Writers, translators, proofreaders and other professions that work predominantly with words tend to deal in word counts. It’s like linguistic quantity surveying. If you want something written, the writer will usually charge you based on an estimated word count, as they can equate this to the amount of time the piece will take. It’s much the same in the field of translation. However, one linguistic quirk translators have to account for is the lengthening and shortening of documents translated from one language into another. In the trade, this is termed text expansion and contraction.

Experienced translators will know that when translated from English, some target languages will almost always end up with more words than the original, while others will have fewer. For example, the average document with 1,000 Arabic words will end up with approximately 1,250 English words. That is text expansion. On the other hand, a 1,000 English document translated into Danish will usually have around 900 words. That is text contraction.

Why does text expand and contract?

There are a number of different reasons. Anyone who has studied languages will know that sentence structure, syntax, word usage and terminology can vary greatly. The subject matter can also play a part in the contraction or expansion of the text.

The famously efficient Germans are equally efficient in their use of language. While a technical or legal text will typically expand by 20 percent when translated from German into English, a data sheet or parts list could expand by as much as 40 percent.

Pricing problems

The lengthening and shortening of documents can cause some translation agencies problems when it comes to pricing projects. Some agencies charge their clients on a ‘target’ word count rate. This is based on the number of words in the completed translation. For this reason, it can helpful if the client understands a little about text contraction and expansion rates to avoid a nasty shock.

A company looking to have a piece of text translated from English to Japanese might be surprised when the target word count is as much as 60 percent more than the original word count. That will have a considerable impact on the cost of the translation.

Most agencies will charge based on the ‘source’ word count. That’s the number of words contained in the original document. In that case, text contraction and expansion will not affect the price, but it will determine the length of the translated document.

When words can’t be counted

Another potential issue translation agencies face when pricing projects is that the documents are not always sent in a format that allows the words to be counted. Documents can be faxed over, be in graphic form or even be handwritten, which can make it difficult and time consuming to count the number of words present.

In this case, most agencies will tend to price the project based on the ‘target’ word count. This saves them the time counting each word manually, which is clearly not a sensible approach when faced with a 10,000 word research paper. Again, having an idea of how the text will contract and expand can be beneficial.

Document formatting

The extent to which text expands or contracts after translation is also important for designers and publishers. In many cases, a publisher or designer will need to know whether the text will fit into the space they have left on a website or artwork file. The expansion or contraction of the text could make the block of text too big or too small to fit in the allotted space.

Text expansion and contraction in practice

Get in touch today

If you’d like to know how the expansion or contraction of your text document could impact your project, please get in touch with our team. Give us a call on +44 2392 987 765 or email: info@linguistica-international.com today.

‘Crowdsource’ is one of those new fangled words created by the internet generation that is now creeping into everyday parlance.

Crowdsourcing, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is:

“The practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.”

Crowdsourcing is probably most commonly associated with business funding. Aspiring entrepreneurs put their ideas out there, and amateur investors can back the idea financially is they want to bring it to life. Crowdsourcing has also been used for non-commercial work and to develop common goods like Wikipedia.

So what does all this have to with translation? Well, until now, the worlds of crowdsourcing and translation have lived disparate lives, but now a number of high profile companies are changing all that by taking a crowdsourced approach to translating their content.

Why are some brands crowdsourcing their translation projects?

Crowdsourcing is an extremely risky approach to take on any translation project. By using dedicated translation platforms to enlist the services of amateur translators, the likelihood is you’ll receive a disjointed, inconsistent and inaccurate translation. So why are some brands choosing this option?

Companies that choose to crowdsource their translation projects are clearly prepared to compromise on quality in favour of cost and speed. For this reason, companies will only usually crowdsource content that is not brand-critical. It is often the case that the compromise on quality actually makes the project feasible, simply because the cost of translating such large volumes of content would otherwise be prohibitive.

The middle ground between professional and machine translation

If you need a word perfect translation of a technical document, website, brochure or any other important content, there is no substitute for professional translation. For large quantities of content, the cost of professional translation services can be beyond some businesses. In this case, machine translation presents an alternative that produces low quality, often mistake-ridden results. The middle ground between the two is to crowdsource translation.

