Coca-Cola recently released an advert on vending machines here in New Zealand that featured both Māori and English text with the copy reading “Kia Ora, Mate”. However, Coca-Cola’s attempts at appealing to Kiwi culture fell flat, as the English word “mate” is also the Māori word for ”death” or “sickness”. If you look at the advert as a Māori text it reads “Hello, death”, which is not exactly the message they were trying to get across. Social media users on Twitter were quick to point out the error, with some even making the tongue in-cheek suggestion that Coca-Cola were playing off the health risks associated with a high sugar diet, and its links to obesity, as a marketing opportunity. A spokesperson from New Zealand based Coca-Cola Amatil, issued the following message: The Kia ora is in obvious reference to our New Zealand heritage through our indigenous Maori language, and the term ‘mate’ is a commonly used English phrase for friend. The two words were only meant to bring Maori and English together, nothing more. In no way was the term ‘mate’ in reference to any Maori word. This avoidable incident highlights the cross-cultural issues that can arise when working between languages. In this case there was no actual mistranslation, and it is easy to see how this message would have passed the various approval stages that marketing campaigns go through. Issues like this are always possible when you are unfamiliar with the language and culture you are communicating in. If you have any concerns about how your message will be received let us know. Our team can highlight and advise of any potential issues and make sure the joke is not on you.

At NZTC International our work goes beyond simple written translations. We offer services as diverse as courtroom interpreting, multilingual design, WordPress website translations and cultural consultancy to name just a few. With the rise in the use of video for marketing and communication, we are doing more and more multilingual video work. One question that comes up time and again is what is the difference between closed captions and subtitles? Here we answer that question. Subtitles – these are the written text of the dialogue that is heard in a video. This dialogue could be the words spoken by a character, narrator or other speakers. Subtitles assist in making a video accessible to speakers of a different language. Closed captions – here the dialogue is also provided in written form but other audible components are also provided in written text. This could be written descriptions of things such as the background noise, music playing and so-on. Closed captions assist in making videos not only accessible to speakers of a different language but can also assist in making videos accessible to deaf or hard of hearing viewers. With subtitling there is an assumption that the viewer can hear the background noises and therefore doesn’t need these sounds described via written text on-screen. Closed captions make the assumption that the viewer cannot hear these sounds and as a result needs them written out in text form on the screen. If you are creating videos for a non-English speaking audience, get in touch with us today - we can help you achieve the best and most efficient multilingual solution for your content. Email sales@nztcinternational.com

Pilar was born in Iquique, a small town in the North of Chile. She is a native Spanish speaker and has been with NZTC for almost two years. She is a journalist with strong communication skills, having specialised in marketing and social media. Pilar also has a Diploma in Cultural Events, a combination that has made for a varied and colourful career. While working at a well-known radio station in Santiago as a journalist, she was in charge of a music programme. She also spent time with an events company and while there helped produce a carnival of music, dance and theatre in the coastal city of Valparaíso. In 2004 she was involved in the meeting of the 21 members of APEC at locations throughout the country. As Anglo Manager for Warner Music in Chile she developed many marketing plans for artists in various cities. Not long after that, Pilar moved to live to United Arab Emirates for five years with her husband Marco Martinez, who was posted there as a Diplomat for the Embassy of Chile. While there, Pilar became a mother of their two children, Tomas (now 6) and Magdalena (4). They enjoyed a very cosmopolitan lifestyle in the Middle East, but on an earlier working holiday to New Zealand, the couple had already fallen in love with this country. When Marco Martinez received a posting to the Embassy of Chile as Deputy Head of Mission, the couple were delighted to have a second chance to get to know New Zealand even better. Pilar says their children quickly became proficient in English – “they are better speakers than we are now!” she jokes. In fact she has just written an article on the challenges for parents in bilingual homes, helping their children maintain both languages well. She enjoys New Zealand’s wildlife and exploring the beautiful landscapes. “We really loved visiting the Waitomo caves and Taupo region and we’re looking forward to seeing more of the South Island. It reminds us a lot of Patagonia in our home country.”

Aquí repasamos un poco de la historia del cine chileno y te contamos cuáles son sus imperdibles.

Para los cinéfilos amantes del séptimo arte, hoy les voy a contar acerca de Chile y la industria del cine, que en la última década ha tenido un crecimiento sostenido, logrando importantes premios como el Óscar a la Mejor Película Extranjera el 2018 con “Una Mujer Fantástica”.

