T&I Business

Engrish.com: a Must-See Website for Translators

2009-06-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already seen Engrish.com, you should check it out. With 80,000 visitors per month, it is the most popular site featuring bad and humorous translations.Warning: don't visit the site during work. The hundreds of bad translations into English (especially the Top 100) can be a terrible time waster. You should also know that not all bad translations are G-rated.The video below shows

Where To Submit Press Releases that Target the Translation Industry

2009-06-17T00:08:00.000-07:00

If a company is marketing to translators, interpreters, or LSPs, how can it get the word out effectively? Here are a few good places to submit press releases so that they appear for free in some of the best translation news sources:MultiLingual News (bimonthly) - complete the submission formGlobal Intelligence Newsletter by CSN (bimonthly) - email a summary and link to news@

Quality Control is Crucial for Public Sign Translation

2009-06-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

A little expectation of personal interaction with the translation company could have helped to prevent the Welsh translation blunder that was displayed for all the world to see on a public sign last October.This is very similar to the amazing translation blunder displayed on a Chinese restaurant sign here.

Large Translation Companies Overlooked for CSA's Top 30

2009-06-09T22:01:00.000-07:00

Common Sense Advisory may or may not have overlooked a few companies that should have been on the recent list of the Top 30 LSPs.CSA has noted that every year it receives feedback with suggested corrections to its report on the Top 20, 25, or 30 LSPs. The feedback suggesting the market is really a different size is to be expected when so many people define the industry differently. The feedback

How Fragmented is the Translation Industry?

2009-06-08T06:36:00.000-07:00

Just how fragmented is the translation industry? Common Sense Advisory recently noted that the 30 largest firms generate only 26.6% of total industry revenues and the industry has an extremely low Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) concentration, indicating a very large amount of very small firms.In a 2007 ATA Conference presentation, I noted some US Census numbers that also show a very large

Bad Translation Irritates Women in India

2009-06-04T06:07:00.000-07:00

A government order to monitor human trafficking of women was erroneously translated last month in a way that has offended many women in the Southern Indian state of Kerala. The resulting mistranslation appeared to want to keep "a close tab on the wrong movement of women" in a misogynistic Big Brother-ish way. Read more here if you can decipher the English of this original news article.

Does the Translation Industry Benefit from Facebook Networking?

2009-06-03T08:04:00.000-07:00

Are there Facebook networks for professionals in the translation, localization, and interpretation industry? Yes. Do translation professionals gain any business benefit from those networks? Or are those networks only useful for shooting the breeze?A few ways to quickly connect on LinkedIn and benefit professionally from that social networking site were highlighted in the list of the Top 5

Dilbert: Minor Translation Issues

2009-06-01T07:10:00.001-07:00

Freelance translator Terry Gallagher (Japanese and German to English) pointed me to the best translation-related Dilbert cartoon that I've seen. See Dilbert's "Minor Translation Issues" here at the bottom of page 91 in Try Rebooting Yourself by Scott Adams. Naturally, this little gem involves relationships with the Elbonians.

Best Translation Industry News Sources

2009-05-28T06:29:00.000-07:00

There are many sources to go to for news and commentary on the translation industry. However, some of those sources are not regularly updated, or they focus on issues at the freelancer level. Here is a list of several preferred sources for news and commentary on the business and technology of translation, localization, and interpretation. Follow the links to quickly sign up for email alerts or

Translation Cartoonist Alejandro Moreno-Ramos & Mox's Blog

2009-05-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hebrew translator Yossi Rozenman just pointed me to Mox's Blog. This is a running comic strip about a young freelance translator named Mox. The strip was created by Alejandro Moreno-Ramos, an electromechanical engineer who translates from English and French into Spanish. The comic strip character Mox is also a young engineer with other possible similarities to Alejandro. But Mox is a little

Translation Cartoonist Tony Beckwith

2009-05-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

Tony Beckwith is a translator, interpreter, writer, voice talent, and cartoonist in Austin, Texas. If you haven't seen Tony's cartoons in the GALAxy Newsletter or other translation industry publications, you can see a small archive of them here on his site. Not all of the cartoons are related to translation and interpretation, but here is a sampling of Tony's translation-related cartoons (posted

Updated List of Salary & Compensation Surveys for the Translation Industry

2009-05-19T05:13:00.000-07:00

Salary & compensation data can sometimes be difficult to find in the translation industry, but it does exist. To help you out, T&I Business's list of Salary & Compensation Surveys for the Translation Industry has recently been updated to include links to more than 15 surveys. You'll find that some of these surveys, like sites on the also recently updated list of Best Job Sites for Translation