Two of the most well known names to crowdsource their translations are internet leviathans Facebook and Twitter. They have both used huge pools of translators to localise their websites. Facebook has long relied on its own users to help translate its site into more than 65 different languages, while Twitter used more than 400,000 volunteer translators to localise its site across 11 languages.

These crowdsourced translation projects were completed extremely quickly, allowing the social networks to unveil new versions of their sites just a few weeks after the translation projects began. However, as is often the case with projects completed by peers, there were considerable differences between the abilities of the would-be translators, making it impossible to achieve a high quality end result.

There’s still no substitute for professional translation

If you have a large translation project that doesn’t demand consistency or a particularly high level of quality, such as a fan site, a blog or a community based platform, crowdsourced translation could be the cost effective solution you need. However, if you’re looking to localise content to encourage the reader towards a particular goal, a professional translation plays an important part in building trust.

Any content that forms a part of your branding, such as marketing materials, brochures and product or service translations, really should be translated by a professional. The same can be said for technical or legal documents, where inaccuracies could get you into trouble.

Quality translations from a professional team

At Linguistica International, we offer high quality, word perfect translations performed by a professionally qualified team of mother tongue linguists. All of our translators have at least five years’ experience in the linguistics field and professional experience in your particular sector. That’s why, when global brands like Orange and Santander want to put their best foot forward overseas, we’re their go-to translation team.

At Linguistica International, we do our damndest to keep you up to date with all the latest news in the translation industry, but we also have a business to run, which means we can’t always dedicate as much time to our blog as we might like.

So, this week, we thought we’d put a little spin on our usual brand of storytelling by compiling 4 of the most fascinating translation news stories to surface around the web. That way, you’re down with all the latest translation titbits, and we don’t have to work quite so hard. It’s win-win!

Join us on our leisurely saunter around the web, as we give you our take on everything from Skype’s new Arabic translation tool to some translation-related silliness.

1. Is Skype’s Arabic translation tool any good?

Earlier in March, Skype posted a release about its new Arabic translation tool. Skype Translator has been around for a while now, but this is the first time it has been able to offer Arabic as one of its spoken languages.

In theory, this means that even if you can’t speak a word of the language, you can now Skype in Arabic in real time. But, as always with machine translation tools, the big question is: ‘Does it actually work?’

If you don’t have access to an interpreter and want to make travel arrangements, speak to an Arabic friend or converse with family members who speak Arabic, then yes, this translation tool could be useful. If you want to achieve any degree of accuracy or have conversations with overseas clients that are not interspersed by lengthy delays, then no, it’s really not that handy at all. In that case, a professional interpreter is still your best bet.

2. Apple’s Siri has selective hearing

The Guardian recently published a piece about how Apple’s virtual assistant Siri is having a hard time understanding anything other than the Queen’s English. Apparently, Siri is at its most obstinate when asked to perform tasks by a speaker with an Australian, Indian or Texan drawl.

As a result, Siri’s selective hearing is actually changing how we speak. Alan Black, a Scottish computer scientist, said: “Most people have what we would call a telephone voice, so they actually change away from their local family accent when they’re speaking on the telephone to somebody they don’t know.

“They also have a machine voice. People are moving to a different register to talk to Siri. You can typically tell when people are talking to a machine rather than a person”.

So, Siri could be responsible for slowly killing off some of our best loved regional accents and quirks.

3. Google Translate celebrates its 10th anniversary

Google Translate is celebrating its forthcoming 10th anniversary by adding 13 new languages to its repertoire, and, there are some absolute corkers. The new languages include Scots Gaelic, Corsican, Frisian, Kurdish and Samoan to name but a few. This brings the total number of languages on Google Translate to 103. Impressive that may be, but it’s still no substitute for a professional translation service, as this recent blunder shows.

4. And, as promised, some translation silliness

What happens when you cross a woman who clearly has too much time on her hands, with Adele’s record breaking hit ‘Hello’ after it’s been put through Google translate several times? This…

Stay tuned to the Linguistica International Facebook page for more of the latest translation news.

We like to keep our ears pretty close to the ground here at Linguistica International, paying particular interest to the rumblings in the translation and interpreting sector. This week, on our travels around the online ether, we stumbled across an interesting news story from across the pond.