Este país tan remoto ubicado en los confines de Sudamérica, se inició en la industria del cine allá por el año 1910, cuando se realizó el primer largometraje titulado “Manuel Rodríguez” de Adolfo Urzúa, posicionando al cine chileno como uno de los de más larga trayectoria del continente.

Diversas temáticas han cobrado vida en la pantalla grande. Desde documentales que retratan episodios de nuestra historia nacional, como “Salvador Allende”, “El caso Pinochet”, “La batalla de Chile”, “Portales la Última Carta”, hasta la aclamada película “No”, protagonizada por Gael García Bernal y dirigida por Pablo Larraín, que le significó a Chile su primera nominación a los premios de la Academia en el año 2013.

En esta cinta, se aborda la campaña publicitaria del plebiscito de 1988, y narra la historia de un joven publicista que luego del exilio en México en plena dictadura militar de Pinochet, regresa al país para participar en la dirección de la campaña del No, que finalmente fue todo un éxito y significó el retorno a la democracia.

También su riqueza y diversidad cultural han servido de inspiración para llevar a la pantalla grande historias de nuestro afamado poeta y Nóbel de Literatura Pablo Neruda (“Neruda”, 2011 dirigida por Pablo Larraín) y de la gran folclorista y cantautora nacional Violeta Parra (“Violeta se fue a los cielos”, 2011) dirigida por Andrés Wood y que recibió el Gran Premio Internacional del Jurado en el Festival de Sundance.

En el género comedia, nuestro país también ha logrado destronar a blockbusters de la industria internacional, imponiendo éxitos de taquilla en los cines nacionales con “El Chacotero Sentimental” (tres historias de vida sacadas de un famoso programa radial), “Stefan vs Kramer” (2012) la película más vista en la historia del cine chileno (una parodia a personajes de la política y espectáculo, del talentoso humorista Stefan Kramer).

Otros filmes que han logrado imponerse en la taquilla son las comedias “Que pena tu vida” (2010) la primera de la trilogía de Nicolás López y una de las primeras películas que logró entrar en Netflix; y recientemente, la cinta “Sin Filtro” (2016) comedia de equivocaciones interpretada por Paz Bascuñán y que ya tiene su versión española titulada “Sin Rodeos” (protagonizada por Maribel Verdú).

El cine chileno en los últimos años ha logrado posicionarse como una industria en alza, con guiones novedosos, directores de gran calidad y actores de renombrada trayectoria.

En 2016 un cortometraje dirigido por Gabriel Osorio y Patricio Escala dio la sorpresa y logró adjudicarse el Oscar al Mejor Cortometraje Animado por la cinta titulada “La historia de un oso”.

Pero sin duda que nuestro mayor logro, ha sido ganar el Oscar a la Mejor Película Extranjera en el año 2018, con el film “Una Mujer Fantástica”, dirigida por Sebastián Lelio y protagonizada por Daniela Vega.

La cinta relata la desventuras de una mujer transexual, que tras la muerte de su pareja, se ve enfrentada a las críticas y desprecio de una sociedad que no acepta las diferencias de género, sin duda una temática contingente y que abrió un candente debate en nuestro país.

El desarrollo de la industria del cine chileno ha abierto una oportunidad no tan solo para directores, guionistas y actores, sino que también para directores de fotografía, de vestuario, de publicidad, de doblajes, sonidistas, vestuaristas y compositores.

Si quieres conocer un poco más de nuestro cine chileno, algunas de estas cintas pueden ser encontradas en Netflix: “El bosque de Karadima” (2015), “Que pena tu vida” (2010), “Fuerzas especiales” (2016), “Sin Filtro” (2016), “Stefan vs Kramer” (2012). “La once” (2014), “Redentor” (2014), “Portales la última carta” (2010), “El verano de los peces voladores” (2013), “Miguel San Miguel” (2012).

