Wolfestone Translation Blog

During a venomous 95-minute speech of Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi at the UN, his personal interpreter struggled to live up to the expectations and simply gave up after he got lost in translation.

Gaddafi’s interpreter was so frustrated after 75 minutes of translation that he shouted “just can’t take it any more”, into the live microphone in Arabic, following which the UN’s Arabic section chief Rasha Ajalyaqeen had to take over the proceedings and translate the final 20 minutes of the dictator’s speech.

“His interpreter just collapsed, this is the first time I have seen this in 25 years,” the New York Post quoted another UN Arabic interpreter, as saying. Gaddafi had bought in his own interpreters from Tripoli for the speech rather than use one of the 25 Arabic translators supplied by the UN, as he reasoned that he would be speaking a special dialect.

For more resilient interpreters! contact us at Wolfestone Translation

Well, here I am. Only one week after terminating my MA in Translation with Language Technology, I already have my first language-related job. Well, sort of. Even before I did my MA, I did do sporadic translation work for people, and even interpreting on one occasion in the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. However, this is my first language-related office job, let’s just say. I found out about the six-week internship from one of my former university lecturers, and was very quickly offered an interview and then the internship itself!

It has been a pretty easy-going atmosphere, but still very productive. Most of my translations have been from Spanish into English, though I have done little snippets from French as well. A very high number of the former type has been marriage certificates, especially from Mexico. Until now, I had never quite grasped just how many people nowadays go abroad to get married, with Cancun and other nearby resorts being particularly popular. I also translated a nationality certificate and a birth certificate too. Furthermore, I have spent a lot of time adding to the company’s database of interpreters, scouring numerous websites and sending lots of e-mails to prospective ones. By and large, I have really enjoyed myself, and hope to get even more out of this as the weeks progress.

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

If you are serious about exporting your product to other countries, a good place to start is your website. On the web you are able to reach millions of people who are potentially interested in your product. Websites in only one language can only reach a very small amount of their prospective market.

Depending on your website content you may need a specialised translator, for example a technical or a medical translator. When you use a website translation service you can specify your requirements and be rest assured that a certain level of quality will be reached, ensuring that when you go live with your new language your message is accurately represented.

With a translation service you will also have the option to directly translate the html files that make up your web page. This will make insertion into your website that much easier. This means that both the translation process can be carried out faster, translations will be more coherent and the text will not need to be cut and pasted by your IT specialists. Instead the delivered files can be uploaded directly.

Many translation services also offer an amendment facility, which means if you want to change your website you can simply send the text over to the company that has thorough knowledge and understanding of your site.

In summary, if you want to reach the global market it would be more than beneficial for you to translate your website. Just ensure you use an experienced and professional translation service.

I’ve been here for one week and worked here every day from 9:30 am until 5:30 pm, but it is not so long, because time flies very fast. My colleagues are very friendly and they have welcomed me with open arms, so that I could settle here quickly.
I get many tasks to do for example writing blogs or designing a new button for the English and German Website. Search contacts or editing images are also responsibilities that come with it and for the first time I realise that work can be fun. I’m very glad to be here, because I get the chance to improve my English and to see another side of work life in Britain.

I could use my experiences for instance my knowledge about Photoshop, Word, Excel, although it is in another language, but I also get new skills such as how to work with Dreamweaver. The best thing is that I was able to gain an insight into the marketing field. It is a very creative and interesting area and I could imagine it for my future as a profession. I hope that it will remain so funny and I get new challenges which must be overcome.

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

Have you ever seen a sign that just made you split your sides? The chances are that the company thought “It’s only a few words, Joe from accounts lived in the country for 6 weeks a few years ago, we’ll save a few quid and ask him to translate it. What could possibly go wrong?” The short answer – plenty.

In Tokyo, a hotel told its guests “Is forbitten to steal hotel towels please. If you
are not person to do such thing is please not to read notis.” It is a backhanded compliment, by assuming that most people wouldn’t dream of stealing anything. It is also a linguistic mess.