According to the Washington Post, a 12-year old girl has been charged with threatening her school on Instagram, with a post littered with menacing emojis, including a gun, knife and bomb. And this is not the first time a court has been asked to interpret exactly what is meant by an emoji.

A grand jury in New York City had to decide whether two emojis, a policeman next to a gun, represented a genuine threat to police officers. In another case, a Supreme Court judge in Michigan had to decide whether a face with the tongue sticking out constituted a threat.

So that got us thinking. Although the emoji is the one language we have in common, it seems that interpreting what emojis actually mean is still not clear cut. Perhaps emoji use, like language, would reflect national culture?

What is an emoji?

An emoji is a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in an electronic communication. Emojis are increasingly used by a wide cross-section of society, although they are particularly popular amongst the young.

While they’re easy to disregard as just a bit of fun, emojis actually represent one of the biggest recent innovations in how humans communicate. In a recent study, researchers found that patterns of emoji use around the world shed some light on the national culture of different countries.

What does your emoji use say about you?

The smiley face is by far and away the most popular emoji worldwide. Adding a smiley face is a simple but effective communication tool as it can set the tone way of an exchange in a concise and friendly way.

Dig a little deeper than the universally popular smiley face, and you soon find that the emojis favoured by different nationalities reveal some interesting, and often clichéd insights into their national character.

These are the headline findings of a recent study into emoji use around the world:

• North Americans tend to favour more violent and aggressive emojis, with lots more use of the gun symbol than elsewhere;
• France’s billing as a country of incurable romantics stands up to emoji scrutiny. They were found to be four times more likely to use the heart icon than any other nation;
• The Spanish love a little bit of revelry, as shown by their preference for party-related emojis;
• Australians are most likely to use alcohol-related emojis;
• The Russians emoji use mimics the subject matter of the country’s famed authors, namely romance and the cold weather;
• Flora and fauna loving Arabic speakers use flower and plant emojis four times more than the rest of us;
• Meat, pizza and chicken drumstick emojis feature prominently in North America.

Emojis as a communication aid

Discussions about emoji use usually descend into complaints about the degradation of language and the dumbing down of today’s youth, but there are those that see emojis as a communication aid.

For speakers of some of the more complicated written languages, it can be quicker and easier to use emojis than regular text. In Asia, emojis are extremely popular because they provide a faster way for people to express themselves.

What are your go-to emojis?

Get in touch on Facebook and we’ll see what your favourite emojis can tell us about British culture. Personally, we’re pretty fond of the tortoise. For more information about our translation and interpreting services, please give us a call today.

We’ve all heard of the big fish in the small pond metaphor, right? The sentiment is that sometimes it’s better to be a big deal in a smaller group, rather than a bit of a nobody in a bigger and better crowd. There are certain scenarios where both ring true. Sometimes, the only way to improve in sport, in business, or in life, is to be part of a larger group where there are bigger and better players than you. On the other hand, sometimes it really does pay to think small.

The big fish in a small pond metaphor also applies to the expansion of your online business overseas. Despite the dominance of the English language online, there are all sorts of statistics that illustrate the strong preference overseas consumers have for native language websites. For example:

• Over half of all Google searches are in languages other than English;
• 90 percent of internet users claim that when given a choice, they always choose to visit a website in their own language;
• 72 percent of online customers only make purchases on websites written in their native language;
• 56 percent of online customers say the ability to read product information in their own language is more important than price.

The benefits of translating your website

With such a demand for native language websites, the benefits of translating your business’s website are clear. You can:

• Enhance your reach
• Improve your rankings for non-English web searches
• Make your business more approachable
• Enjoy better branding
• Increase customer confidence
• Be able to reuse existing content by translating it into new languages

Make a big splash

When considering which language to translate a website into, companies tend to look towards the languages with the highest number of native speakers online. This includes languages like:

1. Chinese (Mandarin) – 704.5million speakers online
2. Spanish – 256.8million speakers online
3. Arabic – 168.1million speakers online
4. Portuguese – 131.9million speakers online
5. Japanese – 114.9million speakers online

Conventional wisdom might be that the larger the target market the better, but online, competition is also a serious consideration.

Enter a smaller pond

Before entering one of these huge markets, just think about how long it has taken to achieve decent search engine rankings in the UK? Or, if you’ve gone the pay-per-click (PPC) route, how much it costs to outbid your rivals for the most lucrative terms?