Por Pilar Cepeda

Fuentes:

http://www.t13.cl/noticia/entretencion/Las-10-mejores-peliculas-chilenas-de-los-ultimos-10-anos

http://www.cinechile.cl/crit&estud-510

https://www.radiozero.cl/noticias/cine-y-series/2016/05/diez-peliculas-chilenas-que-puedes-ver-en-netflix/

A quick primer on the history of Chilean cinema and a few must-see tips. The last ten years have been a period of sustained growth for Chilean cinema, and the local industry has been garlanded with such major prizes as the Oscar for Best Foreign Film for 2018's "A Fantastic Woman". In far off South America, the first Chilean first feature-length film was “Manuel Rodríguez”, made by director Adolfo Urzúa in 1910, making Chile home to one of the oldest film industries on the continent. A variety of stories have been brought to life on the Chilean big screen. From documentaries dealing with historical episodes, such as "Salvador Allende", "The Pinochet Case", "The Battle of Chile", "Portales, The Last Letter", to the acclaimed feature "No", starring Gael García Bernal and directed by Pablo Larraín, which gained Chile its first Oscar nomination in 2013. "No" tells the story of the 1988 referendum through a narrative centred around a young publicist who has returned to Chile from exile in Mexico at the height of General Pinochet's military dictatorship to take a leading role in the "No" campaign, the eventual success of which led to the re-democratisation of the country. Chile's abundant and variegated cultural heritage has also been a source of inspiration. The 2011 film "Neruda", also directed by Pablo Larraín, told the story of celebrated Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda. "Violeta Went to Heaven" (2011), directed by Andrés Wood, which tells the story of Chilean folk-singer Violeta Parra, won the World Cinema Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival. As for the comedy genre, Chile has managed to dethrone some international blockbusters with box-office hits in national theatres such as "The Sentimental Teaser" (three life stories taken from a famous radio show) and "Stefan vs. Kramer" (2012), the most viewed film in the history of Chilean cinema (it’s a parody of political and entertainment characters, by the talented comedian Stefan Kramer). Other films that have left their marks at the box office were the comedies "F*ck My Life" (2010), the first of a trilogy by Nicolás López and one of the first Chilean films on Netflix; and more recently, "No Filter" (2016) a comedy of errors starring Paz Bascuñán which as remade in a Spanish version entitled "Empowered" with Maribel Verdú in the lead role. In recent years Chilean cinema has managed to position itself as a rising industry, with innovative scripts, high quality directors and successful actors. In 2016 a short film directed by Gabriel Osorio and Patricio Escala caused a sensation by winning the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for "Bear Story". Without a doubt, Chile's greatest cinematic achievement was winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2018, with "A Fantastic Woman", directed by Sebastián Lelio and starring Daniela Vega. The film recounts the misadventures of a transsexual woman, who, after the death of her partner, is faced with the criticism and contempt of a society that does not accept gender differences, a hot-button issue that opened a heated debate in Chile. As the Chilean film industry has developed, opportunities have opened up for all kinds of film professionals, from directors, writers and actors, to directors of photography, costumes, advertising, dubbing, sound artists, costume designers and composers. If you want to know a little more about the cinema of Chile cinema, here are a few titles that can be found on Netflix: “El bosque de Karadima” (2015), “F*ck My Life” (2010), “Special Forces” (2016), “No Filter” (2016), “Stefan vs Kramer” (2012). “La Once” (2014), “Redeemer” (2014), “Portales, The Last Letter” (2010), “The Summer of Flying Fish” (2013), “Miguel San Miguel” (2012). Pilar Cepeda Sources: http://www.t13.cl/noticia/entretencion/Las-10-mejores-peliculas-chilenas-de-los-ultimos-10-anos http://www.cinechile.cl/crit&estud-510 https://www.radiozero.cl/noticias/cine-y-series/2016/05/diez-peliculas-chilenas-que-puedes-ver-en-netflix/

Irish (or Gaelic as it is commonly referred to) is one of two official languages of the Republic of Ireland. The languages position as an official language of the Republic of Ireland is enshrined in the Irish constitution. Irish is also officially recognised as a minority language in Northern Ireland. While the language has experienced a decline in speakers over the centuries Irish holds great importance in Ireland for cultural, historic and linguistic reasons. While readers may be familiar with some of the commonly spoken Irish phrases such as fáilte (welcome), dia dhuit (hello), conas atá tú (how are you) and so on what they may not be familiar with are some of the fascinating facts about this deep and historic language. 1) Irish is one of Europe’s oldest living languages – Irish is an Indo-European language. This means that the Irish language takes its roots from the earliest human languages spoken in the Middle East

2) Irish has a massive 1.77 million speakers in Ireland – the Republic of Ireland has a population in the region of 4.7 million people. According to the 2011 census almost one in three people in Ireland speak the language.

