TranslationJM.com

We Speak Your Language

English
  • Home
  • Services
  • Free Quote Request
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / Archives for TranslationJM.com

TranslationJM.com June 15, 2017 Leave a Comment

Why should you use a professional translation service rather than Google Translate?

Technology unites the world, but language barriers still prevent free and easy communication. Luckily there are professional translators and interpreters who stand in as bridges across the language gap, and they can provide a useful and necessary aid to your multilingual needs.
Professional Translation
Using a translator not only includes a list of pros that outstrip the cons, it’s also a far smarter choice for global professional endeavors. While hiring a professional translator may not be the easiest decision for a strained wallet, receiving reliable, consistent quality work is undeniably a case of money well spent.

A professional translator’s fees are not only necessary (they need to make a living), it should also set your mind at ease. Charging for their work shows a dedication to the job that a free service cannot guarantee. By contrast, Google Translate is free to use by anyone whenever they wish, and this ease comes at a cost. There’s no guarantee the auto-translated work will maintain reliable consistency, or if it’ll even be coherent.

Being able to communicate and think critically also sets professional translators far above Google’s technology. Regardless of all the advancements made in technology, computer translations are still in their infancy. Choosing a professional’s service will ensure that you are working with someone who has a better understanding of your text’s needs, as well as the nuances required to best express it in another language. You can also explain to a translator what you’re trying to say and how you want to say it, but Google Translate can’t engage in a conversation at all–not yet, anyway.

Another good reason to choose professionals for your translating project is the reduced chance for embarrassing mistakes. A human translator knows both grammatical and colloquial expressions, and can fine tune a project to be natural and easy to read. Their experience in translating will ensure that your project is in capable hands by someone who devotes time into their work. Your translator’s focus and experience also enhance your project’s professional appearance and appeal to a global audience. Google Translate may be a good way to cross reference some words you already know, but it will be a few more years before computer translations can even compare to people who are not only trained to translate, but are dedicated to doing it well.

A professional translation service’s dedication isn’t the only thing to keep in mind: you should also be committed to your own. Choosing to pay for a professional’s talents helps you save face and avoid any embarrassing situations, especially if native speakers are going to be reading or listening to your work. If you’re looking to reach out to a foreign audience either for your business or creative endeavors on a global market, the last thing you want to do is show off a sloppy, unpolished message in their own language. First impressions leave lasting marks, so a little extra time paid to communication goes a long way, and helps cross the divide between language barriers.

Filed Under: Translation Tips

TranslationJM.com June 7, 2017 Leave a Comment

You should use an editing and proofreading service

Do I need an editing and/or proofreading service?

Almost without exception, the answer to that question is a resounding “Yes!” Although the two are often viewed as the same process, editing and proofreading are, in fact, two very different procedures.

Editing and Proofreading

Proofreading

Usually, proofreading occurs when the writing is complete and before it is submitted for publication or another purpose. This process focuses on obvious grammar and spelling errors, format and punctuation inaccuracies, syntax inconsistencies, and so forth.

No matter how brilliant the concept or innovative the subject matter, a publication that is fraught with misspelled words, poor grammar, or punctuation errors will lose credibility. Conversely, a publication that is free of these types of errors will appear more polished and professional and provide more credibility to the author.

Editing

Although the editing process usually involves proofreading, it goes far deeper than that. The editing process will analyze the overall article to determine how it will impact its audience. This means determining if the publication is appropriate for its target audience in content, language, and structure. The editor will provide recommendations for improvements that could be made to the content to enhance clarity or understanding of the document as well as content technicalities that may need to be addressed.

The Need For Both

Those who speak English as their native language may feel that their written document(s) don’t need improvement: This is fallacious thinking. No matter your education level or your proficiency with the language and/or subject matter, a fresh point of view from a professional can always provide new insight.

Using both editing and proofreading processes will provide the most polished and professional publication or document. Many professional editors and proofreaders have a PhD, a passion for the English language, and have specialized in one or more technical disciplines. This enables them to provide not only the best content and structure for a publication, but technical advice as well.

Whether the publication is for an academic paper, a peer-reviewed journal, a scientific presentation, a short story, or any other audience, there’s an editing and proofreading service available. A resume and cover letter that has been proofread and edited may provide the edge necessary to land a coveted job. Fine-tuning an essay for a college application may make the difference between acceptance and rejection.