If you’re a small business looking for a quick return from your website translation efforts, why not enter a much smaller pond? Consider countries with a stable economy where consumers have plenty of disposable income. For example, just think how much less competition you’ll face by translating your website for the Norwegian, Swedish or Danish market?

These countries are relatively close to home and will be easy to operate in. Most importantly, the level of competition you’ll face will be much less than in larger markets, so you can generate a return from the off. And, while consumers in these markets are also likely to speak English, the bias for native language websites will give you and your new website a distinct competitive advantage.

How can we help?

At Linguistica International, our native linguists hold exceptional language qualifications and have at least five years’ experience working in over 200 languages. So, whatever market you want to target, we can provide the pitch perfect website translation you need to strike the right chord. For more information, please get in touch with our team today.

On the face of it, you might think the process of localising your UK website and marketing materials for the US market would be a walk in the park. Change an ‘s’ into a ‘z’ here and there, remove the odd ‘u’ and you’re done, right? If only life were that easy.

Just watching an American television programme, reading an American newspaper or listening to the way they pronounce the words route as ‘rout’ and buoy as ‘boo-ee’, and you’ll soon understand there are far greater differences at play.

Localisation is the process of adapting a product or content to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific locale or target market. So clearly, the translation of your copy into American-English is certainly a key step in the process; but Americanising your brand is actually a much more complicated task.

These are some of the key differences at play…

• Americans are warm-hearted and less inclined to swear

The social news and entertainment website Buzzfeed has taken the internet by storm in the past couple of years. As a publisher of huge amounts of content on both sides of the Atlantic, it has found that some material which works well in the US dies a death in the UK. Typically, the heart warming stories that are designed to restore your faith in humanity go down a storm in the US, but fall flat with the stony-hearted UK audience. Buzzfeed also cranks up the coarse language in the UK because apparently we all love a good swear!

• Americans respond well to the hard-sell

If you’ve ever watched an American television commercial, you’ll probably have been shocked by the simplicity and brazenness of the message. In the UK, advertisers have to create a story to advertise their products, almost to the extent that they’re not advertising at all. The product is introduced almost as an afterthought, slipped in apologetically at the end of the ad so as not to pique the sensibilities of the British public.

A British ad:

If you want to make any sort of headway in the American market, you’d be best served leaving your British sensibilities at home. Most US advertisements, websites and marketing materials rely on the hard-sell. The product is displayed front and centre with benefits hurled at the buyer. Techniques such as comparative tests with competitors are also common.

An American ad:

Talk their language

Although there are doubtless similarities between British and American culture, localising the terms you use in your copy, for example changing words like trousers to pants and bespoke to custom-made, can help the audience relate to your content. Talking the audience’s language is a key element of communicating with, and engaging your audience, so don’t use words that won’t chime with your readership.

This extends to cultural references which might not necessarily apply to the US market. For example, while talking about the Superbowl and waffles might not wash over here, the cup final and a good pie probably won’t mean much to them. Focusing on unfamiliar events, such as the recent floods in Cumbria, would also be a missed opportunity to align your brand with the zeitgeist in America.

How can we help?

You might think that an automated translation tool that ‘translates’ your UK copy into American-English is enough to break into the US market, but you really are missing a trick. The localisation and transcreation service at Linguistica International can help you tap into the cultural zeitgeist and strike an emotional chord with your readership. Our talented copywriters can even write original American copy to help you transcend those cultural and linguistic barriers.

The power of the written word to influence and teach others is huge. When marketing to new customers, businesses are trying to build authority and position themselves as leaders in a particular industry or sector. From this position, it is then possible to influence prospective customers.

To establish yourself as an industry authority, it’s essential you get the basics right. Grammar must be spot-on and the copy should be free from spelling mistakes and errors. The slightest mistake can completely undermine the trust you were desperately trying to build.

When translating text from one language to another, proofreading carries even more weight. When you’ve gone to the time and expense of translating or transcreating your text for an overseas audience, the slightest oversight can undermine all your hard work. The trust is gone and the customer quickly moves on.