3) The Gaeltacht; Irish speaking region - this is the name given to the Irish speaking regions in Ireland which are mainly located on Irelands west coast. Here you will find road signs and other public information in Irish. This is a must visit for any language lovers coming to Ireland.

4) It’s spoken in Ontario, Canada – Ontario has historical links to Ireland and the Irish language through the Fenian’s in the 19th Century so it is somewhat unsurprising that it is now home to Gaeltacht Thuaisceart an Oileáin Úir (or the North American Gaeltacht); the only Gaeltacht that exists outside Ireland.

5) Official European Union language – in 2007 Irish became an official language of the European Union and they are often on the lookout for Irish language translators and interpreters.

6) There is no word for “yes’” in Irish – Commonly “sé” is used for this word but it directly translates as “it is”

7) Boycott, brogues, galore, gob and hooligan – just a selection of the commonly used English words that can trace their origins to Irish

8) Irregular verbs or lack of them – Irish only has 11 irregular verbs (while English has over 80!)

9) Numbers – the words for numbers are different depending on if you are counting humans or non-humans.

10) An Coimisinéir Teanga – similarly to the Maori Language Commission An Coimisinéir Teanga are tasked with promoting and safeguarding the Irish language.

11) Latin alphabet – while Irish uses the Latin alphabet it leaves out j,k,q,v,w,x,y

12) Endangered – while Irish is widely respected and celebrated in Ireland and beyond according to UNESCO the language unfortunately is “definitely endangered”

An international, multilingual conference can provide myriad opportunities for putting one’s foot in it. Humour, for example, does not always translate easily, so if you are attempting to lighten the mood with a quip in your keynote speech, it can be good insurance to consult a professional interpreter or translator first to ensure that hilarity in one language isn’t met with confusion or blank stares in another. The use of puns, elaborate or extended metaphors, and local slang is better avoided altogether.

Different languages have different approaches to gender and pronouns, which can make translation interesting at times. While French and German insist on genders for all nouns, and having the adjectives agree, English does not. So far, so simple for English speakers. But where things get trickier in English is when pronouns apply to an entity/person with a biological gender. In these non-binary, gender diverse times, “he” or “she” don’t always suffice. One makeshift solution is to apply “they”, “them” or “their” to people who identify as neither male nor female. That can work to a point, but they are plural pronouns, which can start getting tricky when precise meaning is required. There are plenty of alternatives being used within transgender or “genderqueer” communities, such as ne/nem/nir/nirs/nemself, ve/vir/vis/verself. None of these trip off the tongue and it’s unlikely they will broaden into general usage any time soon.

Nonetheless, issues of gender and gender neutrality are becoming more prominent as are discussions about diversity – all of which may present some interesting new challenges for translators!

Singapore, May 2018 – In May 2018, GCBG moved its HQ back to Singapore. This is a homecoming of sort for the alliance as GCBG was formed and registered in Singapore back in 2009.

The decision to move the corporate HQ to Singapore was made during the AGM in London in 2017. The partners unanimously agreed with this strategic decision as it is a step forward for the alliance.

The current chairman and a founding member of the group, Mr. Nickson Cheng, CEO of Lingua Technologies International, Singapore, said: “Moving the HQ back to Singapore is a return to the roots of GCBG. The group is now in a position to review its past objectives and set future goals for the alliance. This will definitely open new doors for everyone involved.”

Mr. Young-Kwon Tae, the CEO of Prolangs, South Korea, one of the founding members of GCBG said: “Not only is Singapore in a strategic position to coordinate activities amongst its members, it is also in a time-zone where it can communicate with all its members with ease. The financial and IT infrastructure in Singapore is also one of the best in the world making future transactions and communication seamless.”

Another founding member, Mr. Werner Lierz, the CEO of Kocarek, Germany, echoes the sentiments of the other members: “Since the inclusion of our Argentinian partner, GoGlobal Consulting, GCBG has spread its reach yet again, effectively covering almost all continents of the world. This move is not only strategic but also necessary.”

The CEO of NZTC International, New Zealand, Ms. Liz Seymour said: “We are all excited about how the move will change the dynamics of the alliance in a positive way. We are already working closely with the members from the alliance and we are quite sure that this strategic move will be a catalyst to future collaboration.”

