Wolfestone Translation Blog

In yet another chapter of their success story, leading Swansea entrepreneurs Anna Bastek and Roy Allkin of Wolfestone Translation have been chosen to take part in the LEAD Wales project. This is an event limited to 25 of the most successful owner-managers of small or medium sized businesses, initially in the Swansea area, but eventually to cover all of Wales. It has received recognition and £8m of funding from the Welsh Assembly Government and the European Social Fund. The co-founders of Wolfestone were chosen as a result of the great potential of Wolfestone Translation and for creating employment in Wales.

It is hoped that the scheme, which is being run through Swansea University School of Business and Economics, will help some 700 businesses over the next 7 years, with the first cohort completing the scheme within 10 months. It is intended that the scheme, which provides each participant with £10,000 worth of training, will enable these businesses to “increase profitability, enable diversification and encourage business growth.” Pilot schemes trialled in the North West led to increased turnover, employment, productivity and profits.

The scheme itself involves two days study per month, which started in February with an overnight weekend experiential team-building event. Mr Allkin said about the first session “The weekend was about ice breaking and leadership training and I think the event was a great success. It really brought to light the diversity of businesses in Swansea and the real entrepreneurial talent that exists here”. Following on from this each participant is supported by the expertise of academics, mentors, coaching professionals and, of course, each other. LEAD Wales is unique in that it is a programme which attempts to meet the needs of growing companies as opposed to traditional business management courses which are aimed at start-ups or public sector managers seeking to enhance their career prospects.

When asked how she felt about the honour of being chosen for such an elite scheme, Miss Bastek said ”I was delighted to be approached by LEAD Wales. It will be very beneficial to team up with so many successful businesses and share experiences and ideas. I’m sure it will also create new business opportunities. I also believe that encouraging collaboration between higher education and the private sector will help to drive forward the Welsh economy.”

Guest post by Christian Arno, Director of Lingo 24.

If you would like to write a guest article, contact us at sales@wolfestone.co.uk or visit our website: www.wolfestone.co.uk.

Congratulations – you’re multilingual and you’ve got your translation qualifications, accreditation and some contacts in the industry – but how do you now transform your talents into taxable income? With full-time positions increasingly hard to come by, it’s lucky for you that you’ve picked an industry where it pays to go freelance. Being your own business isn’t all working-from-bed and midday television, though – consider the below pros and cons of becoming a freelance translator.

The good

The upsides to going freelance are numerous: you get to control when and how often you work; you can pick and choose the projects, ensuring varied and interesting work; once established, you may be able to charge a higher rate as a freelancer than what you would earn as a full-time employee, especially if you’re qualified to specialise in a particular area, such as business or IT; you can choose to either join a translation agency, who will bring you work but may charge a fee or percentage of earnings, or to strike out on your own and reap the benefits of your hard work building contacts; and you’re free to move and travel as you please – as long as you have a computer and the internet you’re in business. Getting established is no easy task, but online translation communities like Proz.com can be invaluable for advice and contacts, and once you’re settled with a database of reliable clients you’ll never look back.

The bad

The major downside to going freelance is maintaining a regular stream of incoming work – one week you may be swamped with projects, while the next you may find yourself spending more time making tea than translating documents. Dedicating your downtime to fostering relationships with potential clients is the best way to ensure you don’t get caught short – keep a regular stream of communication open with existing and potential clients and you’ll find the extra hours spent on the phone and email pay off financially in the long run.

Being self-employed also means managing your own accounts, invoicing and tax records – setting aside a block of time each week to catch up on administrative duties is the only way to make sure you don’t end up buried under a mountain of paperwork at the end of each financial year. Of course, going freelance also means you’re not entitled to general company benefits like pension schemes, holiday pay, sick pay and health insurance – even though you can take a holiday whenever you feel like it, you’ll need a well-maintained budget to make sure you can always pay the next month’s rent!

The ugly

Sorry to break the bad news, but when you go freelance, the only person who’s going to make sure you get paid is you. Keeping on top of your invoices by ensuring they’re sent error-free and on time, then keeping a close eye on which get paid, and promptly but politely following up on those which don’t, will help to ensure your hard work doesn’t disappear into an administrative black hole. Also, unless you have a tech support team for your home office, it’s up to you to make sure you’re digitally connected all the time – no phone and no internet means no business. Now get out there and start hustling!

I am currently in a first year of Master in Foreign Languages applied to Business. However, I would like to do a Master in Translation next year, so I thought doing my internship in the translation area would be a perfect transition between both. Moreover, to work in an English-speaking firm would help me to have more professional experience, to meet different cultures and, of course, to improve my English language.