So is proofreading important? Take a look at the following examples and make up your own mind…

The importance of ‘langauge’

It seems the government has become so sick of the criticism it receives that it’s taken the brave move to cut out the middleman and start to parody itself. This is the government’s official press release announcing the new language tests migrants will have to pass to stay in the country – notice anything wrong…?

The government has warned that failure of the English language test could result in deportation, so whoever wrote this press release stressing the importance of ‘langauge’ should probably pack their bags.

The Home Office was quick to acknowledge the incorrect spelling of the word ‘language’, adding: “This was a regrettable typographical error that has now been corrected.” Next time, maybe they’ll do a spot of proofing.  

The children are our future

What chance have our children got if the brainiac developers of Lego Harry Potter and the Powerpuff Girls computer games can’t even get the very basics of the English language right? Let’s hope they’re spending more time reading the Harry Potter books than this terrible poster.

Wait just a New York minute!

We’re not exactly sure what a New York minute is, but it must be pretty damn fast if it leads to marketing billboards like this. Reebok is one of the biggest sports brands in the world, but it obviously doesn’t have money to waste proofreading its marketing messages.

Your translation proofreading checklist

While proofreading native language communications might be a simple case of checking for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and omissions, translation proofreading is a much more thorough process. The professional translation proofreader should answer the following questions:

• Is the essence of the text conveyed clearly?
• Have the most appropriate words been used?
• Is the word usage and layout consistent?
• Does the translated copy convey the same meaning as the original?
• Is the translated copy culturally relevant?
• Is the translated copy unintentionally offensive in anyway?
• Are time and date formats or currencies appropriate for the target market?
• Does the content follow brand and style guidelines?
• Are the paragraph and sentence lengths appropriate for the medium?
• Are page numbers, indexing and other headings correct?
• Are the images and their captions appropriate for the intended audience?

How can we help?

If you need marketing copy, websites, technical documents and legal copy you can trust to put your best foot forward overseas, please call +44 2392 987 765 today. Our translation proofreading team have the exceptional linguistic qualifications and sector-specific experience to deliver word perfect translations and transcreations in over 200 languages.

We all have a soft spot for R2-D2 don’t we? Oh come on, of course you do – what’s not to like? Not only is ‘he’ an incredibly cute, rotund little robot, but his method of communication, just a series of beeps and boops, is indiscernible to the human ear. That means we don’t have to put up with any of his rubbish. The job of translating is left to his trusty sidekick C-3PO, who acts as the robot-human filter.

It’s a good job most of us are fond of our robot friends, because if a recent an article in the New Scientist is to be believed, R2-D2’s automaton buddies could soon be coming to a school near you!

The friendly face of language learning

In four cities across Europe, the trial phase of an exciting new initiative is underway. In Tilburg and Utrecht in the Netherlands, Bielefield in Germany, and Istanbul in Turkey, young immigrant children are having a helping hand settling into their adoptive countries, courtesy of a number of robot teachers.

The robots, called NAO, have been built by the French company Aldebaran Robotics. Working in conjunction with a consortium of roboticists and linguists from leading universities across Europe, the company have created the robots to help youngsters learn the language skills they’ll need.

The benefits of one-to-one teaching

Life can be tough for children who have to move away from their home. Not only do they have to adapt to a different country and culture, but they also lack the language skills to integrate into society and make new friends.

Studies have shown that children learn best in a one-on-one environment rather than a classroom setting, but resources are simply too scarce to dedicate a language teacher to each child. The L2TOR project is not designed to replace teachers, but rather, to give children a three-dimensional presence that can work alongside teachers to support the language learning.

NAO’s teaching style

The NAO robots improve language learning by watching over the children and providing assistance while they complete exercises on a tablet. NAO also explains to the children what they will learn from each lesson, and observes their body language to identify when they become stuck.

One of the biggest benefits of NAO is its infinite patience. This allows the repetition that forms an essential part of language learning, without eating into the teacher’s time.

The tablets the children use also feature a software system, CoWriter, which helps them practice their writing skills. The robot can write on the tablet too. However, NAO is prone to the occasional mistake; at this point the children and step in and teach NAO where it went wrong. The result is a truly interactive learning experience.

Do you need help adapting to new cultures?

If you’re expanding your business overseas and struggling to overcome language barriers of your own, our expert team of human translators can help. Get in touch to learn more about our translation, transcreation and multilingual copywriting services.