A shop in the Balearic Isles went out of its way to make customers aware that they “English well talking.” and “Here speeching American.” Sometimes though, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with the grammar or syntax. For instance, a Swiss restaurant proudly displayed the following outside the front door: “Special today — no ice cream”. Trade is rumoured to have been brisk.

Another hotel in Japan by way of welcome informed its guests that “YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID”. What the chambermaids in question thought of this innovative special offer remains unknown.

In this photo, it isn’t just the name which should really have been reconsidered for the English market. The description of the manufacturing process is quite interesting to read.

However, for bad translations, nothing quite beats this example.

The council in question had sent the English version of the sign to the translation department. When the reply came through they simply cut and pasted the words and, voila, a sign went up. It was only later that they realised that the reply had actually been an out of office autoreply stating “I am not in the office at present. Please send me any work to translate”.

As ever, the man from Del Wolfestone, he say “For pity’s sake don’t do it yourselves.” Get a team of professionals to do your translation, however many words it is – or isn’t. Coincidentally, Wolfestone Translation may be able to help you with this….

Whilst my colleagues were team building in the lovely Welsh countryside (in very bad weather) I was in Helsinki in glorious sunshine having Finnish saunas and eating fine Finnish cuisine…..The weather in Finland was a lot better than I had expected, so much so that that the Ski jacket and jumpers I had taken with me were quickly hidden under the bed in embarrassment, as everyone was walking around in Summer clothes as the temperature reached 28 degrees, ‘’so much for the Snow and midnight sun I was stupidly expecting’’.

My trip began in a beautiful town called Porvoo . Porvoo is one of Finland’s oldest cities and, because of the picturesque old town, it is a very popular summer destination for international travellers. Everything was made out of wood and all of the houses looked like they belonged in The Doll’s House Emporium in Cardiff, much to my youngest daughters delight.

We attended the Race of Porvoo on the 15/16th August 2009 in the industrial area of Tarmola. The two-day motor racing event includes races in three different classes and also the Race of the Stars, where the world legends of the sport rival against each other in three different types of cars. This was great for me as I am a Top Gear fanatic and nearly died at seeing the likes of Mika Haakinen and Miko Hirvonen at the helms of their extremely fast cars!

Next Stop Helsinki and Suomenlinna – Helsinki is a modern city with over half a million residents and is situated on the Baltic Sea. In 2000 Helsinki was an official European City of Culture while celebrating its 450th anniversary.

Helsinki’s Island Fortress Suomenlinna was truly breathtaking, we witnessed an amazing open air concert whilst the sun set over Helsinki. Across the water, the city centre was host to Finland largest multi arts festival which runs every August; a total must for art lovers as the museums were overrun with amazing Art exhibits from the likes of Van Gogh to Picasso.

My trip ended with a weekend in the beautiful city of Tallinn, Estonia. The foundations of this city are apparently 4500 yrs old and was one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to, I would definitely recommend a visit. The trip was highly enjoyable and in fact taught me a lot about Finnish and Swedish translation, also finding out that Swedish is in fact an official language of Finland totally fascinated me. Stay tuned folks Finland will shortly be featured as our country of the month and we will be offering a 10% discount on all translations.
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… and you are wondering how to go about it.  Well, there are no completely right or wrong ways, but there are certain things which are beneficial.

Firstly, whichever language you are learning, learn it properly.  Your University might send you abroad for six months to a year, but this is not normally enough.  It is also surprising how many British language students create their own little island whilst at foreign universities, completely cutting themselves off from the local community.  So, participate locally and, if possible, go back to your chosen country after graduation and get a job for a year.  Any job will do, because you will be surrounded by the language all day, every day – and the money you’re earning will go nicely toward paying off that huge overdraft you’ve run up.

Now that you are completely fluent in your chosen language, what next?  Many people choose to undertake postgraduate qualifications.  These will usually introduce you to computer aided translation programs such as Trados and Deja Vu.  It is also a very good idea to improve your general IT skills – the days of translating with a typewriter, scissors and glue are very long gone and aren’t coming back.  Most Masters schemes will introduce you to the sort of skills which you don’t really need at degree level, but which are essential as a professional translator such as terminology acquisition and possibly some DTP / web design programs (the client decides which format you will work in, not you!)  And, obviously, you will be given much more complicated translations.  In the real world, you will very seldom translate newspaper articles and extracts from books.

