Wolfestone Translation Blog

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.