Language facts: Czech

With our production center based in Prague, Czech is after English and Japanese one of the most used "in-house" languages at idioma. 

Prague – Capital of the Czech Republic – view from the castle
(source: DollarPhotoClub.com)

More popular as appears 

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers. "Čeština" (= Czech), is the name derived from a Slavic tribe of Czechs that inhabited Central Bohemia in former days. Today it is the official and main language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide (especially by immigrants in the USA, Canada, and Ukraine). Czech is similar to and mutually intelligible with Slovak, due to mutual history and decades of being a common republic: Czechoslovakia. Even today, many books or films distributed in Slovakia come with Czech, rather than Slovak translation or dubbing. 

Various internationally significant artworks in literature and music (especially opera) were originally written in Czech – Dvořák's Rusalka, the works of Alois Jirásek, Bohumil Hrabal and many more.

Since the integration of the Czech Republic into the European Union, Czech has also become an official EU language.

"Strč prst skrz krk!" (stick a finger through a neck)

Czech is considered one of the hardest languages for foreigners to actively master, due to overcomplicated grammar, as well as tricky pronunciation. Some words, for instance, do not have vowels, such as zmrzl (froze solid), ztvrdl (hardened), scvrkl (shrunk), vlk (wolf), krk (neck), prst (finger) or smrt (death) and more. There are actually tongue-twisters based on consonant-only words, such as "strč prst skrz krk", frequently used by Czech wives late in the evening to check their husbands' alcohol intake.  :)

Czech also features the consonant ř, a phoneme that is said to be unique to the Czech language and that is problematic to articulate even to some native Czechs. 

Alphabet:

A Á B C Č D Ď E É Ě F G H Ch I Í J K L M N Ň O Ó P Q R Ř S Š T Ť U Ú Ů V W X Y Ý Z Ž a á b c č d ď e é ě f g h ch i í j k l m n ň o ó p q r ř s š t ť u ú ů v w x y ý z ž

Are you sure about your Quality Assurance?

Quality in translation is not only a matter of presenting a correct translation free from spelling mistakes and other linguistic errors. It is also about using correct terminology from glossaries, making sure text in the document is unified and that rules and customs for the language have been respected.

Quality can suffer in many ways. Short deadlines, for example, affect the outcome of quality in translation especially with large volume projects. How can we speed up delivery without compromising the quality of translation? This became our mission years ago.

Check record volumes in record time

An obvious solution is to check documents more than once, however, when humans check text, they have limited capacity, get tired and make mistakes. We wanted to find a different, complementary and automatic solution, so we could check more languages and bigger volumes in less time. It should detect mistakes like wrong numbers, untranslated text, misspelled words, unification issues, etc. So we put many brains together and with the help of our in-house programmers we developed a unique QA (Quality Assurance) concept that checks bilingual files for errors in record time. The main tool is CrossCheck™, a cornerstone in a comprehensive concept forming a framework of quality that all translations must adhere to. 

Quality assurance at a whole new level

CrossCheck™ interface

CrossCheck™ departs from the need to develop glossaries, e.g. from existing translated bilingual data such as PDF files, website text, etc., and prepare language-dependent style guides for translators and verifiers working on projects. 

CrossCheck™ checks documents according to detailed client-specific criteria and resources that can include client glossaries and customized style sheets. This way, we create a standard that everyone must respect to enable us to produce unified and consistent translations with a clearly defined level of quality. If glossaries and style guides do not exist, we will be happy to help prepare them, and we also assist with client preferences, such as forbidden words and other issues. These contents prepared for the QA concept are automatically integrated in our production system. This QA concept has taken quality assurance to a new level, especially thanks to inclusion of morphology and locale settings. With CrossCheck™, terminology and language rules become compulsory ingredients in the translation and verification process. 

FREE QA for everyone!

idioma’s QA service is, however, not limited only to the projects we translate. We also offer it as an aid to our clients and anyone else wanting to assure the quality level in translated documents. 

Visit www.idioma.com today to test it yourself.

For more information about the QA service, please contact

your project manager.

