As the U.S. Hispanic population continues to grow in size and influence, knowledge of Spanish is quickly becoming a more crucial skill for Americans. To that end, an interactive program is being launched at select schools to test out a new model of Spanish language instruction. With the aid of specialized software, students are able to study the language at home on their own computers. The software provides a personalized approach to learning that combines reading, writing, listening, speaking and vocabulary building. Some activities require the student to orally describe pictures or photos while others involve written communication in Spanish, and the software will not allow the student to progress to the next exercise until the current lesson has been satisfactorily completed. The program provides an incentive to students to study a foreign language because many perceive it to be easier and more enjoyable than traditional classroom methods. If the pilot program is successful, the language-learning software will be introduced to schools around the country.
Latinos and the 2012 Elections
As the 2012 U.S. elections draw ever closer, some candidates scramble to curry favor with influential Latino voters while others have dismissed the Hispanic vote altogether. However, the impact of the Latino vote in this year’s elections cannot be ignored by those seeking office, as Latino voters’ say at the ballot box will make or break competitive Senate races and decide who ascends to the office of president (or remains there) for the next four years.
The flexibility of the Latino vote means that this crucial demographic could swing either way politically in this year’s election. Most Republican candidates have firmly taken an anti-immigrant stance, and many of the party’s key priorities fail to resonate with Latinos. Nonetheless, President Obama hasn’t come through on important campaign promises to the Hispanic community and has, in fact, distanced himself from many in the demographic by increasing the number of deportations.
Immigration is the key issue for Latino voters. A recent poll conducted by Univision News revealed immigration reform as the number one concern for registered Hispanic voters, followed closely by jobs and the economy. Even when voters find that they agree with a candidate’s take on economic issues, they are less likely to vote for that candidate if he supports restrictive immigration policies.
In spite of a tremendous push to register Latino voters in 2008 and 2010, only some 60% of Latino adults are registered to vote, in comparison with 70% of blacks and 74% of whites. So, while the Latino population is experiencing dramatic growth, the influence of the Hispanic demographic on the 2012 election could be even greater than expected if voter registration drives result in more Latinos on the rolls.
The Latino community is engaged and energized ahead of these elections. Organizations such as The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and Mi Familia Vota are working hard to register every eligible Latino voter and to encourage Hispanic turnout at this year’s election, which is predicted to be 25% higher than in the previous presidential election.
Trends in the Global Translation Market
Companies and multinational corporations operating in the global market require translation services for many aspects of their business. Marketing materials, websites, help forums, compliance documentation, technical handbooks, and human resource manuals all require language support. To meet demand, departments routinely contract with various translation service providers from around the world; however, in light of budget constraints and corporate belt-tightening, perhaps this isn’t the most sensible approach.
The independent market research firm Common Sense Advisory released new data that confirms the benefits of centralizing language services with one trusted provider. Using this approach can lead to decreased costs and faster times to market for greater volumes of translated material. The firm conducted a survey with 226 respondents at international companies that purchase translation services. In spite of global economic concerns, the majority of these firms reported that their translation spending had increased from 2010 to 2011.
Key findings in the report “Translation Performance Metrics” include:
- Translation costs are extremely small in comparison to the revenue they create. Virtually all companies noted that their translation costs fell well below 1% of total revenue.
- Key industries are spending more on translation services. Spending increased by more than ¼ in the financial services, health care, manufacturing and insurance sectors.
- The budget for translation services correlates to the size of the firm. The majority of companies anticipate an increase in their budget for translation services. Firms with revenue in excess of US $10 billion expect the highest percentage increase (31.1%).
- There’s an upward trend in project size and the number of languages. Large translation projects consisting of one million words or more increased across almost all industries. The organizations that participated in the survey estimated that ¼ of their projects would contain a million or more words by the year 2012. In 2009, projects of 10,000 words or less were translated into an average of 16 languages, with predictions for 2012 estimating some 20 different target languages.
For more information, visit Common Sense Advisory.
Five Term-Search Resources for Translators
Sometimes even seasoned, professional translators come up short in the hunt for a tricky term. Here are five resources available on the Internet where you can search for translations of terms or discuss terminology with fellow translators. Remember: Seek, and ye shall find.
ProZ.com offers a searchable database of personal glossaries and an archive of questions previously posed by fellow translators. If your search there yields no clues, take advantage of KudoZ, a forum that allows you to pose a question to colleagues in your language pair who can lend a helping hand when the proper translation of a term seems to elude you.
In addition to this site’s extensive dictionary offerings, WordReference also features an excellent forum that translators can turn to with questions. The forums there are quite active, but if an answer doesn’t seem forthcoming, the moderators often chime in and help.