The new kid on the block of the alliance, GoGlobal Consulting from Argentina is also in agreement with the move. Ms. Gabriela Rosello, CEO of GoGlobal Consulting said: “We are proud to be associated with GCBG and the location of the HQ of GCBG in Singapore will allow us to tell our clients of our representation in Asia. With the growth of Asia, this will be more than a plus point for all of us in the alliance.”

It didn’t take too long for computers to learn how to beat humans at chess. By the late 1980s they were already bitting and byting human players all around the board. The final victory of machine over mind came in 1997 when the supercomputer “Deep Blue” gave world chess champion Garry Kasparov a run for his money.

Extending that achievement into the area of automated translation has proven a much tougher proposition, however. The intricacies of chess strategies are mere tiddlywinks compared with the subtleties and nuances of language.

The first serious attempts to automate translation started in the 1950s, when a translator-free future was thought to be just around the corner. It didn’t work out.

Information technology made big leaps and bounds over the following three decades and in the 1980s statistical machine translation (SMT) was born. It uses large volumes of data to construct specific language pairs and was the idea behind Google Translate when it was built in the early 2000s.

The technology has been refined and improved since then, but the hoped-for quantum leap to a fully automated and reliable translation system has yet to materialise. Human translators have still had their hands full “post editing” machine-translated text.

But there is a new kid on the block that might take humanity a step closer to automated translation.

Neural machine translation (NMT) uses the same starting point as its predecessor, SMT, but this technology builds on its experience as it goes along. This “self-learning” makes the technology far more flexible and able to cope with the inconsistencies and diversions of any language.

The output of NMT is said to be more natural sounding and easier to edit than the sometimes clunky output of its predecessors. It is able to translate the semantic meaning of entire sentences, rather than cobbling together individual words and phrases.

This is a big step forward, but there is a way to go yet. NMT still processes only one sentence at a time, so can’t yet take the wider context – let alone knowledge of the world – into account. And the system sometimes randomly adds or omits chunks of text for no apparent reason. In fact it’s not fully clear how NMT teaches itself, something that is simultaneously scary and exciting!

For now, the technology is in its infancy, but it definitely has its feet under the desk as the world’s biggest IT companies (Google, Microsoft, Facebook) start to work out ways to apply it.

It will not be replacing human translators any time soon, but we are watching developments carefully because NMT could bring some fundamental changes to what we translate and how we do it. The future of automated translation may well have arrived, but automatic translation requiring no human input definitely has not.

Four of the world’s top five most translated texts feature strongly Christian themes – reflecting perhaps an enthusiasm for “spreading the word” about Christianity to other nations and cultures.

But tucked away in that top five is an unlikely contender. The Adventures of Pinocchio: The tale of a puppet, written by Carlo Collodi and published in 1883, has been translated into a whopping 260 languages. It is second only to The Bible as the most translated text of all time.

Those in recent generations may be most familiar with Disney’s uplifting and somewhat sanitised animated version of Collodi’s tale, released in 1940. The original is a dark and meandering story in which our hero is variously robbed, kidnapped, stabbed, whipped, starved, jailed, punched and burned. The author was no fan of mischievous small boys and his puppet character serves as their proxy, regularly suffering the consequences of his lying, treachery and laziness.

In fact there are strong moral messages contained within The Adventures of Pinocchio, so perhaps it is not so out of place among the top five most translated texts after all. And whatever version of the story you prefer, the good news is that our hero comes out of his scrapes more or less in one piece!

For the record, the top five most translated texts are:

The Bible – 460 languagesThe Adventures of Pinocchio – 260 languagesWhat Does the Bible Really Teach? – 250 languagesThe Pilgrim’s Progress – 200 languagesThe Watchtower – 195 languages