35 years of idioma!

idioma started out on a small scale in 1980. The company was set up by a Swedish entrepreneur, Joel Brynte. Our first office space consisted of two modest rooms in then Sweden Center in Tokyo, Japan. I recall we were a core of 7-8 people, mostly translators. Our first clients were in the AV industry, which at the time was taking off with export of all kinds of VCRs, tape recorders, Walkmen, etc. All products needed manuals, promotional material, etc. and the main export markets at the time were the United States and West Europe. This has of course changed. Now the entire world is the market for Japan’s consumer products.

Typewriters and one very lonely fax

But at the time, things were different. There was no Internet, there were no mobile phones, and fax machines were just around the corner. 35 years ago, translation was done on typewriters writing on tracing paper – we had a few machines in the office, while freelance translators in those days had to invest in expensive electric typewriters that cost more than what you pay for a decent laptop today. Some of the better typewriters had a correction feature where you could easily “lift off” a typo with correction tape, although it was time consuming. When electronic typewriters saw the light of day, it was actually possible to type a full line on a green display, you could then correct typos easily by stepping back, then print the full line by hitting Enter. What a productivity boost!

I think we got our first fax, a Ricoh G3 unit about a year or so later. It was as big as a fridge, had heavy paper rolls and sticky toner you literally had to pour into a container in the machine. Handling toner was a dirty job. That first fax sat unproductive for a very long time in the beginning. Since hardly anyone else had a fax, we had almost no one to communicate with. When we finally did receive faxes, the black toner somehow got glued to the paper more or less in the right place, later when the received fax documents got too old, the toner tended to fall off making the documents close to illegible.

Who needs internet when you have motorcycles!

Because there was no Internet or other easy ways of communication, to serve clients better we created our own motorcycle messenger service. This sped up deliveries and instead of waiting for a letter in the mail, clients in the metropolitan area of Tokyo and Yokohama could now get deliveries within a few hours. Like our sales people, the messengers also had pagers, small units you could call with a phone. They would beep, and the paged person would then look for a public phone and call back.

We continued to expand from day one, the office still in Sweden Center in the Roppongi district of Tokyo got bigger, translation volumes increased and the need for more languages also increased. In the 80’s, technology also started to take off. To help communication, we witnessed the advent of computers. We invested in bulky CPM computers with green CRT monitors, but no hard disk drives. Translation was done using the WordStar word processor application (the spellchecking feature was a godsend!), data was saved on floppy disks, and soon it became possible to use acoustic couplers to send data over telephone lines, but the line had to be noise-free.

An acoustic coupler – everyone had to
be quiet for transmission to succeed
source: Wikipedia.org

By the mid 80’s, idioma was indeed a very hi-tech operation and with an acute need for more translators. That’s when we set up our first office in Europe, but that’s a story for another time.

Sanyo MBC-1000 computers had 5” floppy disks to store data
source: old-computers.com

Steen Carlsson

Managing Director

idioma sro

Happy New Year from Atago Shrine!

Our Tokyo staff had lunch together on their last day of work at Toranomon before the New year and here's a little photo report! 

After lunch we were very close to the famous Atago Shrine http://www.atago-jinja.com/

So we had a visit to thank you for a good 2014 and wish a prosperous New year. 

Atago Shrine, on top of Atago Mountain - the tallest mountain in Tokyo, has one of the most steepest Tokyo stairs. 

You can actually see the steepness of the stairs so you can also imagine that the climb was quite tiring after lunch. 

You may not believe it but these stairs have been climbed on horseback 3 times. There are also stairs made for women and children which are not that steep.

The Shrine is in the middle of metropolitan area so you can witness the contrast between Shrine and the city.

There are many little shrines in Atago area, as well as unique Japanese yard with shrine in water.

Fortune papers are tied all around to wish good luck (O-mikuji). It's kind of like a horoscope, or better said like throwing a coin into a wishing well or fountain. The tradition was supposely started by Ryogen (warrior monk). 

There are even small wooden fortune plaques (Ema) where people write their wishes and hang them for good luck. It can vary from wanting to pass a test, to get married, to have a healthy child, etc. . 