With a similar set-up to that of ProZ.com, TranslatorsCafé provides a forum for translators to discuss challenging terminology with colleagues. TCTerms allows you to take advantage of collective wisdom when you’re really feeling stumped.
Although Linguee lacks the interactive/conversational features of the other sites, it’s still a valuable term-search resource for translators. Linguee, the combination of a dictionary and translation search engine, hunts for a match to your query from among assorted texts culled from professionally translated websites and sources in the public domain such as EU documents and patent specifications. Unlike the results provided by a machine translation tool such as Google Translate, every entry that appears in the Linguee dictionary has been translated by humans.
Sometimes contributors can be slow to respond in a translation-specific forum, which is why Twitter can be a valuable resource when you’re in a real pinch. Thousands of translators participate in the conversation on Twitter, so if you’ve taken the time to get to know some of them, you can pose questions to colleagues and receive responses, sometimes in mere seconds!
The Meaning of ‘Morfar’
Argentine Spanish is strewn with words and colorful phrases from Lunfardo, a rich vocabulary born on the streets of Buenos Aires in the second half of the 19th century. Now considered a fixture of the Spanish language in Argentina (especially in and around Buenos Aires) and Uruguay, linguists cite the use of Lunfardo as a defining characteristic of the Rioplatense dialect.
In Lunfardo, the word “morfar” means to eat, especially in a hearty, voracious or gluttonous manner. Other possible informal English translations of the word include to get some grub, to get some chow, to chow down, to devour, to wolf down, to gobble (down) and to scarf (down).
In soccer (football) slang, morfar can also be used to indicate that a player hogs the ball.
It’s said that the verb “morfar” stemmed from the French slang word “morfer” meaning—not surprisingly—to eat, although it’s highly likely that both the French and Lunfardo terms arose from the Italian dialect word “morfa,” meaning mouth.
Related words in Lunfardo:
noun morfi: food, grub, chow
noun morfón: glutton, pig, hog
Usage example: Ese chabón es un morfón, se queda con la pelota. // That guy’s a ball hog. He keeps the ball for himself. (He never passes the ball.)
Éstos van en limusina y no tienen para morfar. // These guys ride around in a limo, but they’ve got nothing to eat.
The song Yira yira by the popular 90s Argentine rock band Los Piojos features the word “morfar” in the lyrics.
Cuando rajés los tamangos
buscando ese mango
que te haga morfar
la indiferencia del mundo
que es sordo y es mudo
recién sentirás.
Verás que todo es mentira
verás que nada es amor
que al mundo nada le importa
yira, yira…
Aunque te quiebre la vida
aunque te muerda un dolor
no esperes nunca una mano
ni una ayuda ni un favor.
The High Cost of a Bad Translation
Pay now or pay later. In the world of translation, this saying certainly rings true. Some translation buyers—more concerned with the bottom line than with quality—look for the cheapest translation possible without considering the potential fallout from a translation done for a rock-bottom price. A poorly translated text could tarnish a company’s hard-won corporate image or negatively affect sales, but, in the worst-case scenario, a bad translation could lead to injury or even death.
Translation buyers wooed by low-budget translations don’t always realize that they’re likely sacrificing quality for price. Cheap translations are often performed by inexperienced or unqualified translators or those who hope to garner more clients by translating into languages other than their mother tongue. Some translation buyers bypass human translators altogether, opting to plug their text directly into online machine translation tools such as Google Translate. The results of translations by rookie translators, non-native translators and machine translation tools can be disastrous in certain situations.
The following types of translations require the utmost care and should never be left in the hands of a second-rate translator or a machine translation tool, as doing so could invite catastrophe:
- Sales and marketing texts requiring both linguistic and cultural understanding
- Patent translations or other technical literature where accuracy carries great importance
- Medical and pharmaceutical texts, particularly when such information may mean a matter of life or death
- Legal texts such as contracts, court orders, and wills, where any error in the text may have profound legal implications
- Any text that represents the public face of your business or organization, including websites, brochures, manuals, etc.
Companies work tirelessly to cultivate a particular image, but the results of that hard work can evaporate quickly with just one major gaffe. Websites marketing products and services can’t afford to take a lax approach to linguistic blunders. According to an article published by BBC News, UK-based online entrepreneur Charles Duncombe found that “an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half.” It makes one stop to think about the potential impact of error-free yet awkwardly-expressed language, or text that flows and works well in one country and culture, such as Spain but not in others, such as Mexico or Argentina.
