Business Translation

I’m always looking for glossaries, dictionaries and other resources that can help working professionals. Thanks to a Venezuelan colleague, in her blog La Traducción al descubierto, I discovered Invertext.com -a dictionary that covers different business areas. It has around 100 terms in English and Spanish with defini...

A New Grammar from the Royal Spanish Academy

The Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Spanish Language Academies present a New Grammar for Spanish Language. This is the first time the academy produces a grammar book since 1931.The two volumes, and a third one being published soon, is a result of eleven year of work from the twenty-two academies of Spanish Lang...

Glossary of Neutral Spanish – Part 4

As I promised here’s the last part of the glossary of Neutral Spanish terms, which I shared with you in previous posts. quitar (take off, take out) rabo (tail) rasurar (shave) refresco (soda,”coke”) refrigerador (fridge) renta (rent) retrete, excusado (toilet) rosquillas  (donuts) sabroso (tasty, yummy) sala (liv...

The Legality of Translations in Court

In the US, when a transcript contains a translation of conversations spoken in a foreign language, a qualified witness must authenticate and verify the translation. See United States v. Llinas, 603 F.2d 506, 509-10 (5th Cir. 1979). A party who wishes to challenge the accuracy of a translation is responsible for presenting ...

Glossary of Neutral Spanish – Part 3

This the third part of the glossary (just one more left) is a continuation of the previous posts 1 and 2. Below are words from letter F to P. falda (skirt) fontanero  (plumber) fregadero  (sink; kitchen) fresa (strawberry) frijol (bean) gafas, lentes (glasses) galleta (cracker, cookie) gaveta (drawer) golpiza (beating, th...

Should the US adopt Spanish as a Second Language?

November 27, 2009 6 Comments »

Spanish is the second most-common language in the United States. There are 45 million Hispanics who speak Spanish in the United States, making it the world’s second-largest Spanish-speaking community. German, Italian, Polish, Russian and Greek are also spoken among older generations of immigrants. Also spoken are Tag...

Glossary of Neutral Spanish – Part 2

November 25, 2009 2 Comments »

This is part 2 from the previous post. Included here are terms in Neutral Spanish from letters C to E. I’d like to remind you that this list is specifically for subtitling and voice over; there may be different options. Feel free to leave your comments or suggestions to add to the list. cabello (hair) […]...

Glossary of Neutral Spanish – Part 1

Here an additional note on Neutral Spanish. I’d like to share with you the first part of a list of neutral terms (not exclusive), complied for the use of the movie industry, mainly for subtitling and voice over. As I mentioned in a previous article, these terms are only a standardized version, that is, the […]...

Machine Translation Plays the Telephone Game

November 17, 2009 3 Comments »

Remember the Telephone Game? Most of you probably remember it from childhood. You would whisper a short sentence into someone’s ear and so on until it went full circle. When the message reached the last person it was totally different from the original and it had everyone laughing out loud. You’re probably thinking, “...

Neutral Spanish

To wrap up my previous post, I’d like to make a brief comment on this subject. A translation targeted towards different Spanish speaking regions or countries should be translated into “Neutral Spanish”. As I mentioned before, it’s very important that the client be aware of this. What we’re talking about is a stand...

TRYING TO KEEP SPANISH PURE IN THE U.S.

November 11, 2009 1 Comment »

Can anyone stop the ever growing Spanglish movement in the U.S.? After all, Spanglish is not a language but rather people who speak English and Spanish badly. The North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE, for its initials in Spanish) has taken on this challenge. Seen by some as the “language police”, the Aca...

Accuracy: Professional Translators Make a Difference

It is commonly believed that any bilingual person can translate. However most fail at written translations. This is because such informal translation is oral, not written. For an informal translator, any translation which communicates the main idea of the message suffices. But in a professional translation, the original doc...

ICANN approved the use of domain names in Asian, Arabic and other scripts

October 30, 2009 4 Comments »

Will the web ever be internationalized? Yes, the web as we know it will change forever by mid 2010. The net regulator ICANN will be introducing web addresses using non-Latin characters, which will allow the use of domain names written in Asian, Arabic or other scripts. ICANN has said that this will be the “biggest ch...

Language Localization

October 29, 2009 1 Comment »

In a previous post, Justin had mentioned that there are language differences in countries where English is the official language (e.g. in England, the Unites States, Australia and Canada). There are also differences in countries where Spanish is natively spoken, for instance Spain, Latin America, and even Spanish speakers i...

What is DTP?

October 22, 2009 8 Comments »

DTP is an acronym used to refer to Desktop Publishing. But what is Desktop Publishing? Its meaning has been redefined since it was first invented over 20 years ago (In 1985, PageMaker was developed for Macintosh computers, the first “desktop publishing” application). Desktop publishing in the 21st century refers...

Is A Certified Translation Necessary?

October 14, 2009 4 Comments »

Certain processes require a certified translation, meaning that the translation must be accompanied with a notarized translation certificate of authenticity and accuracy. This may include an Apostille, a signed certificate from a sworn translator, or a host of other requirements. If you are having a document translated, it ...

Translating Software

There is no question that the Internet has brought people from around the globe closer (virtually) than ever before, but there are still quite a few barriers to be conquered when one is looking to market  software internationally. English is the unofficial “computer language” of the 21st century, but what if yo...

Facebook Translation Crowdsourcing

Social networking giant Facebook has taken a somewhat novel approach to providing its service in other languages. It is employing crowdsourcing, or community-based design, to take popular phrases from the site (tag a photo, nudge a friend) and translate Facebook into more than 65 other languages. When the Facebook applicati...

How to Use Trados: First Steps

Trados can be extraordinarily useful for translating and editing your documents, but using it can be a little daunting if you don’t have much experience with it. This video will help you get started. Source: Trados Video Tutorial...

How to Create Multiterm Databases with mdb, xdt and xml Files

This video tutorial in Spanish will provide you with another Multiterm functionality– creating termbases with mdb, xdt and xml files. Source: Video sobre Cómo Importar MDB XDT XML en Multiterm...