For us, it says "All the best in 2015!" :)

Language facts: Japanese

Federico Fellini said, that a different language was a different vision to life. While we cover over 70 languages at idioma, we can only agree with that statement. Each language has its history, specifics and flavors and we're here to inform you about it regularly in the Language facts.

Tokyo / source: iStock

Did you know Japanese uses four "alphabets"?

Japanese (Nihongo in Japanese) is spoken by around 127 million people in Japan, plus a couple of million people outside of Japan. It is of course the official language of Japan, but it is even an official language of Angaur (island nation of Palau). Japanese is not directly related to any other language even though it does share a lot of characters with Chinese. It uses four writing systems: kanji, hiragana, katakana and romaji. Hiragana is syllabic and is used for simple words, conjugations, particles and children's literature. Katakana is used to write foreign words. Kanji is based on the Chinese writing system and has about 2000 basic signs, but there are thousands more. Romaji is a Romanization of Japanese words, basically relying on the letters in the Roman, or Latin, alphabet, used e.g. for company names, logotypes and text entry of Japanese text into computers. 

Japanese translation specifics

Japanese has borrowed many words from the Indo-European languages, primarily English, and even made up terms that a native English speaker would never understand, especially in the line of business we are in: Technical Translation. The Japanese term for such "borrowed" words, especially from english, is Gairaigo (外来語).

Would you ever guess that ハフコン [hafukon] is a reference to 'half-concealed' wipers", while リモコン [rimokon] means 'remote control'? Or that ペンション (pension) should actually be translated as a 'a guest house'? Because Katakana can be very ambiguous, sometimes it is hard to determine how to translate a given term. "Hose" and "Hawse" for example are both written as ホース in Japanese.

There are many, many more where translators have been pulling their hairs for days, even weeks. Combining this with other peculiarities of the Japanese language – such as where the subject in sentences is often omitted – makes translating Japanese text into other languages a true undertaking.

Japanese alphabet:

Hiragana (ひらがな)

あいうえおかきくけこさしすせそたちつてとなにぬねのはひふへほまみむめもやゆよらりるれろわをん　がぎぐげござじずぜぞだぢづでどばびぶべぼぱぴぷぺぽぁぃぅぇぉっゃゅょ、。 

Katakana (カタカナ)

アイウエオカキクケコサシスセソタチツテトナニヌネノハヒフヘホマミムメモヤユヨラリルレロワヲン　ガギグゲゴザジズゼゾダヂヅデドバビブベボパピプペポァィゥェォッャュョー 

Kanji examples

自動, 計算, 費用, 納期, 即時, 提示, 天気, 管理, 健康, 旅行, 料理, 鍋

Romaji examples

We love Japanese!

Celebrating Lucia in Sweden

Lucia processions in Sweden
(source: Wikipedia)

Tomorrow in Sweden we celebrate Lucia. Together with advent, this is a popular celebration and the harbinger of yuletide and the Christmas holidays. Held every year on December 13th, Lucia celebrations start early in the morning, very early for some, and continues throughout the day until late evening.

Traditional Swedish Lussekatter
(source: DollarPhotoClub.com)

Girls with cookies and crown of lights

If you visit Sweden on this very date, you are bound to witness Lucia processions throughout the day. Each procession is led by a young girl with a crown of lights; they used to be candles, but for practical reasons electric ones are more popular. The procession then includes Lucia girls and boy attendants. Their number vary but each one carries a candle or light in their hands. The name Lucia originates from the Latin lux or lucis and means “the light one”. They are the bearers of light, and this is possibly one reason why Lucia is so popular – in deep winter daylight is scarce, in the north of Sweden people have daylight for only around four hours every day, sometimes less.

The Lucia girls and boys are dressed in white and sing Christmas songs for everyone watching, including the Santa Lucia, which originates from Italy. They also bring Lussekatter ("Lucia buns" often made with saffron) and other traditional cookies with them for everyone to enjoy.

Lucia everywhere

At home, those with children will often have a mini procession in the morning to wake up dad and others. In schools, there are usually processions with volunteer pupils, and most companies, eldercare centers, hospitals and other public facilities arrange Lucia processions to put everyone in a festive mood. Some processions turn into concerts in churches and other public venues.