I applied for an internship as translator in this company in part because their website was really attractive and complete, and thanks to the positive testimonies of other interns. I made an unsolicited application and I received an answer very quickly; they gave me all the information I needed in a very short time. I didn’t have many translation classes during my studies but, during the 4 months of internship, I have hoped to learn a lot about translation techniques and, more simply, how things take place in such a company.

During my first week, I began with some documents such as certificates and technical documents to practice. It was really interesting to discover new fields of translation as I was used to translate extracts of novels, magazine’s and newspaper’s articles, etc. Then, I was giving more and more responsabilities with translations for clients, proofreadings and a few tasks in the marketing area. I have felt more involved in the company. The staff is very friendly and helpul in case of any problem or question and there is a really cultural diversity. The atmosphere is relaxed and nice which is a really important thing in a company. Maybe it can explain its dynamism and its success.

I think that it is an experience really rewarding on a personal and professional point of view. Being in contact with other cultures helps you to be more open-minded, even at work. What’s better than working in a firm in a foreign country to know what is working life? They are serious about their work and they pay attention to the client’s expectations. According to me, Wolfestone Translation plays his part very well as teaching us how to work.

Marion Laisné – France

Do you want to do an internship at Wolfestone? Visit our website www.wolfestone.co.uk!

In the age where English comes to dominate the planet, the fate of smaller languages spoken by lesser numbers is often forgotten.  At exactly the same time as we debate the pros and cons of English taking over the world, other languages which have been spoken for tens of thousands of years are rapidly dying.  One such example occurred last week, when Boa Sr, the last remaining speaker of the Bo language, died.

With her death, a language amongst the very very oldest spoken by mankind – some 65,000 years old – passed into history.  An expert on the languages of the area said that her loss was tragic as it robbed us of the chance of discovering how languages evolve.  Indeed, there are only a few dozen Great Andamanese tribespeople left.  When they leave us, another 10 languages will be consigned to history.

At a human level, there is the fact that for the last 30 years of her life, there was no-one left with whom she could converse in her mother tongue.  She adapted by speaking Hindi and a colloquial mixture of other Great Andamanese, but not everyone can master another language.  Even those who can will never quite be at their ease using a second language.

That said, not every minority language is doomed to die out altogether.  If the decline can be checked in time, a minority language can be preserved, and, given time, brought back to the rudest of health.  One such example is the Welsh language.  At one point, it was considered simply a matter of time before Welsh would die out.  However, certain steps were undertaken – the key one being its reintroduction as a language used in schools – and it is now estimated that one in four Welshmen can speak the language to conversational level.

Indeed, many of these pupils achieve near-native fluency in the tongue despite having monoglot English parents and family.  Quite frequently they become indistinguishable from those whose mother tongue is Welsh.  This is proof that no language need ever die out if the will to preserve it is there.  It is simply a matter of having this desire to save a living language.

Do you want to know more about languages? Or do you need a translation in an unusal language? Contact Wolfestone Translation.

I am currently studying PR and media at Swansea University and decided that it would be useful to assess my strengths and weaknesses, as well as to get hands on experience in the chosen field of study through a work taster.

At the end of my placement here I consider that the chance of working within the Marketing and Sales Department of Wolfestone Translations has been really useful. Firstly, I am starting to understand how important it is to know the background of the company you are working for, as it helps you deliver better customer services. This was relevant both to creating customer newsletters, but also performing marketing research in the US market. Secondly, I got acquainted with softwares such as ACT!, Dreamweaver 8 or business oriented internet services such as Link Market and Swiftpage 5, which are really important in managing customer databases or designing various materials. Last but not least, the work taster gave me the opportunity to improve my writing and screen-based designing skills.

On the whole, the atmosphere in the office is relaxed and the environment can indeed be called international and culturally diverse. Also, my colleagues have been really helpful in answering the questions I had about various tasks, as it helped me improve my skills.

Georgiana Avram, Romania

Do you want to do an internship at Wolfestone? Visit our website www.wolfestone.co.uk!

I finished my Bachelor´s degree for Translation and Interpreting in July 2009, after four years of intensive language learning and a lot of translating and interpreting work I thought the logical step would be to immerse myself in the practical side of translation and apply for the Leonardo DaVinci scholarship.  It is good to be trained on the theoretical aspects of a certain field of knowledge, but nobody ever teaches you the reality of an everyday job and that is what I needed next.

