Untranslatable Things

Untranslatable Words: words or phrases – okay, concepts – that are some of the most difficult to translate into other languages

Below is one category…more to come in the next few weeks…

Perfect Distillations Category
Words or phrases that sum up a concept perfectly

Fachidiot (German): Excessively narrow-minded technical expert.

Farpotshket (Yiddish): Something that is all fouled up, especially as the result of an attempt to fix it.

Attaccabottoni (Italian): A doleful bore who buttonholes people and tells sad pointless tales; literally, a button attacker.

Mokita (Kiriwina, New Guinea): A truth everybody knows but nobody speaks.

Mamihlapinatapai (Tierra del Fuego): Two people looking at each other each hoping the other will do what both desire but neither is willing to do.

Uovo di Colombo (Italian): A simple, obvious idea that doesn't occur to the person who could use it the most.

Kaelling (Danish): A woman who stands on her doorstep yelling obscenities at her kids.

Traer la lengua de corbata (Latin American Spanish): To be worn out; to be exhausted; literally, to have your tongue hanging out like a man’s tie.

L’esprit d’escalier (French): Used to describe the precise moment a person comes up with a clever retort to an embarrassing insult; literally, spirit of the staircase.

Nito-onna (Japanese): A woman so dedicated to her career that she has no time to iron blouses and so resorts to dressing only in knitted tops.

Faire du leche-vitrines (French): Window-shopping; literally, to lick the windows.

Take me out to the "BAL" game...

I was reading this article and it reminded me of how important proofreading is:

Majestic Athletic, the company that created these jerseys, creates all of the jerseys for Major League Baseball. They issued an apology here. To avoid national embarrasement, make sure you have a trustworthy proofreader!

Announcement!

I know I know, this might not be complete blog material - but LinguaLinx has announced the formation of its newest division. This division specializes in content authoring. Think of your LSP as a partner - we can help you write your content from day one, making the translation process easier for us and saving you money. It's a win-win situation. For more information, click here:

LinguaLinx Announces Formation of GlobalScript™

German Business Culture

In business, it is important to understand the cultural differences that affect the way business is conducted between people from various countries. In order to make sure not to offend or misinterpret clients or partners, cultural sensitivity is critical. The World Business Culture website outlines the ins and outs of 39 countries from a business culture standpoint and can be a valuable tool when dealing with unfamiliar environments. Below is a sampling of some of the more important similarities and differences between the ways German companies tend to operate compared with American companies.

Check out these "top ten" German Culture rules. For more rules, go here.

Top Ten Business Culture Rules:

1. Companies tend to be run by technical experts rather than lawyers and accountants.
2. Companies tend to have a strictly hierarchical approach within which individuals' specific roles and responsibilities are tightly defined and compartmentalized.
3. This results in what appears to be a distant and cold demeanor.
4. People are expected to contribute to the debate when discussions touch their area of expertise.
5. The greatest amount of respect is due to the person with the greatest depth of technical merit. Therefore, education is highly prized.
6. Relationships between bosses and subordinates tend to appear somewhat formal.
7. Direct speaking is seen in Germany as a sign of respect and a fundamental in the search for the correct answer.
8. Fact is the important issue and personal emotions should not deflect the truth from being spoken.
9. The perceived arrogance is more a misinterpretation of direct speech.
10. Instructions need to be clear, precise and above all unambiguous.

By Anthony Thornton, Intern Extraordinaire.

April Fool's Day treat

I found this blog called "Speak Media Blog" by JA Jones Consulting and today's post is about incorrectly translated marketing campaigns. I don't want to beat a dead horse (we've all heard these translation blunders), but I did want to post a few of my favorites:


1. Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."


2. Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" was read as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave" in Chinese by billions of potential consumers.


3. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as they did in the U.S., with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside because most people can't read.




For more, click here.


Happy April Fools Day!

DTP and Translation Memory

A couple weeks ago, Bill Kelts in Production wrote an introduction to Translation Memory (TM). With this post, I'd like to get into how TM affects your project on the publishing side.

Let's say we translated your sporting goods catalog last year. Here is how your top-selling product looked back then:


This year, however, you revamped the layout a bit and wound up with this:


Shouldn't matter, right? It's the same text, and it's already been translated, so we'll have 100% consistency, right? Not so fast!

How did your artist execute this runaround effect? Let's start by looking at last year's version, with all the layout marks visible in InDesign:


And this year?


Maybe the basketball graphic didn't have a proper clipping path embedded; maybe InDesign's "wrap to object" feature wasn't accurate enough; or maybe the person who did the layout doesn't know what either of those two terms even mean. Whatever the case, a TM tool does not perceive these as being the same sentences. In fact, they are so different the text in them won't even show up as partially leveragable "fuzzy matches," but as completely new text...potentially to be charged to you at the unique word rate.

Here's how the original and the altered text blocks look to a translation tool:


We went from one complete paragraph to 12 segments - with no text being recognized as repetitive or a close (fuzzy) match to text already in the TM. Repeat this problem throughout a 24-page catalog, and you've lost a lot of time and money. There is also a high risk of inconsistency between last year's catalog and this year's, which increases QA and revision time.

We in LinguaLinx's DTP department do everything we can to clean up files before they are run through the text-extract and translation process, but this takes time and adds production hours (and dollars) to the project.

In subsequent posts, I will address additional specific examples, as well as general strategies for creating localization-friendly layouts in InDesign and QuarkXpress.

Travel and translation

For some, traveling can be can be more hassle than relaxing escape - especially for those who don’t speak the language of the country they’re visiting. This can make even something as simple as asking for a restroom or bus station very confusing and intimidating.

In the U.S. alone more than 3 million citizens speak a language other than English, according to the 2000 Census. Think of all the untapped marketing resources! All that buying power being trapped by a language barrier! Translating and localizing travel materials can increase your audience; in this economic climate, who doesn’t need a larger audience?

This article by hotelmag.com gives tips for companies on tapping into the hospitality industry's revenue potential. The most important piece of advice they give is this:

“It is important to hire a reputable translation company that understands the semantics and nuances of different languages, specifically the language of your target country.”

Just remember, regardless of the industry or language, marketing materials should never offend the population you're trying to reach.