Many online services will provide a cursory proofreading and editing for free or a nominal charge. For a more sophisticated analysis, many professional companies are available online with reasonable rates and a quick turnaround time.

Freelance proofreaders and editors are available but be sure to check their reputation before committing to one. Proofreading alone is less expensive than editing, but editing will yield a better document for publication. For more information on the proofreading and editing process, click here.

Filed Under: Translation Tips

TranslationJM.com June 1, 2017 Leave a Comment

Is Google Translate accurate?

Google TranslateGoogle Translate recently celebrated 10 years of existence. There’s no dispute that its accuracy has increased as it’s gone from supporting a handful of languages to more than 103, but how accurate is Google Translate today? Can you rely on the results when communicating with someone in a foreign language?

Neural Machine Translation: Google’s Latest Translation Technology

Google Translate and other types of translation software have come a long way in fluency by translating whole sentences at a time rather than translating piece by piece. This is important because the meaning of words can change depending on the context. With a broader context, Google Translate can determine the most relevant translation. From there, it actually rearranges and adjusts the translation to sound more like a fluent speaker using Google’s new Neural Machine Translation.

Announced in 2016, this update produces smoother translated paragraphs and articles based on a computer system that learns over time. Right now, Neural Machine Translation is in place for eight language pairs representing more than one-third of the world’s population and over one-third of Google Translate queries.

The new technology is so accurate, in fact, that researchers called the results “unsettling” in an interview with MIT Technology Review.

If you’re using Google Translate to translate to or from English and Spanish, French, German, or other languages that now use Neural Machine Translation, you can expect better translation results than before.

Where Google Translate Misses

As with any translation tool, there are still plenty of areas where mistakes will be made. For example, the tool still doesn’t have common sense so it can mistranslate a sentence like, “The glass will not fit in the box because it’s too big.” In this case, the tool doesn’t understand which “it” is too big. This can be a problem in languages like Swedish in which nouns have two articles: “en” and “ett.” Swedish requires that adjectives and definitive articles to agree with the noun, so “big” can be “stor” for an en word, “stort” for an ett word, or “stora” for a plural noun. Glass is an ett word (ett glas) but box is an en word (en låda). Google Translate may believe the box is the “it” that is too big and mistranslate “it” and “big.”

Another smaller issue you may run into is the words Translate suggests aren’t commonly used or they don’t quite capture the same meaning. Words may be considered synonyms and used interchangeably by Google Translate, but they certainly don’t have the same meaning. For example, “intoxicated” is a synonym for “happy” or “thrilled,” but it also has another meaning and it may not be the right word in the context of your sentence.

The best way to use Google Translate and get an accurate answer is to use simple sentences free of complex structure. Review your sentence before you hit the translate button. Have you used any slang? Did you use correct grammar and sentence structure? Are there any words or sections that may be unclear, such as the example above with the glass? It also helps to have at least some familiarity with the other language to spot obvious problems you can correct yourself or tweak in your original sentence to improve your results.

Filed Under: General

TranslationJM.com May 27, 2017 Leave a Comment

Create a Multilingual WordPress site

When creating a bilingual or multilingual WordPress site, there are numerous steps you will need to take to ensure that everything is translated properly. Whether you’re an experienced webmaster or someone that is designing their first website, here is a straightforward guide for running a bilingual or multilingual website with WordPress
Multilingual WordPress Site

Creating a Site with Multiple Languages

In the past, creating a multilingual website was an extremely difficult task to accomplish. While there are still some hoops you have to jump through in order to get your site working properly on WordPress, it takes much less time than it once did to get your multilingual site up and running. The essential aspect of any bilingual or multilingual site is a good multilingual WordPress plugin.

There are other methods that will allow you to forego reliance on a plugin, such as WordPress Multisite. However, these options weren’t specifically created for the creation of multilingual websites. Plugins allow for a streamlined approach to multilingual site creation. They also work wonders in keeping your posts and content up-to-date.

Using the Right Plugins

First, identify the multilingual plugin that you want to use. There are numerous plugins available to you, all of which have their own distinct advantages. WPML is likely the best bet, as it’s the most powerful plugin available. WPML allows you to easily run this type of site by providing you with a plethora of features that simplify the translating process.

