Telegraph newspaper reported that "the number of teenagers studying foreign languages has plummeted to a record low," following the recent publication of national A-level results. The article goes on:

"Only 13,850 students took an A-level in French this year as entries slumped by more than three per cent in just 12 months.

Over the last 10 years, the number of pupils studying the subject in the sixth-form has nose-dived by a third.

Figures also show a rapid demise in German, with just 5,548 A-level entries this year - a drop of almost 42 per cent since 2000.

The disclosure – in data published by the Joint Council for Qualifications – will fuel warnings that foreign languages are becoming largely extinct in state comprehensives.

Pupils from private schools and state grammars now make up a significant proportion of those taking the subject at the age of 16.

The slump has been blamed on a Labour decision to allow pupils to drop GCSEs in languages for the first time in 2004. This has had a serious knock-on effect on the number of pupils taking the subject at sixth-form and university.

Ministers hoped to reverse the decline by making the study of languages compulsory in primary schools but the plans were quietly scrapped during the legislative “wash up” before this year’s General Election.

According to the latest figures, the overall number of pupils taking other modern languages also slumped by seven per cent in 2010 – the fourth fastest drop of any subject this year.

Spanish was the only mainstream language to grow in popularity, with entries increasing by four per cent to 7,629. The rise has been put down to the influence of Latino culture in the US and the continuing lure of Spain as a holiday destination.

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: 'With the exception of Spanish the disastrous decline of students taking a modern foreign language continues. This is a result of successive governments underestimating how vital possessing a modern foreign language is to Britain’s role globally.'"

A split in linguistic personalities

I can relate to the feelings of the author of this article very well, about "the identity shifts of people living in two cultures." Having been brought up in Finland, I have a hard time losing the traits that are so synonymous with Finnish culture; shyness, quietness and what other people might perceive as coldness. I would say I'm a different person in my adoptive country, the UK, and the English language and culture changes who I am; more outgoing, talkative and approachable - but sometimes, just sometimes, the Finnish in me shines through... I don't think you can fully "get rid" of your roots (why would you want to?) but you most certainly do, in some ways, develop linguistic personalities!

Thankyou?

But why are typos and mistakes merely annoying when you're closer to home? This one from Scotland.

Engrish

I dared not have the juice that apparently "cures sex"....



We weren't quite sure what we were supposed to do in case of a flash flood...




I love these little treats when I go abroad. Signs and menus with funny English. These delights are from Thailand.

Funny Translator

One could have hours of fun playing around with this new "gadget". It's called Funny Translator and it highlights the important difference between real translators and machine translation. It takes your English sentence and abuses it in a number of online machine translation tools. Several different languages later you have an end-result that barely resembles English anymore.

New documentary on languages

I'll be looking forward to watching this on the BBC soon:

"In Planet Word, a five-part series on language for BBC Two, Stephen Fry dissects language in all its guises with his inimitable mixture of learning, love of lexicon and humour.

From the cutting-edge of linguistic research to the glories of world literature, Stephen analyses how we use and abuse language, corral it for good and bad, and seeks out whether we are anywhere near to beginning to understand the complexities of its DNA."

How languages shape us

There's a new book out by Guy Deutscher called "Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour Your World" which studies the way different languages shape the way we actually see the world. Deutscher takes examples from languages all over the world and compares them, proving that a single word can change the way we see things - all depending on where in the world we live and what language we speak. A very interesting read.

Trust me, I'm a translator

Another interesting article about machine translation versus human translation in The New York Times. Could machine translation ever replace real translators? Probably not but help save lives it can, apparently, as it did in Haiti recently. Read more here.

Lingoleaf in Diplomat Magazine!

There's a really great piece on Lingoleaf in this month's Diplomat Magazine. Don't miss it!

Say what???

This post is borrowed from the Language Translation blog about the top 5 translation mistakes of 2009. Very amusing. Here's to an error-free 2010!



"The First Annual Jelly Donut Awards Recap the Top 5 Translation Errors of 2009

Accredited Language Services announces the first annual Jelly Donut Awards recognizing the top translation, interpreting and localization errors of the year. See the winners for 2009.

New York, NY (PRWEB) December 21, 2009 -- Translation was a hot topic in 2009, but sometimes for the wrong reasons.

That’s why Accredited Language Services, a US-based translation company, announces the first annual Jelly Donut Awards – recapping the top 5 real translation, interpreting and localization errors of the year.

The Jelly Donut Awards pay tribute to one of the most infamous translation errors in US history: John F. Kennedy’s pronouncement “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Although Kennedy intended to express empathy for the citizens of Berlin, his German phrase actually translated to “I am a jelly donut.”

From the highest levels of international politics to the ad campaigns of multinational corporations, 2009 saw some big translation errors – all of which could have been prevented by professional, accurate translation services.

#5. Unexpected Gifts

When a South Korean government representative visited Russia, he commented on the beauty of the endangered Siberian tigers of Eastern Russia. “Korea is very interested in Siberian tigers,” he told Vladimir Kirillov, head of Natural Resources Management.

But Kirillov heard a very different message. The Russian/Korean interpreter told him that South Korea was asking Kirillov to consider donating a tiger instead. Kirillov proposed the gift upon his return to Russia, and the tiger is now living in the wilds of South Korea - all because of a translation error!

#4. Game Over

Fans of the controversial – and resoundingly popular – game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” might be confused by a translation error in the Japanese release.

In the American version, the Russian villain Vladimir Mararov organizes a massacre at a Russian airport. (Spoiler alert!) The player’s character, an undercover CIA agent, is instructed not to speak Russian, since Mararov intends to frame the Americans for the attack.

But in Japan, Mararov’s line, “Remember, no Russian,” was translated as “Kill ’em; they’re Russians.” The translation error did not properly set up Mararov’s plan to frame the Americans and left Japanese players confused as to why Mararov kills their CIA character and leaves his body and CIA identification at the scene of the crime.

#3. Look Before You Cross

Visitors to Wales should make sure to look both ways before they cross the street, thanks to a translation error in Cardiff. A temporary road sign this summer cautioned English-speaking pedestrians to “look left” to avoid dangerous road hazards.

The problem? The sign was translated for Welsh readers as “cerddwyr edrychwch i'r dde” – “pedestrians look right.” Luckily, no Welsh speakers were harmed in the making of this translation error.”

#2. Microsoft Misjudgment

Microsoft’s error in a website for Polish businesses became national news this summer. Although the translation of the ad copy was accurate, the company’s localization experts altered the photo accompanying the ad to “adapt” the graphic for Poland.

The original ad featured three racially diverse people sitting around a conference table, but the Polish ad replaced an African-American man's face with a Caucasian one. How did people catch on? The man’s hand hadn’t been changed.

#1. Translation Overload

During a foreign policy meeting between American and Russian leaders in March, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a “reset button,” representing the erasure of past tension between the two countries.

But the English word “reset” had been translated to the Russian “peregruzka” - meaning “overcharged” or “overloaded.” The photo op of the two politicians pressing the button lost its international significance - and instead became a global joke thanks to the translation error."