Monday, February 29, 2016

Language facts: Irish

Irish is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family. It originates in Ireland, and was historically spoken by the Irish, but today only a small part of the population speaks the language. 

Ring of Kerry, Ireland.
Source: DollarPhotoClub.com

Irish has status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland, it was voted an official language of the European Union in 2005, and it is recognized as a minority language in Northern Ireland. Irish is spoken as a native language only in parts of Ireland, mostly on the west coast. Native speakers are estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000.

An "emigrated" language

Due to various reasons, Irish language experienced a decline in use of such proportions that it almost stopped existing as a live language. The British rule as well as adopting English by the Irish catholic church and a good part of the middle-class was, interestingly, not the eventual catalyst of the Irish language decline – just some of the factors. The final "killer" turned out to be less ideological and in fact purely practical: during massive emigration of Irish folks to United States in the 19th century, speaking English simply ensured a greater variety of job opportunities (aside from farming). 

Irish as a symbol

In today's Republic of Ireland, Irish has largely lost out to English in common usage, but it remains a required subject of study in schools, while all official documents issued by the Irish government must be published in both Irish and English or only Irish. Since the 1920s, there has been an incline in use of the language (while it is considered by Irish themselves as having more of a symbolic, than practical value) and there are movements trying to promote Irish and its use not just in official communication.


Alphabet

A Á B C D E É F G H I Í L M N O Ó P R S T U Ú
a á b c d e é f g h i í l m n o ó p r s t u ú

Saturday, February 20, 2016

5 Facts to Glossary Use in Translation

Company terminology pushed through an entire enterprise, including all business communication, should be organized, saved, and continuously updated – and all crucial terms in your working language as well as all other languages your work in should end up in one or more Company-level glossaries (click here to learn more about why you need a glossary in translation). 

Source: DollarPhotoClub.com


If you have never peaked behind the curtain of professional, human translation – and we are explicitly excluding machine translation solutions because of liability issues – in technical translation, trying to understand “exact matches”, “terminology consistency”, “glossary maintenance” and such can be a taxing undertaking to anyone, while trying to understand “fuzzies” and “content matches” not to mention “200% matches” is probably gobbledygook to most of us.

In this post we will try to clarify the issues and underscore what’s important in the translation process. 


1. What does a glossary in translation cost? 
Done professionally, a glossary should not cost anything extra if two conditions are met:
a) It is done on the fly within the translation process, and 
b) you have already indicated which terms you want to add to the glossary. 


2. How many terms and expressions should be featured in a glossary? 

The size of glossaries vary, but typically a general glossary for a machine manufacturer would have around 500-1,000 entries, while glossaries for standard consumer products should have from 100 to 500 entries.

3. How to update a glossary in translation? 
We recommend running a check on your glossary to identify potential problems and areas to update. How often this should occur depends on product releases, but generally once a year, or when terminology changes are implemented.

A Glossary Review should be performed by professional linguists who correct and update incorrect entries and clearly indicate what has been changed and why.


4. How to maintain a glossary in translation? 
With a good glossary, translators and reviewers are warned by their CAT tools whenever a term is not used or a different one is used; glossary terms should only be ignored by stating a reason and if possible also giving a condition why a given term should not be used. These reasons and conditions should be collected in the form of a report and presented to the end client in the final delivery. This helps ensure consistent quality, and it will integrate with any ISO9001 undertaking to make sure all issues are documented – and it will guarantee your translated documents are up-to-date with company terminology.

5. Where to get a professional glossary in translation? 
Every competent language service provider should be able to create and process a glossary for you. If you do not have a language service provider available with this service, you can ask to GET A GLOSSARY CREATED HERE. We have the means and smart tools to create glossaries even from aids as simple as PDF files.