Inexperienced translators and machine translation tools also lack the ability to fine tune the text based on cultural nuances. The success or failure of a print ad or online marketing campaign rides on the text’s ability to connect with the target audience, and culturally inappropriate aspects of a translation will stick out like a sore thumb to native speakers. Regardless of the technological advances made, machine translation will never learn to pick up on the cultural undertones and subtleties at play in language. Jokes, idioms and wordplay are largely lost on tools such as Google Translate, which fail to capture the “flavor” of the text.
It’s worth mentioning that bad translations can have an impact on more than just the company’s bottom line. Inaccurately translated testimony in a court case could lead to an undeserved conviction; a translation error on a prescription drug label could have life-threatening consequences for a patient; and badly translated instructions in a machine manual could spell injury or death for a factory worker.
Businesses and organizations that prioritize their investment in a high quality translation of their documents, website, etc. project an image of professionalism and integrity, and they ensure the health and safety of those who rely on the company’s products or services.
STATS: English, Spanish and Portuguese on the Internet
English, Spanish and Portuguese comprise three of the top five languages on the Web. Let’s take a look at some statistics reflecting these languages’ influence on the Internet.
English
- Number of native English-speaking users on the Web: 565.0 million (as of May 31, 2011)
% of English-speaking Internet users with respect to total population of English speakers: 43.4% - User growth from 2000 to 2011: 301.4%
- Percentage of total Internet users: 26.8% (Overall ranking among top 10 languages: #1)
- % of websites available in English (as of December 31, 2011): 56.6%
Spanish
- Number of native Spanish-speaking users on the Web: 165.0 million (as of May 31, 2011)
- % of Spanish-speaking Internet users with respect to total population of Spanish speakers: 39.0%
- User growth from 2000 to 2011: 807.4%
- Percentage of total Internet users: 7.8% (Overall ranking among top 10 languages: #3)
- % of websites available in Spanish (as of December 31, 2011): 4.6%
Portuguese
- Number of native Portuguese-speaking users on the Web: 82.6 million (as of May 31, 2011)
- % of Portuguese-speaking Internet users with respect to total population of Portuguese speakers: 32.5%
- User growth from 2000 to 2011: 990.1%
- Percentage of total Internet users: 3.9% (Overall ranking among top 10 languages: #5)
- % of websites available in Portuguese (as of December 31, 2011): 2.0%
A quick analysis of the numbers points to the following facts that translation buyers should be aware of:
» Figures show that there’s still a great deal of room for growth among all three languages, in terms of the number of users and the amount of content available. Although English leads the charge as the “language of the Web,” not even half of all English speakers are on the ‘net, and Spanish and Portuguese lag even farther behind. As the economic outlook continues to improve in Latin America and Brazil, user growth among speakers of Spanish and Portuguese should be particularly strong.
» Despite an explosion in the number of Internet users among the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking populations over the last decade, access to content in those languages remains severely limited. Those businesses looking for a competitive edge will invest in translations of their web content into Spanish and/or Portuguese.
Statistical data courtesy of Internet World Stats and Wikipedia
More information on the English Language
More information on the Spanish Language
More information on the Portuguese Language
How to Handle Client Feedback about a Translation
As the great Latin proverb reminds us, To err is human. Inevitably, there will come a time when – in your capacity as a professional translator – you will make a mistake. On the flip side, clients may demand changes to your translation or, worse, ask for a literal translation of the text, in which case maintaining the integrity of the translation while keeping your client happy may pose a significant challenge. Learning how to deal with clients in a diplomatic fashion in either of these scenarios is an important skill for translators.
When a mix-up, error or disagreement occurs, consider applying the following three rules:
1) Own up to the error;
2) Tell the client you’re sorry;
3) Try to make things right.
Additional points for dealing with client feedback:
» Never respond to a client in anger or frustration. It’s easy to fire off a nasty email or phone call when you’re in the heat of the moment. Take a few hours to collect yourself (or wait until the following day) before addressing the problem.
» Ask the client to point out the specific problem areas in the translation. It’s difficult to improve upon your work if the client doesn’t offer examples of quality issues.
Keep in mind that clients (even non-native speakers) who are well-read on the translation’s topic will likely have intimate knowledge of the vocabulary used within a particular field; in this case, the client’s feedback about terminology may well prove to be valuable. However, when the client insists on changes that badly mangle the translation, politely and gracefully point out that you’re a professional linguist, trained to craft natural-sounding, readable text for native speakers of your language. In situations where the client’s changes are stylistic and do not affect the quality/correctness of the translation, it may be best to bow to his or her preferences.