With this plugin, you can readily translate all of your web pages, posts, menus, widgets and themes. This plugin is perfectly compatible with all themes and plugins from WordPress, so you don’t have to worry about it not working properly when adding content in the future. Other plugin options include Polylang and qTranslate, both of which are free.

Polylang is a great option, but it’s important to note that there is no accompanying installation wizard, so the initial set up of its features can be time-consuming. As for qTranslate, there are a multitude of features that comes with the plugin, all of which are designed around utilizing proprietary tags for translations. However, it can cause issues with your current content if you ever decide to deactivate it.

Translating Website Posts and Metadata

Once you’ve fully installed the multilingual plugin of your choice, it’s time to start translating the content of your website. This content likely includes more aspects of your site than you’re fully aware of, such as attachments and menus. The first portion of translation should focus on your posts. With a multilingual plugin, this process is simplified. The plugin settings should allow you to add the languages you want your posts to be translated to. With WPML, a screen will come up that lists your posts and allows you to translate them into any language you want.

Each translation will be made into a separate post, which allows for URLs for each one. Many posts of yours will also have metadata. This needs to be put through the multilingual plugin as well. Any info that’s been stored as custom fields in a post will need to be replicated for each translated post. Once you save these changes, the translated metadata will immediately be placed with the proper translated post.

Translating Attachments and Widgets

While the posts and metadata you’ve just translated make up the bulk of the content you need to put through the multilingual plugin, there’s still some work that needs to be done to have a fully operational bilingual or multilingual website. For any post attachments or images, it’s recommended that you replicate them for all translated posts. This can be essential to the layout of your website and theme.

To translate an attachment or image, upload the exact file to each translated post. This may take some time, but is a relatively easy process. As for widgets, these can be somewhat difficult to translate properly. The reason for this is that most plugins don’t come with built-in support for widget translations. In some cases, there’ll be no way around it, but to go in the plugins’ code to manually translate some strings.

One other possibility is to use the Widget Logic plugin, which will create a field alongside each widget, wherein text can be added that will allow for different languages.

This text should read ICL_LANGUAGE_CODE==en. The final en portion of the code should be changed to reflect the language you want the widget to be translated to, such as fr for French, de for German and es for Spanish. To have the widget be translated to all supported languages, leave this area blank.

Translating Menus and Themes

Any menus on your site should also be translated. This can be accomplished in much the same way as the rest of your site content. Various menus can be created for each language, all of which can be customized. WPML offers automatic menu syncing, which makes this step much quicker. When it comes to themes, most themes aren’t created with multilingual settings built in, which can make translation tricky. However, there are some themes available that support multilingual and bilingual sites, which may be your best option.

Plugin Installation That Allows For Switching Languages

Once the translation has entirely been completed, users will still need to be able to switch between content and page languages.

If you’re using WPML, just go to “Languages” and configure the switcher from there. It’s recommended that you make it to where the language switcher is placed in a sidebar on your theme, which makes it easy to access across all web pages.

However, if your website is larger than a blog, you might want to place the switcher in the header across all pages. To control where the switcher is placed, insert the code icl_language_selector into your theme’s layout. Once you’ve done all of this, your bilingual or multilingual website should be good to go.

Filed Under: General

TranslationJM.com July 24, 2015 Leave a Comment

Why you should transcribe your podcasts?

The profit potential of podcasting makes it an attractive medium for a variety of content creators. You don’t need millions of followers to make a decent impact and increase your listenership in the podcasting game if you know what you’re doing. Producing transcripts of your podcasts is one step that even some of the experts in the field don’t take the effort to make. This can seriously help your enterprise as you attempt to grow. Transcribing audio is a key ingredient in any successful podcast for a number of reasons.

Immediate SEO Ranking Benefits

Despite all the malarkey you may have been hearing lately about SEO being dead, the fact of the matter is that traditional SEO still counts. Google and Bing continue to scan and index text when figuring out which sites or pages should sit at the top of their SERPs. While their algorithms are increasingly dependent on social media signals and visual data such as video and images, the search engine heavyweights primarily rely on text. A transcript of your podcasts will help you to get found online.

Organic Backlinks Generation

Though text versions of your podcasts are a great way to augment your SEO strategy, they’re even better at getting people to do your SEO for you. By making your audio searchable and presenting it in written form, you’re making it far easier for other people to link to it from their own sites. When bloggers have quotable pieces of text to latch onto, they’ll create organic backlinks to your content if it’s relevant. Long story short, text transcriptions encourage followers to powerfully promote your podcasts.