CSA Reveals New Ranking of Top 30 Language Services Companies

2009-05-18T15:23:00.000-07:00

The industry always loves to see the new rankings posted by Common Sense Advisory. The 2009 rankings (using financial data from 2008) have been compiled by Renato Beninatto and Nataly Kelly and have been expanded from 25 to 30 translation and interpretation companies. You can find them here: Ranking of Top 30 Language Services Companies

Clichés and Pet Peeves Lost in Translation

2009-05-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

My grandmother always said that the biggest problem with a pet peeve is that we pet it. We love it and caress it and nurture it so that it grows and takes up more of our lives than it should. Well, I'm going to pet one of these pet peeves today by hypocritically using the same translation cliché that peeves me.Many translation professionals like me cringe in pain and disgust every time they see

Translation World Records Update

2009-05-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

The list of translation world records has been updated. The list now includes not only the world's most translated book, the most translated author, the most languages simultaneously interpreted at a single event, and the largest translation company and contract, but also the most translated movie, the most translated magazine, and more. Click here to see the updated list of translation world

Financial Data for Public Translation Companies

2009-05-07T06:25:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple months, translation companies have been releasing their numbers for 2008. This means that its about that time of year when the of people Common Sense Advisory will combine this public financial data with the private data they have gathered through sleuthing and soon release an updated list of the 25 largest translation companies.Where can you find all this financial

Bad translations revisited in video - Part II

2009-05-05T06:12:00.000-07:00

In honor of Audi's recent translation blunder, here is a link to more humorous translation goofs on youtube. After you watch the clip below, you can see a similar video here or learn which famous bad translations never really happened in "Myths Debunked: Bad Translation Apocrypha."

Bad Translation Turns Racing Product Racist then Racy

2009-05-02T06:15:00.000-07:00

A German company learned the hard way that its PR firm lacks cultural sensitivity and professional linguistic ability. Many car blogs (such as this one) reported this week that the German "tuning shop" AVUS Performance recently released a car with the name "White Power." After the controversy broke, AVUS released the following statement and apology:Dear visitors, readers and customers,We are very

CyraCom Answers the Call for More Differentiation in Telephone Interpreting

2009-04-29T11:21:00.001-07:00

Only four days after T&I Business observed the need for greater differentiation in phone interpreting, CyraCom sent out a press release announcing that it would release proprietary training materials to advance national healthcare interpreter certification efforts. This is a nice announcement to promote CyraCom training and quality, but not the main point of differentiation I'm referring to.

Interesting Notes from Language Line about the OPI Industry

2009-04-28T06:19:00.000-07:00

Last month, Language Line Services (LLS) submitted its 10-K for 2008. In a space the size of the OPI industry, one little report from the company with the most market share can reveal a good amount of information about the industry as a whole. Here are some of the important points gleaned from the report:Barely maintaining market share, thanks to industry acquisitions. LLS stagnated in 2003 while

Commoditization vs Differentiation in Telephone Interpreting

2009-04-18T22:51:00.000-07:00

How are one company's phone interpreting services different from another? Is there really any significant point of differentiation? For the most part, we see a lot of "me too" OPI (over-the-phone interpretation) companies out there.Looking at the websites of any of the Top 15 Telephone Interpreting Companies (free registration with Common Sense Advisory required), you'll see that everyone looks

Shaking Things Up in the Phone Interpretation Market

2009-04-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

The OPI (over-the-phone interpreting) market has been rather quite for the past year, except for some acquisitions by Lanugage Line (the first and largest OPI company) and the unfortunate passing of NetworkOmni founder George Ulmer in 2008.That may be changing as Cyracom (the company that patented the first dual handset phone) is starting to grab some attention in a number of ways.It appears to

2019: the Future of Translation According to Microsoft

2009-04-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

Microsoft's new little video about a future high-tech utopia includes fun visions of machine translation.Microsoft's Future Vision 2019 - The best bloopers are here

New Concept: Portable Hand-to-Speech ASL Interpreter on a Necklace

2009-03-27T06:15:00.000-07:00

Portable interpreters (most commonly referred to in news articles as portable "translators") have previously been limited to spoken and written languages. Check out this innovative little idea for American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation. A small camera detects signs made by the person wearing it and interprets them into audible speech for those around who may not understand ASL.This has been