It wasn´t difficult to apply for the internship at Wolfestone Translation: I found an advertisement at the Europlacement website and from there onwards they made the application procedure easy and convenient. It has only been a week and I am already sure of having chosen the correct means to my goal.

The experience has been very valuable so far, and I have felt comfortable in the working environment since the very beginning. The team is really friendly, and the multicultural and young staff made my first days very instructive and pretty entertaining! At the office, I have been assigned with many different jobs of a diverse nature, which prooves that the team really appreciate my commitment to the job.

I have felt like one  of the team, and have enjoyed the challenging tasks I have been assigned since the very first day. Honestly, I thought that the internship would be a thorough guide, step by step, to the basics of translation and their daily implementation. It hasn´t been like that but even better: I have been taught how to do things by my own means and gained experience, which is challenging and very useful. Furthermore, it is really rewarding to get involved in the work environment and its own dynamics and achieve certain goals –meet deadlines, improve my writing skills, etc.-. The sincere dedication to their tasks makes you want to learn from them (and as fast as you can) so they´re not only being encouraging but also motivating!

What´s more, the labour dynamics here are well organized and professional which, at the same time implies the job being pretty demanding. Fortunately, my tutor, Emma, has explained to me in detail what everyone´s role within the company is and has given me helpful advice on how I should do my job. In only a week´s time I can say that I have not only put into practice my translation skills but also got to learn the dynamics of a business, the importance of the work environment being relaxed and motivating and of course, practiced my English. What more could I ask for after a single week of placement?

Maria Sáez,

Spain.

Do you want to do an internship at Wolfestone? Visit our website www.wolfestone.co.uk!

Translating is not simply a matter of taking one word in one language and putting it into another. You also have to take into account the fact that what one culture or nation sees as good may be seen as bad by a different group. What do I mean by this?

Well, one prime example is happening right now. Some of you may have noticed that we have a layer of white stuff on the floor at the moment. It’s called snow. It’s the reason it took you 6 hours to get to work today. And, with the exception of 5-year olds throwing snowballs, most of us are already pretty fed up with it. But not everyone.

My sister in law is South African, and, not surprisingly, when she was growing up, she didn’t see much of the snow. This means that she really enjoys snowfall, because she associates it with novelty and pleasure. In comparison, most Northern Europeans associate it with inconvenience and cold. (In addition, most of the rest of Northern Europe also laughs at our utter incompetence when dealing with more than two flakes of it, but that’s another story). So, how do you translate the sentence “I groaned when I saw 10 inches of snow on the floor”? Not everyone would groan.

Another example would be the tradition in Western culture of celebrating victory by awarding the winner champagne. Although not as old a tradition as some (most notably champagne companies) would have you believe, it is nevertheless seen as a simple connection in our culture. Success=Champagne. However, in other cultures, champagne, being alcohol, is more associated with illegality than success. When Formula 1 expanded into the Middle East, the race winner received a bottle of a sparkling fruit juice-style drink instead. So, again, translating the sentence “The winner got the obligatory bottle of champers” is not necessarily as easy as looking up the word for champagne, especially if the winner would go to prison the moment he accepted his prize.

Finally, what do you do if the language you’re translating into simply doesn’t have an equivalent word for the word you’re translating? Many languages only have one word to cover the colours blue and green, which makes describing a set of snooker balls more challenging.

So, translating is about more than just learning lists of words for school test. You also need to get to know the people and the culture as well. Here at Wolfestone we work exclusively with professionals who have done just that. To utilise their skills, contact us at sales@wolfestone.co.uk.

The work of a translation company does not begin and end with translations. At Wolfestone we also undertake interpreting, transcription, localisation and voiceover projects.

In practice, transcription/translation and voiceover recordings go hand-in-hand. Quite often a client will have a video in a foreign language and will want to know what a speaker is saying. This first involves writing down what the speaker is saying in his/her own language (Transcription), rendering it into his/her own language (Translation) and then dubbing the translated words over the video footage (Voiceover). This is actually a lengthier process than is usually assumed. Transcribing 10 minutes of well recorded, clear speech will usually take 20-30 minutes. Transcribing 10 minutes of amateur recording can take twice as long. If, in addition, the speaker is not very clear, or the vocabulary is extremely complex, transcription can be a long, drawn-out procedure.

Then there is the translation. There isn’t really a lot to add at this juncture – translation is what we do every day here, and this is simply another translation.