» Don’t take business issues personally. Stay calm and professional, and try to place yourself in the client’s shoes.
» In some cases, when you simply can’t see eye to eye with your client, the best course of action may be to part ways. Not all clients are a good fit.
Found in translation: 2011 a year of word acceptance for slang, social media
Even in the realm of words, 2011 has been a revolutionary year.
Indeed, some words that originated in the spontaneous and unorthodox social media have been finally accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which is by far the most formal dictionary of the English language.
So, slangy words like LOL and OMG are now enjoying the same privileges as businesslike initials that were accepted a long time ago, like FYI and ASAP. That is what I call a linguistic democracy.
The list of words recently accepted by OED, as of December, contains compound nouns that certainly reflect our current times. Take for instance “abatement notice,” “adaptive expectations,” “adult child,” “cyber-bully,” “worried well,” and “zero emission.”
Under the form cyber, the dictionary even listed “cyberfriend,” “cyberlover” and “cybersnob.” All these sorts of sidereal words explain the acceptance of another word also quite alien like “abhuman,” which means partially human. Then, next to “adultlike,” there is this other intriguing word “adulticide,” which I wrongly assumed as related to the killing of adults, by that I mean humans, but the dictionary defines it as “an agent used to kill the adult forms of a pest or parasite.”
This year’s linguistic openness has apparently brought 400 new words into the OED. As its chief editor John Simpson proudly announces, there are over 102,000 new and revised entries “and counting” since March 2000.
More spicy words like “sexting” and “mankini” have also been recently added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. However, I could not find them when I searched the online version of the OED.
What I did find is the addition of more Spanish words.
So, along with words already widely accepted in the English language, such as bonanza, corral, mucho, patio, sombrero, and torero (which my computer does not underline as I write them), new words have been added, like “abundante cautela” (extreme caution), “abuela” (grandmother) and “abuelo” (grandfather).
Curiously, two more words have been included only in their female form, such as “abuelita” (dear grandmother) and “gordita” (little fat woman).
Believe it or not, “gordita” is an affectionate nickname quite common in Latin American countries. Why? Well, food is not a stigma when hunger remains a social issue.
Among the 400 new entries of 2011, we also can find old words with new meanings. That is the case of “bruising,” “charger,” “speculate” and “warrant.”
I wonder when “occupy” will join this list of new senses. Without a doubt, this verb has lost all naivety after Occupy Wall Street and its different variations appeared this year in the urban American landscape.
By the way, there is a rural version of this movement in my own country. As I am writing this column, thousands of farmers in northern Peru are occupying a series of lakes in the Andes, at more than 12,000 feet above sea level, to defend their rights to water against a mining project.
Yes, 2011 has been a turbulent year with plenty of raised fists and even pepper sprays. But while claims and chants might come and go, some new words and meanings are here to stay.
Alessia Leathers is a Peruvian journalist and a published writer. She moved to Cape Coral in 2003.
Ten Keys to Success as a Freelance Translator
The ultimate key to profitability for any freelance translator is to assemble a core group of steady clients who will keep you busy with quality projects. Follow these tips to find success.
1. Stick to deadlines
Clients need to know that they can rely on you to deliver a project on time. If you can’t meet the deadline for a project, don’t accept it.
2. Follow instructions
While you likely have your preferred way of doing things, if a client gives you specific instructions for a project, follow them. Clients will take notice and send more work your way.
3. Value your clients’ time
It’s important to clarify doubts about a project with the client; however, you should make an effort to keep emails or phone calls brief and on point. Respect your clients’ time as much as you respect your own.
4. Be easy to contact
If clients can’t contact you right away, they’ll simply get in touch with another translator. Place your full contact information in your email signature, and put an auto-responder on your email if you’ll be away from your desk.
5. Be friendly and accommodating
Go the extra mile for regular clients. Show your customers that you value their business.
6. Seek out constructive criticism
Request feedback about your translations from your regular clients to determine where changes to your work flow can be made.
7. Don’t take clients for granted
Freelance translators’ success lies firmly in the relationship with their regular customers. Consider a small gift for clients at the end of the year as a token of your appreciation.
8. Don’t quarrel
If a potential client offers you an extremely low rate for a translation, courteously decline the project. There’s no need for negative or insulting comments.
9. Refer colleagues
Don’t be afraid to recommend trustworthy colleagues who work in your language combination when you’re too busy to take on a project. You’ll get your client out of a jam, and colleagues will likely reciprocate when they find themselves in the same position.
10. Charge clients what you’re worth
Give clients a high level of service, and they’ll be willing to pay what you’re worth.
