Green Project? Green Translator!
When I read articles on the Internet that are posted in “green“ blogs or relevant coverage in the media I am always pleased to see how much the consciousness of European people has evolved since my youth with regards to the environment, organic food and green products. However, I can imagine that it is still a bold move for manufactures of organic or green products, who have secured their share in their domestic market with hard work, to expand their business operations into foreign markets. If they want to go into the German market they cannot possibly approach it with an English website and English promotional materials. Although a fair few Germans speak or at least read English they still won’t be very impressed if the supplier hasn’t taken the trouble to make life easier for them by communicating with them in German. Between those Germans who are put off and those who know no English a lot of business will be lost. Therefore, it is imperative to have all the marketing materials and websites translated properly and professionally.
But if the translator has no familiarity with the target market and/or no sympathy with “green” objectives how good will that translation be? What is needed is a “green” translator. Here is where I come into play. Although I am certainly not coloured green I do have a dark secret or, more accurately, a “dark green” secret!   
Back in the 1970s together with …
To read the full article on my blog – Johanne’s Translator Blog – please klick here
Machine Translation Tools and Discounted Rates …
Nowadays, the Internet not only provides access to the information we need but also offers the opportunity to have this information (sentences or even whole websites) translated into foreign languages or from a foreign language into one’s mother tongue free of charge. On the Internet you can find numerous free online translation tools, like the Google Translate and Yahoo Babel Fish translation systems, which you can use for a rough translation of a document to get an idea what this text is talking about.Â
However, even today’s most powerful and sophisticated translation software is not capable of even vaguely approaching the fluency of a native speaker or the accuracy and skills of a professional translator. Translation tools also throw up fundamental errors which a professional translator would never be prone to.
Â
Although these machine translations can be quite useful if you want to get an idea of the contents or information in a foreign language text, their translations are useless when you want to express yourself in a foreign language (like in a personal letter) or want to convey some business or personal information. For an automatic machine translation to be accurate is very difficult, if not impossible, because the meaning of words always depends on the context in which they are used and this is too complex for translation software. A translation tool like Google Translate sometimes provides some rather “imaginative” translations as for example:
The English sentence, “Don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today”
translated into German as, „Nicht die lange Bank geschoben wird, was Sie tun können, heute“ and this German translation translated back into English will then read, “Not long will be shelved, what you can do today.” …
To read the full article on my blog - Johanne’s Translator Blog - please klick here
If you want a free quote please click here
Further Training for Translators - how to become an Amateur Magician
Sometimes investing time and effort beyond an expected service does pay off in unusual ways. This happened when I was challenged with the translation of books on magic tricks for children which had been translated from several languages into English. As often happens with this kind of source material at best something had been “lost in translation” and at worst some sentences were completely mis-translated …
Read the full article on my blog - Johanne’s Translator Blog:Â Â Click here.
How to turn an English actor into a German in one week !
Sometimes I get an “emergency job” which really requires some resourcefulness on my part in order to come up with a feasible solution for the client’s problem. This was the case when a theatre group contacted me because they had decided – a week before the debut performance of their latest play which was set in World War Two – that it would be more effective to have the lines spoken by the German soldiers spoken in German rather than in English.
Unfortunately for them, not only did none of them speak German but they didn’t even have the faintest idea how to pronounce the simplest words in German. 
So they asked me whether it was possible not only to get the lines translated into German but also to have a phonetic transcription of the individual words so they would have a better idea of how to pronounce them. I had no problem with their request but very much doubted that, even with a phonetic transcription, the actors would be able to make the lines sound really “German”.
Actors often spend a great deal of time with a voice coach before they can convincingly express themselves as a “native speaker” of that language and not just sound silly (like the Irish-sounding Greeks in Oliver Stone’s film of Alexander the Great for instance). So I tried to come up with something better than phonetic transcription. Fortunately my partner is a musician and came up with the wonderful suggestion of recording me speaking the lines. He would then turn the recording into a good quality but small sized audio file that could be emailed. This would enable the actors to hear a native speaker speaking the lines and give them the opportunity to try and copy my pronunciation. I got in touch with the group and asked them whether they were okay with handling MP3 files. They were and they were delighted to get a recording of the lines as well as the written translation … and at no extra charge. If there were any Germans in the audience then I’m sure they would have been impressed that the actors were not just speaking English with dodgy German accents!
You can also find this article on my Blog - Johanne’s Translator Blog - if you have a moment come and have a look! Click here  Â