Posts Tagged ‘Japanese Spanish translations’

The correct language translation price

Friday, November 9th, 2007

– www.goihata.com
Which is correct the translation price? There is no such “correct price”, the translation price moves up and down influenced by many factors like;
* Supply and demand situation; when competition is tough prices drop and the contrary happens when professionals are in high demand.
* The text’s difficulty; Translation is a niche business, customers are highly recommended to find the right translator for the specific field. It is not the same the translation of patents and intellectual property or publicity and marketing text. A good translator for a medical subject, is not necessarily so at marketing.
* The language combination: Is not the same to translate into a very closely related language like Portuguese (from Spanish) or into a language poles apart, using a completely different alphabet, syntax and cultural background.
* The country where the translator is located: Scandinavian language translations tend to be more highly valued than others in the southern part of Europe, and does not make much sense to search for such translators in Timbuctoo.
* The translation format: It is more time consuming to translate an MSWord document with images and embedded text than plain straightforward text.
* The program being used: Elegantly presented documents in QuarkXpress, Freehand, Adobe Indesign, and other DTP document translation is more laborious.
* Documents with a lot of repetitive text: Technical manuals often have repetitive text that can be reused using a Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) program like Wordfast. Some discounts can be applied for the repetitive text in these cases.

Having mentioned all the above, we still come across bad-expensive translations and good-cheap translations. But the customer should weigh up the risks and take all the necessary steps to minimize them.
If the translation is going to be used in a marketing campaign costing a huge amount of money, it is not recommended to take risks by trying to save a few pennies.

And always remember the bad translation is the most expensive of all translations.

www.goihata.com

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Complexity of Japanese Spanish translations

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

Language and culture are deeply related and the language stands as the maximum expression of that culture. The Japanese and Spanish cultures are worlds apart as their geographical location. Each language has its own idioms and borrows expressions from their religious background and people’s way of thinking. The language is the mirror image of the culture of that country and when translating from Spanish to Japanese language we also need to do cultural translation.
Some issues encountered by Japanese Spanish translators. Idioms with deep cultural roots
Well known biblical expression like “man can not live by bread alone” which means that human beings need something more than material things. The people need something more to enrich the mind and soul. This expression would have little meaning in a country without a Christian heritage.
Or Japanese expressions like “hito no fundoshi de sumo wo toru”, which means to practise Sumo using a borrowed fundoshi (a sumo wrestler’s belt). This could be translated as “it is not comfortable to depend on others to do something”.

The Spanish language has gender and singular and plural, from the sentence itself we discover that the action was done by a male or female and if the object is one or many. Spanish is a straight and direct language and this is not perceived as being rude or impolite.

In Japanese there is no gender neither singular/ plural articles that suggest the number,
In Japanese we could say “ringo wo tabemashita” which literally translated means “ate apple” which could be any of the following combinations: He/she ate apple/s. He or she ate one apple or many apples.
One more issue is the length of the text. Spanish text normally takes a lot more space than Japanese and when asked to make a Spanish replica of a Japanese manual or web site. The physical dimensions are a big constrain. How do we solve all this? With many headaches.

David Sawada Japanese Spanish translator

www.goihata.com

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Will computers replace translators?

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

Translators are using computers and very powerful tools to increase productivity.
Some of those tools could be automatic translation software programs that do the translation on a swift and then a professional translator revises the text in the target language. One of the problems with this kind of software is that quite often the translation is such a mess that the revision and correction process is more time consuming than doing it from scratch.
We all know such programs: Sytram, PowerTranslator, etc. If you try to translate literature text or typical expressions that do not exist on the other language, chances are very high that you will experience the above mentioned frustration.
Then we have the Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) software programs. Some well known programs are Wordfast, Trados, Transit, Dejavu, etc. These programs save into their memory all the paragraphs and when the same sentence or a similar one comes up again, the professional translator has to validate or amend that translated text. This is very helpful when translating technical manuals and repetitive text, because it can save a lot of time and increase productivity during the translation process.
Some problems facing the CAT programs are that they are not very friendly to DTP programs like QuarkXpress, Freehand, Adobe InDesign, PageMaker, etc.
This CAT programs are also more efficient when the source language and the target language are somewhere related like Spanish or French or even Spanish and English. But when we come across languages that are using completely different syntax, completely different cultural background and scripts poles apart like in the Japanese Spanish combination case, then the CAT programs are not so efficient and sometimes can even become troublesome.
Therefore do not expect computers to replace the professional translator for quite a while, language is a complex and often non logical communication tool that is difficult to code. Language is not black or white, there is a lot of grey that needs to be clarified by linguists and translators. Competition is tough, but we are still very much needed.
A Japanese Spanish translator
www.goihata.com

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