Content Creation Possibilities

Transcribing audio from podcasts allows podcasters to increase their content offerings in a number of ways. For instance, one could turn podcasts into newsletters or email blasts. You could also create entire e-books out of podcast content and sell it for a few bucks on Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Transcripts can also be edited to create blog posts or articles. Ultimately, the possibilities for re-purposing audio content into new formats are limited only by your imagination.

Superior User Experience

Nowadays, providing a great user experience for podcast and website followers alike is the name of the game if you want to get ahead. With so much content to choose from online, podcasters will suffer if they don’t include transcripts of their episodes. Some listeners can’t give their full attention to audio for whatever reason and like to follow along via the written word. Providing transcripts puts followers in the driver’s seat and allows them to consume your content on their terms.

Add-On Monetization Options

Another great thing about producing transcripts of podcasts is that they can be used to make extra money. For instance, you could distribute your text transcriptions around the web and pop in affiliate links that center on appropriate anchor text. Those links can produce income for years to come if you play your cards right. You could also insert links back to a subscription service like a paid email newsletter within your text as you see fit. Either way you slice it, transcribed podcast content can be monetized in a variety of creative ways.

Enhanced Social Media Marketing

While streaming audio services are ubiquitous on the Internet, they don’t exactly lend themselves to social sharing. Transcripts are a far better way to promote a podcast on networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+. For instance, you could select choice quotes from every podcast that’ll pique the interest of potential listeners and post them to your social media profiles. By spreading text from your transcripts around the broader social media sphere, you can draw in far more followers and build hype. Transcripts or at least excerpts are just one more way to advertise.

A Boost in Perceived Reputation

Nowadays, consumers have learned to be very discerning when it comes to which podcasts they patronize. What’s more, podcasts have become increasingly polished and professional over the years. Even a lone podcaster without a studio can put out a great product for the cost of a hundred bucks worth of audio equipment. Lacking a well-edited transcript of episodes can make your podcast look amateurish and potentially scare off new listeners.

Getting Started with Transcription

In the end, transcribing podcasts is fairly straightforward and well worth the effort. Some programs like Dragon Dictation, Transcribe and Express Scribe can help you do it yourself. As great as those programs are, they’re not infallible. The most important step when running audio through a transcription program is to go through and manually edit it for formatting and spelling, assuming the program was fairly accurate in the first place. Another option is to use a professional transcription service like the one we offer here at TranslationJM.com. A real human will transcribe your podcast for you and deliver it in its finalized format. When you consider the cost vs time benefits, using a professional service often makes financial sense.

One last thing, once you have your transcripts, be sure to prominently display links to transcripts for each episode that you upload to the web.

Filed Under: General

TranslationJM.com December 28, 2009 Leave a Comment

Vancouver’s Olympic Games to be Bilingual

Thanks to New Brunswick that is. New Brunswick’s Government announced earlier this month that they will help with the translation from English into French of all the Vancouver 2010 Games documents. They pledged $60,000 to a non-profit group, Sport New Brunswick, to provide with the translation.

One would think that Quebec would have been a more logical province to come forward with such an offer. Still, New Brunswick (Nouveau-Brunswick in French) is actually the only bilingual province in Canada per their constitution. Quebec, for its part, is the only Canadian province whose (sole) official language is French. Canada has two official languages, English and French of course, so it makes a lot of sense for the Games to be bilingual.

Filed Under: News

TranslationJM.com December 28, 2009 Leave a Comment

Toshiba Develops a Trilingual Translation System for Mobile Phones

A story from PC World announces that Toshiba has developed a cell phone version of their PC translation system which translate between Chinese, English and Japanese.

The software uses a speech recognition method that uses one of two systems: statistical machine translation or rule-based machine translation. According to the article, tests provided fairly good results, although they state that the system is prone to misidentify some words, which in turn causes bad translations.

You can read the full article here.

As we wrote before, we’re not big fan of machine translations here; however, we do applaud the technical advances that have been made in the past years in this field. Google, for instance, is pouring a lot of energy in their Google Translate feature, and it seems that with technological advances coming from every corner of the world, accurate machine based translations could be something of a not so distant future.