This week is Samoan Language Week so I had a look in Google to find out about themed weeks. I learned that the correct term is not “themed week” but “awareness week” and that, in addition to several language awareness weeks, New Zealand also enjoys “Teach a Kid to Sew Week” and “Grandparents’ Week”, among others. Internationally, there are some excellent awareness weeks. There is a world-wide one called “Money Week”, which I have made a mental note not to miss out on in future. There is also something called “Idiopathic Hypersomnia Awareness Week”, designed to raise the profile of Idiopathic Hypersomnia – a goal which it has apparently failed to achieve if this author’s own awareness is anything to go by. The US celebrates “National Dairy Goat Awareness Week” in June (“local observances during that week include demonstrations of goat milking and hoof trimming, and goat obstacle courses”). The UK celebrates “National Map Reading Week” in October - but I still haven’t managed to figure out where the actual observances take place. I also found mention of something called “Fix a Leak Week” (but you didn’t hear that from me). Some of these weeks are indubitably better than others, and Samoan Language Week, known in Samoan as “Le Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa” is, without question, the best awareness week of them all. Primary and secondary schools are involved, as are tertiary institutions and universities, public libraries, churches, social clubs and community groups throughout the country. Best of all, the focus is on the glorious Samoan language, known for its singular sonorousness and its infungible centrality to the splendid culture of Samoa and its industrious diaspora. It turns out that Samoan Language Week started in 2007 (in New Zealand; the Australians caught on in 2010). It was first promoted by Radio Niu FM along with a number of other Pacific language weeks leading up to Māori Language Week (which dates from 1975, in case you were wondering). Since then it has been promoted in schools by the Association for the Teaching of Samoa in Aotearoa, FAGASA Inc. (Fa’alapotopotoga mo le A’oa’oina o le Gagana Samoa i Aotearoa (FAGASA)); since 2009, FAGASA and the New Zealand Human Rights Commission have partnered with other organisations to extend the week to the wider New Zealand community. So who speaks Samoan? Well, Samoans, obviously, and most of them live (in descending order of population) in Samoa, the United States, New Zealand, American Samoa and Australia. The language is not endangered – it is flourishing – and does not therefore require the kind of promotion that Idiopathic Hypersomnia and obstacle course-navigating goats do. So why the awareness week? Well, according to the Human Rights Commission website, the goals of the week include: • Speak your language: use the language, at home, at work, everywhere; • Celebrate the Samoan language and culture in New Zealand and globally; • Promote the teaching and learning of the Samoan language; • Raise awareness of the Samoan language as one of the most widely spoken languages in New Zealand; • Promote the use of the Samoan language in every environment respecting each other’s situation; • Promote initiatives to maintain and grow the recognition, learning and use of the Samoan language in the home, in education, at work, in government, in the media, in sport, in the arts, in the church and in the community. These all seem like worthy goals to me. As someone who grew up in a rigidly monolingual environment, I am particularly drawn to the goal defined as “Raise awareness of the Samoan language as one of the most widely spoken languages in New Zealand.” After all, the Samoan language may be one of New Zealand’s noblest benedictions, but it is sometimes overlooked in favour of more widely-spoken languages whose ascendency on the global stage overshadows it and its sister and cousin tongues. Perhaps that, then, is why this awareness week is called for. The phrase ‘think globally, act locally’ can certainly be made apply to languages as well: just as language is one of the greatest human riches, so the speaking of many languages is necessarily a multiplication of that wealth. Samoan is not a community language in South America, Eurasia or Africa; in New Zealand it is, and we should esteem it for that.

Once upon a time French was the main sources for culinary jargon. Words like terroir, crouton, bouquet garni, entrée and so on clearly entered English from across the Channel. The sonorous Gallic tongue is often used to describe certain foods, cooking dishes and techniques, not only in English but in languages spoken around the world. Nowadays English, a language once not regarded as a source for the language of ‘good’ food, has become a leading propagator of related terminology. Here in Brazil it is not unusual to see menus festooned with selected English terms, many of them incomprehensible without the help of the ubiquitous cellphone. Furthermore, many food-related words and terms have entered everyday parlance and, pronounced in warped embodiments according to the rules of Portuguese, can be heard everywhere: ‘food truck’, ‘craft beer’, ‘flat white’, ‘bagel’. Foods and drinks are also described using the Portuguese cognates for some of the English words that are presently indispensable for the marketing of such products, words like ‘artesanal’, ‘orgânico’, ‘tradicional’, ‘fermentado’and ‘natural.’ Above all, many are advertised as enjoying the characteristic which defines quality par excellence in the early 21st century in English just as in its Portuguese counterpart: auténtico. The concept of authenticity in contemporary food marketing cannot be overstated. But why would English be such a source, both of associated borrowings and cognates, when English is spoken by people who, especially for most of the twentieth century, were engaged in abandoning traditional food production practices, culinary cottage industries and small-scale local food and beverage craftsmanship? The answer is this: it is precisely because English-speakers in such places as the UK and the USA lost their food and beverage craft traditions as a corollary of their twentieth-century car and supermarket lifestyles (lifestyles, it must