Friday, February 12, 2016

Language facts: Uyghur

Uyghur belongs to the Turkic language family and  is derived from Old Turkic language with its origins in Mongolia and Xinjiang. This is the autonomous territory in northwest China, sometimes also referred to as East Turkestan, or Uyghurstan (although actively discouraged by Chinese government), in historical context even Moghulistan – the land of Mongols where the descendants of Genghis Khan actually ruled. As a member of the Turkic language family, Uyghur is related to languages like Turkish, Azerbaijani, or Turkmen. Uyghur has somewhere between 10 and 15 million speakers nowadays. 

Muztagh Ata mountain and Karakuli Lake, Pamir Mountains, Kasgar, Xinjiang, China.
Source: DollarPhotoClub.com

Formerly known as Eastern Turkish, it is today a language spoken by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region where its status is that of official language. Uyghur is widely used in public life and in official settings as well as in print, radio and television. Apart from  Xinjiang, the language is spoken also in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia by Uyghur diaspora. 

Three different scripts

Generally, Uyghur has three main dialects, Central, Southern and Eastern, where the Central dialect is clearly the dominant one and spoken by 90% of the population. Like the other Turkic languages, it has vowel harmony. Uyghur has been influenced to a large degree by Persian and Arabic, and more recently also by Russian and Chinese. The Old Uyghur writing dates back to the fifth century and its writing system is based on the Arabic script. This writing system still dominates today, although Uyghur also can be written in two different Latin alphabets (classic Latin – Uyghur Latin Yëziqi, and a blend of Latin, Turkic and Pinyin* – Uyƣur Yengi Yeziⱪi – abandoned after 1982, when the original Arabic-based script was reintroduced) as well as Cyrillic. In Xinjiang, the Uyghur Arabic script is adopted as the official writing system, while the other alphabets are primarily used in areas outside Xinjiang. 

Alphabet


ا ئە،ە ب پ ت ج چ خ د ر ز ژ س ش غ ف ق ك گ ڭ ل م ن ھ ئو،و ئۇ،ۇ ئۆ،ۆ ئۈ،ۈ ۋ ئې،ې ئى،ى ي


* Pinyin = The official writing system for transcription of Mandarin pronounciation of Chinese characters into the Latin alphabet

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Navigating the translation mine field

To improve means to clean out mistakes, ambiguities and errors, essentially correct what is wrong – it could be our mistakes or incorrect proposals from your text memories.

Source: DollarPhotoClub.com



The translation process – at least in technical translation – these days closely interacts with use of custom software and "translation resources" – glossaries, translation memories and style sheets, even lists of prohibited words and more. It is getting to be an ever-more difficult process with demands from the obvious to requests that would seem extreme to the 'poor person' translating, and eventually the 'poor person' having to confirm that the translation is correct. Just like soldiers learn how to navigate through a mine field, in translation we have our own "mine fields" that we must manage.

A golden plate with errors

The map to potential errors after a translation project is finished is a Comprehensive Aftercare report – at idioma, we will be happy to issue such reports for projects we handle. 
These reports will tell you why we have dismissed glossar proposals (usually because of content), why a fuzzy match was ignored or why an exact match was changed.


Language is like a living being. There is no given translation for a given  text. Language is dynamic and for translation content can always change depending on content. With a professional human translator in charge, you can rely on the translation being correct – especially when it has been reviewed by a second human translator, which is compulsory at idioma. We do not deliver machine translations.

Submitting your web pages to machine translation platforms, for instance, will seriously affect your image, and the message to potential customers.

Ask!

If you are not convinced and if you have doubts about proposed translations, you can use our Ask! service – this is a free online language query service where you can submit questions regarding your translation issues straight to our professional translators. It can be used to question and comment content in your translated documents, or to simply request additions and amendments in a completed delivery. 

AfterCare reports on your projects

Our Aftercare with comments and recommendations from our native translators will help you keep your translations and translation resources error-free and in line with your needs and terminology. Not just for a single project, this care is thoroughly provided with every order you place with idioma. 
For more information, please contact our project managers.