Filed Under: News

TranslationJM.com March 20, 2008 3 Comments

The SEO Aspect of Country-Specific Domain Extensions

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a familiar term to almost anyone who owns and operates a website – especially a website that is used for business. This is what puts your business in front of internet users and what keeps bringing in new customers; however, some website owners make the mistake of only focusing on Meta tags and keywords during their SEO efforts. On the contrary, there are actually many aspects of Search Engine Optimization that should be considered when one is marketing a website. One such important, and often overlooked, consideration is a country-specific top-level domain extension.

Why These Extensions Make For Good Business

When you are trying to attract an international audience, a good way to do so is to translate your website into (at least) a few of the most often used foreign languages around the globe. But in order to attract as many international customers as possible, you need to take this strategy a step further by attaching the translated website to a URL containing a country-specific top-level domain, a TLD, extension.

Consider this: Each country has a customized form of Google just for them, such as www.google.co.uk for internet users in the United Kingdom. As expected, many internet users from foreign countries, especially those not fluent in English, are likely to utilize the Google search engine specific to their country (as opposed to the one found at good ‘ole www.google.com). This is for two reasons:

  1. These country-specific search engines are more likely to feature websites written in a user’s native language. This means that internet users in a non-English speaking country won’t have to wade through a bunch of English-based websites just to find what they are looking for, in a language that they can easily understand.
  2. They can find relevant content, which is targeted directly at them, and nearby merchandise vendors with greater ease. Many times those of us from English-speaking countries can forget how alienated non-English speakers can feel when searching a World Wide Web of English-based content. It can be a much friendlier place when all the articles that pop up are in your own language.

The frequent use of these county-specific search engines is just one of the many reasons why using a country-specific top-level domain extension is an essential component to targeting an international audience.

There are also two important SEO-related benefits that you gain from when using this kind of domain extension: these domains will be ranked higher than normal dot-coms in country-specific search engines and the owners of these domains will then have the opportunity to be included in exclusive county-specific website directories.

Ranking Higher in Country-Specific Search Engines

The ability to rank highly in country specific search engines is one of the best methods for growing a large international customer base. Although you can get a normal dot-com name ranked and included in country-specific search engines, you will likely not get the kind of results that you expect. This is because country-specific search engines give greater priority to those websites that use the two-letter top-level domain extension specific to their country, which will produce friendlier search listings for internet users in that country.

Of course, as with any search engine (no matter what language it serves), the higher your website ranks, the more “hits” you are likely to receive. This raises the percentage of interested buyers who will land on your page, which will result in more sales and a higher ROI; all equaling a larger profit for your business. It is also the first step to international brand awareness for your company.

Inclusion in Exclusive Country-Specific Web Directories

Having a country-specific top-level domain extension also gives you the eligibility to be part of exclusive country-specific web directories, where one of the main requirements for inclusion is that you use the two-letter top-level domain name extension specific to that country. Many people in foreign countries choose to use these web directories in place of English-language directories for the same reason they choose to use search engines that are specific to their country: because it results in friendlier search listings for internet users in that country.

Inclusion in these directories is a great way to be discovered by customers from around the world who use these directories to find what they are looking for and to again rank even higher with search engines, since they place greater value on websites that have been accepted into their web directory. It may also help get your websites indexed by these search engines more quickly. All the additional benefits of English-based website directories still apply, including the SEO benefits that come from these one-way links and customized anchor text, as well as the marketing and budget benefits of free, targeted website traffic.

Failure to use a country-specific top-level domain extension for your translated websites may result in slower international growth for your business. The practice of giving your translated websites a country-specific top-level domain extension should be as important to your business as any other SEO strategy. Then, and only then, will you be able to target and receive the type of international attention that your company needs to flourish in a global market place.

Filed Under: Translation Tips Tagged With: seo, tld, top-level domain extension, translation

Navigation

  • Home
  • Services
  • Free Quote Request
  • Testimonials
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact Us
  • Work with Us

Copyright Protection!

Areas of Expertise

  • Web-Based Companies and Start-Ups
  • IT, Computer and Technical Related Fields
  • Legal Translation
  • Resume/CV & Cover Letter
  • Gaming and Gambling
  • Montreal Translation Services
  • Freelance Translators Opportunities
  • Upload

All rights reserved © 2023 · TranslationJM.com

Copyright © 2023 · Log in