be remembered, once seen as desirable in large part due to successful marketing) that they are now engaged in rediscovering (and in some cases fabricating) such traditions and, while doing so, zealously marketing them in a froth of linguistic dynamism. It is therefore not the perennial relevance of Anglo terms to ‘authentic’ food and drink products that gives English its weight in the world of their marketing but rather the heady rediscovery (and occasional enthusiastic falsification) of such traditions that gives the terminology its heft. Languages like French and Italian are spoken by peoples who did not lose their alimentary and beverage craft traditions to anything like the same extent as we English-speakers did, and it therefore we, and not they, who currently coin marketing terms with the glowing passion of the converted. Brazil is one of the most interesting markets in the world in this area for several reasons: 1) Brazil suffers from many of the negative effects of a large-scale industrialised food industry (growing obesity, a profusion of foul processed food products, a well-developed supermarket culture, massive environmental destruction etc.); 2) Brazilian consumers eschew the influence of their Spanish-speaking neighbours and take their trend cues from the English-speaking world; and 3) there are lots of them and they are party animals who love eating and drinking out. The case of craft beer is an interesting one to examine in this connection. Brazil is the world’s third largest beer market (behind China and the US and ahead of Germany and the UK) and annual sales are worth 74 billion reais (i.e. 20 billion US dollars at the time of writing). Most beer consumed in Brazil is revolting. Major brands successfully market hideous, mass produced concoctions which are cheap and universally available.

However, in the last five years, sales of craft beer have grown at eight times those of the traditional industrial brands. More than 500 craft breweries are now established in the country and, according to beer industry sources, growth is expected to skyrocket over the next decade. It’s not hard to see why: only last night some friends and I wandered into a random downtown São Paulo petrol station in search of a bathroom and found, next to the service counter, display refrigerators bulging with trendy, quality, authentic craft beers. The fact is, the stuff is turning up everywhere. Craft beer is just one example of an industry whose ‘authentic’ credentials are highly sought-after in today’s Brazil, and Brazil is just one example of a market with near infinite growth potential – but it is probably the best example around. Regardless of where you wish to market your authentic/traditional/handmade/vegan/artisanal product the rule that applies to Brazil applies everywhere: the magic ingredient is not organic hops, or fungus from the inside of a cave, or that certain je ne sais quois conferred by the bowels of a civet; it is language, and if you get your language wrong then you can kiss your desired future market share goodbye. For here is the sting in the tail of this article: English is a source of certain key food and beverage terms, yes, and an inspiration for cognates, no doubt, but it’s not enough just to throw a few key words together and wait for success. A good translation is what’s needed and a good translation is like an expertly brewed beer. It is the handiwork of skilled artisans, steeped in the ancient tradition of coaxing the authentic and the natural out of language. Like the fermentation of cereals to produce alcohol, translation has been around since the dawn of civilisation; like the beer industry itself, large-scale industrial producers have devastated the quality of widely-available product. Thank goodness, then, for such high-quality craft producers as NZTC, translators of the authentic, traditionally skilled type. Authenticity, tradition, craft, artisanship: that’s what we do here at NZTC. You can drink to that.