So, now you have finished university and it’s time to put this into practice.  Ideally, during your studies you should have developed a specialisation.  If you haven’t, start working on one now.  Work in pairs with another translator, for feedback, support, and just for someone to moan to when your PC has crashed again.  Make contacts (Wolfestone does internships, for those who are interested…)  But above all, keep learning.  The world outside is constantly evolving, and you will be too.

For more information visit our website www.wolfestone.co.uk!

Many people, especially companies who are more keen than ever to save money, consider machine translation as an alternative to paid-for translations. There are many programs and online services available, so at first glance, this is a viable option. However, how realistic is this?

To start with, here are a couple of points. At the one end of the scale, most machine translation programs can handle “Happy Birthday” or”Hello, how are you?”. (Although even this should not be taken for granted.) At the other end, there is not yet, nor will there ever be, a machine translation program that can translate the operating manual for the Space Shuttle. So, what about the texts in between?
One simple headline from the sport section today – “David Beckham said he will accept Fabio Capello’s decision with grace if not picked to go to South Africa.” This is not fantastically complicated, but the three machine translation tools used came up with three very different versions. All three had various faults ranging from the comical (David Beckham said that she will…. Google Translate) to the simply wrong (Google Translate also referred to Beckham accepting it with good grace if he was not given a lift to South Africa.)

However, most companies will have significantly more to translate. To test this I pasted the three subsequent paragraphs into each website. (All texts I’ve used, and the resulting translations into German can be downloaded as a PDF here) The first difficulty is that three short paragraphs is more than the permitted length for some tools (Reverso) which means that texts must be very short. The second is that I have deliberately chosen an article from the sport section because they are the easiest to understand. Even then, all three programs used struggled badly. A German native speaker with a good understanding of English might understand the overall text, but it would otherwise be unusable.

So, you might expect me to say that you should always use a professional translator, and keep use of machine translation to a minimum, but it is actually true – there is no substitute for a trained linguist well-versed in his vocation.

For more information visit our website www.wolfestone.co.uk!

I’ve really enjoyed my 3 weeks here at Wolfestone Translation here in Swansea. The work experience has been invaluable for many reasons. Firstly, it’s truly superb being able to get back to the work environment after a long illness. Secondly, I’ve been able to use the skills that I’ve acquired and which I specialise in; namely being able to use my French Degree from Bangor University, and my Masters in translation with language technology (although I did not finish that course). Besides, the experience undoubtedly improved my French, after not having used it for a long time. Unfortunately Wolfestone did not give me time to use my knowledge of translation software like Trados and déjà vu. I would have liked to have been able to refresh my knowledge of translation software and apply it to the workplace.

The social aspect is significant as well. Everybody has been very kind and understanding. It’s nice to have a routine and having to get up early to face a day of work and catching the train. I also enjoyed the administrative side . As regards the actual translations and computer work, I found it very challenging, especially the medical translations, and coping with jargon and administrative French. The resources for translating in Wolfestone are very useful, and I used the internet quite a lot for my research into what different medical terms mean. I coped quite well with the computer side of things. The ECDL I acquired a couple of years back was of use.

Moreover my experience here with Wolfestone has given me a direction for the future. I would like to become a freelance translator, translating from French to English. And maybe even translate from French to Welsh if the opportunity arises, as Welsh is my first language. Remploy have been very helpful in securing this work placement for me.

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

Wolfestone is currently looking for student Interns who wish to gain experience in the Translation and/or Marketing industry. We will consider students with all language pairs but would prefer those who can translate French, Spanish, Italian and German in particular. These are the languages we can guarantee the most translation work for.

As we are a small company we can offer students experience in all aspects of the business not only translation but also in marketing, research, project management and also interpreting and transcription occasionally. Wolfestone is a young and dynamic company who can offer an intern a great experience both socially and professionally.

If you are interested in applying for an internship please visit our website.