Hummingbird Translations is pleased to now offer dubbing and voice-recording services!
Instructional and safety videos, advertising and product demo’s, informational clips on your website or at your next presentation can now be localized to suit several different languages. Currently our voice over talent includes French, Mandarin and Cantonese, Japanese, Spanish, Italian and Korean.
Contact Hummingbird Translations for more information.
Apparently letting Babel Fish handle your affairs of international diplomacy might not be such a good idea. Most high school students have grasped this notion – one simply has to input their English data into the machine and click on the English to French button to see what useless garble emerges, and well, if you don’t see it, your French teacher certainly will.
However, when a group of Israeli journalists were asked to submit their questions to the Dutch foreign ministry before a diplomatic visit, someone thought they could get away with using Babel Fish to translate their Hebrew into English.
The result begins with an introduction of “Hello Bud…” and goes on to discuss mothers and bed. While this might have been a charming anecdote if it involved some tourists and guidebook trying to find lodgings, it is a gross and ignorant error where international relations are involved.
But, the big question now is: If some Israeli journalists thought Babel Fish an appropriate tool for phrase translation, how many of you out there are using this software to translate your letters, or Word documents, or, really, anything besides single words or short phrases??
If you are, here are a few words of caution:
1. Automatic or computer generated translations occupy only a specific place in text translation. You can insert a couple of words, or sometimes a phrase at a time and the result has a chance of coming off naturally. If, however, more than one sentence is entered, the wheels come off. And, well, if you are bilingual and haven’t tried it out, go ahead and do it now, it makes for great entertainment.
2. Nuance, persuasive language, and any culturally relative details will be missed. These are not tools for communicating effectively with an audience of any size, unless it is you, or your forgiving parents.
3. Best case: the translation is coherent, but not grammatically sound. Worst case: tragic misunderstanding. Either way, if your text is intended for anyone besides your nearest and dearest who doesn’t mind wading through some misunderstanding, there is no shortcut to working with an experienced translator. It might cost more than Babel Fish, that is “more than free” but your business personal and professional relationships are probably worth it.
4. A last note: computer generated translations cannot be made coherent with proofreading. Often words are completely mistranslated, as happened in the above-mentioned case of the Israeli journalists, or sentences are contorted and end up taking on new meanings. Proofreaders are not psychic, or at least most of them aren’t, which means that even if made intelligible your machine made translation may have completely lost its original meaning.
Earlier today I came across an online article listing Search Engine Optimization tricks for translating your website. The article was helpful in parts – hosting the website in the target country and assuring that you have the right keywords in your translated site; and obvious in others – don’t get your cousin to translate your site if you need your site to be professional.
The topic got me thinking about website translation. I have done a lot of copywriting for websites and realized how many people get bogged down by trying to find the right wording in English, never mind another language.
A few pieces of advice I usually have for people wanting web content for commercial sites, should be observed when having your website translated as well.
1. Stay away from flowery language and complicated wording. Your website is not a technical manual, it’s an invitation to your product or service.
2. Be specific about what you do, and if you specialize in any area be sure to mention your expertise there.
3. Answer frequently asked questions. You can do this either on a FAQ page, or simply within the main site content. This seems like a no-brainer, but can actually require some real thinking.
One line of thinking goes: If we don’t post all the answers customers may be more inclined to phone thereby offering us the opportunity for personal interaction and greater opportunity for sales. I whole-heartedly disagree with this approach however. Because so much information is at our fingertips now, customers are far more likely to simply keep looking for the information, on someone else’s site. If translated, FAQ’s are a good place to localize your information to a particular region.
Any further thoughts on website translation, FAQ’s or localization? Send me an email at fainne@hummingbirdtranslations.com !
Since the company started 2 years ago, we have been very busy. We have worked with many businesses in Vancouver, and across the country, translating and localizing their messages. One recent success story is Vancouver Film School.
Hummingbird Translations is excited to announce Vancouver Film School’s newly localized, multi-lingual website, www.vfs.com. Their goal: To increase the geographic reach of the VFS website and include a diverse audience more representative of the city they call home.
VFS is aware of the impact of a global market – 50% of their students now come from outside Canada. Imagine the possibilities of a website localized to multilingual search engines!
Hummingbird and VFS worked together to support their goals and the result is a site that is inclusive of 15 different languages and opens up multi-lingual localization possibilities.
The VFS website is a great example of how translation can increase your potential market while creating a more inclusive corporate culture within your organization.
Congratulations, Vancouver Film School!