At idioma in Gothenburg, there is also an annual Lucia procession, however, this year because Lucia is on a Saturday, the procession was instead held on December 10, and the people there are now in a festive Christmas mood....so let's better get back to our translation and localization business :)

Sad singles in Japan and fishes in Czech bath tubs

As a multinational company, we encounter with many different winter traditions as well as multicultural approaches to Christmas. While our Prague office went off the chain this year and has been decorated in a very festive Christmasy way since the beginning of Advent, our colleagues in Tokyo are preparing for the Japanese New Years celebrations instead, having a white cake and the traditional KFC bucket for Christmas dinner... Wait - what??

KFC, illumination and Mariah Carey

Traditional Japanese Christmas cake
(source: Dollar Photo Club)

Since the 1970s, it has been a tradition for Japanese people to indulge in  KFC during Christmas, no matter how surprising and weird  it may sound to Europeans or Americans. Foreigners back in those day couldn't get their Christmas roast chicken so they went to KFC. The chain saw this as a good marketing opportunity and indeed, eating a fried-chicken-bucket has been a traditional thing since then in Japan. In fact, the Japanese version of Christmas seems a bit like a concentrate of all the western glitz and glamor multiplied by 10 :) You hear Mariah Carey everywhere and of course Wham!'s Last Christmas is an eternal hit. On Christmas Eve, the majority of Japanese people annually buy and eat a cake with fruit and icing. Also illumination is a big thing during Christmas in Japan.

Interestingly, Christmas is a season for couples in Japan, not families as in Europe or the States.  Couples  get together during Christmas, exchange presents and eat at expensive restaurants. It's not a good time for being single on Christmas in Japan – many singles feel sad because couples are together virtually everywhere (this yearly pleasure of single people is reserved for Valentine's day on the other side of the world). There are even social gatherings for single people looking for a partner during the Christmas season. On the other hand, New Years is the time for family gatherings in Japan.

Fishes in bath tubs, lead pouring and angels everywhere

idioma Prague office -
Christmas decoration making

On the other side of the globe in Prague, central Europe, the Christmas radio set list matches with Japan, however that's pretty much the end of resemblance. Czech Christmas traditions are tightly bound to religion and Christian customs, however due to cultural impact after the fall of communism several before unknown elements have been adopted. The decoration of the idioma Prague office is self-evident in this regard with a Christmas tree decorated with straw adornments and angels, the Advent wrath, pine branches with hanging chocolates and Christmas socks, local special Christmas incense sticks called "Frantisek", bells over the front door and pieces of cinnamon all around the place.

In the Czech republic, Christmas is a purely family event. It is literally the one time of the year when all members of the family should gather for a common Christmas dinner, exchange gifts, settle conflicts and enjoy each others' presence. Because of this, Christmas is also the busiest time of the year in the majority of Czech kitchens.
Christmas pastry as well as traditional Christmas dishes are rather complicated and usually prepared several weeks in advance. Traditional Czech Christmas Eve dinner usually consists of a cabbage soup, potato salad and baked or fried fish (carp being the prime choice). Interestingly, it is still a preference and also strong-lived custom in Czech families to buy the fish alive and keep it in the bath tub until the feast comes. The kids love it. Poor fish. At the right moment, the fish is ritually killed (usually by the head of the family – the father, although a lot of fathers opt for the less brutal alternative and go out and buy ready-to-eat  fish filets or even fish fingers).

Poor Czech Christmas carp
(source: Dollar Photo Club)

Another remarkable Czech custom, and also fathers' responsibility, is the lead pouring. The head of the family pours liquid lead into cold water to create a solid shape to recognize. The imagination is very important here, as it is said that the lead shape predicts the family future. We decided better not to risk this tradition inside our office :)

So that's how winter and Christmas work in Japan and Czech Republic. For fascinating winter tradition in Sweden, wait for our next blog. Until then, you can admire these delicious Czech Christmas sweets!

(source: Dollar Photo Club)