So, then comes the voiceover recording. Again, many people assume that it is just a case of buying a £10 microphone from the local musical instrument shop and plugging it into a tape recorder. For best results, a good studio with modern equipment is necessary. The advent of the digital age has made recording considerably easier than in the old days with reels and reels of tape, but it has also made blemishes more undesirable as it is now relatively cheap to produce high quality recordings. A clear, articulate, well-paced speaking voice is necessary (which, again, is not as easy to find as could be presumed. There is a good reason why professional voiceover artists earn substantial amounts of money.) Rehearsing the text is always advantageous, particularly the longer and more unfamiliar words.

The key factor, however, is being relaxed when recording. This can make the difference between needing one take and twelve. As a rough rule of thumb, recording 30 minutes of audio will take 3-4 times as long. It is then edited, compiled and sent back to the client. And yet another 100% satisfied Wolfestone client enjoys the fruits of our labour, exactly as was planned from the very outset. For a quote, contact us at sales@wolfestone.co.uk.

Wolfestone Translation is proud of its Welsh roots and would like to share with you some Welsh Christmas and New Year traditions, both past and present.

Y NADOLIG (Christmas):
The custom in many parts of Wales was to attend a very early church service known as “Plygain” (daybreak), Men gathered in rural churches to sing, mainly unaccompanied, three or four part harmony carols in a service that went on for three hours or so. The custom managed to survive in many country areas, and because of its simplicity and beauty is being revived in many others. After the service, a day of feasting and drinking would begin.

GWYL SAN STEFFAN (St. Stephens Day; Boxing Day – December 26th):
The day after Christmas Day was celebrated in a way unique to Wales and included the tradition of “holly-beating” or “holming.” Young men and boys would beat the unprotected arms of young females with holly branches until they bled. In some areas it was the legs that were beaten. In others, it was the custom for the last person to get out of bed in the morning to be beaten with sprigs of holly. These customs died out before the end of the 19th century, thankfully!

NOS GALAN (New Years Eve):
In England in many places it still is the custom that a dark haired man should let in the New Year for good luck. The man leaves the house by the back door just before midnight on New Years Eve, walks around and on the strike of midnight, knocks on the front door. The householder opens the door, and receives from the man the following gifts: salt for seasoning, silver for wealth, coal for warmth, a match for kindling and bread for sustenance. In Wales the custom of letting in the New Year was slightly different in that if the first visitor in the New Year was a woman and the male householder opened the door, that was bad luck. If the first man to cross the threshold in the New Year was a red haired man, that was also bad luck.

Some other Welsh customs associated with the New Year were: “all existing debts were to be paid”; never lend anything to anyone on New Years Day else you would have bad luck; and the behaviour of an individual on this day was an indication of how they would behave all year!

The most popular New Year’s custom was one that was carried out in all parts of Wales: the Calennig (small gift). On January 1st from dawn until noon, groups of young boys would visit all the houses in the village carrying evergreen twigs and a cup of cold water drawn from the local well. The boys would then use the twigs to splash people with water. In return, they would receive the Calennig, usually in the form of copper coins. The custom, in various forms, survived in some areas well after World War II, at least in the form of the chanting of a small verse or two in exchange for small coins.

http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/Wales-History/WelshChristmas.htm

For a quote, contact us at sales@wolfestone.co.uk.

Yes, it’s that time of year again, when everyone celebrates the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ / goes mad buying stuff they don’t really need for people that they don’t really know and watching The Great Escape for the 37th time on Christmas Day. (Don’t laugh, in Germany it has been a tradition for several decades to watch a play called “Dinner for One” on Christmas Day). Yes, Christmas is celebrated very differently in other countries. Here are a few examples.

To start with, Christmas isn’t even celebrated on the same day everywhere. The national churches of, amongst others, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Serbia still use the Julian calendar as opposed to the Gregorian one. This means that they celebrate Christmas on January the 7th. The major countries of Central Europe (such as Poland, Austria and Hungary) go in the other direction, and their main celebration is on the 24th of December.

Then there is the meal itself. Turkey is not as universally common as would be thought. In the Czech Republic, carp is a popular meal to serve with the celebrations. In Finland, the dinner is most likely to be a Christmas ham. Greek families often prefer lamb.

Then there are the presents so beloved of children worldwide. Many South American countries give presents on 6th of January. Argentinean children are especially lucky. They receive presents on both the 25th of December and the 6th of January. German children also traditionally get an additional set of presents, usually small things, similar to our Christmas stockings. This happens on the 6th of December.

However, one thing unites every country that celebrates Christmas. It is the joy of celebrating a magical event with your family nearby, for those with children it is the pleasure that they get from playing with their new toys on Christmas Day (whenever that may be in any particular country) and simply enjoying a few days of well-earned rest and relaxation at the end of the year.