Dime dónde andas y te diré qué idioma hablas Hace poco tuve la oportunidad de viajar a Chile de vacaciones. Consideraba importante pasar una temporada en nuestro país de origen, principalmente para que mis hijos no olvidaran sus raíces y pudieran practicar su idioma nativo, el español. Además, era la oportunidad perfecta para mostrarle a mi familia lo bien que mis hijos se estaban adaptando con el aprendizaje del idioma en Nueva Zelandia. Para mi sorpresa, Tomás (6) y Magdalena (4) no quisieron demostrar sus habilidades lingüisticas y se rehusaron a hablar en inglés durante los casi dos meses que estuvimos de visita en nuestro país. Tratando de comprender por qué, llegué a la conclusión que el ambiente en el que se desenvuelven, juega un factor primordial para que tengan la necesidad de comunicarse. Al ser un país de habla hispana, rápidamente comprendieron que no era necesario hablar en inglés. Comprobé que efectivamente, el lenguaje nace de la necesidad de comunicarse. Así como lo señala Charles Berlitz en su obra “El Maravilloso Mundo de los Idiomas”: “Fuimos creados como seres pensantes, desde nuestra primera infancia tuvimos muchas ideas y es allí donde el lenguaje se origina, ya sea de forma oral o escrita. El lenguaje es un código que lleva un mensaje con sentido común para concretar y expresar nuestros sentimientos”. Siguiendo esa misma corriente de estudio, el Grupo de Investigación en Adquisición y Percepción del Habla, señala que los niños bilingües necesitan darse cuenta de la existencia de dos mundos lingüisticos diferentes, es decir, requieren hacer una discriminación de los idiomas existentes en su entorno. Pero ¿Cómo se aprende un idioma? ¿Cómo adquirimos y dominamos el lenguaje, y cómo funciona? El cerebro humano es uno de los grandes enigmas de la ciencia y hasta el día de hoy, es difícil definir cómo aprendemos a hablar. Para Berlitz, todo parte del núcleo familiar donde crece el niño, y en base a su propia experiencia cuando pequeño, comenta lo siguiente en su libro “Native Tongues”: “Cuando recién empecé a hablar, aprendí cuatro idiomas al mismo tiempo, ya que cuatro integrantes de mi familia me hablaban exclusivamente en esos idiomas. En ese momento, no entendía que eran cuatro lenguajes distintos, solo creía que eran formas diferentes de hablar, y si lo piensas, es una buena manera de definir los idiomas”. Según los estudios de Noam Chomsky, los niños nacen con aptitudes linguísticas innatas que se activan dependiendo del entorno. Siguiendo la misma línea, Jean Piaget postula que la comunicación e interacción con el ambiente es lo que activa el aprendizaje de un nuevo idioma. La lingüista Barbara Zurer, lo retrata con la siguiente metáfora. “Las lenguas son dos árboles en un bosque. Los dos árboles son independientes, están plantados en el mismo suelo, pero cada uno tiene sus raíces. En el bilingüe tardío, uno de los árboles es el único que tiene raíces propias (la lengua materna) y sobre él crece una planta que se alimenta de la primera y depende de ella (la segunda lengua)”. Sea cual sea la mecánica en la que se aprende una lengua en particular, los niños poseen una alta capacidad para activar simultáneamente el idioma, y en muchos casos, sin siquiera ser conscientes de qué idoma están hablando. Buscando más respuestas, me fui dando cuenta de cómo mis hijos han sido especialmente flexibles para aprender las reglas sintácticas del inglés. Con apenas 4 y 6 años, han sido capaces de arriesgarse a hacer inferencias sin temor a equivocarse, y eso a mi juicio, ha sido clave para desarrollar el bilingüismo en estos años en Nueva Zelandia. Según un estudio del Instituto de Aprendizaje y Ciencias del Cerebro de la Universidad de Washington, hasta los 7 años a los niños les resulta fácil aprender dos idiomas y pueden manejarse al mismo nivel con los dos. Ya a partir de los 8 y hasta los 18 años, el aprendizaje pasa a ser más académico y por ende, más dificil hablarlo con la misma naturalidad. La inmersión es otro factor que crea la necesidad de aprender más de un idioma y el cambio de casa al que nos vimos enfrentados, ha sido gatillador en sus cerebros. A medida que transcurrieron los meses, mis aprehensiones de cómo serían sus adaptaciones, cómo podrían comunicarse y hacerse entender, y qué tan difícil sería relacionarse con su entorno, fueron disipándose. Cada vez que buscaba algún tipo de orientación- ya sea en el colegio, jardín o con amigas con niños pequeños- el consejo era el mismo: que el idioma en un país de habla inglesa afloraría por cuenta propia gracias a la inmersión. Efectivamente, estudios demuestran que el cerebro es más flexible y activo en la infancia y hay una mejor capacidad cognitiva. Y eso se aplica como primera regla en Nueva Zelandia, teniendo una aproximación a la educación en la que los niños se divierten y juegan aprendiendo. Las ventajas de los niños bilingües A pesar de los múltiples beneficios, dejarlos en el jardín sin saber si podrían comunicarse continuaba siendo muy agobiante. El proceso tomaría tiempo y había que buscar técnicas para transmitirles seguridad y confianza. ¿Cómo apoyarlos a fin de conseguir el desarrollo del idioma? Según el estudio de Raymonde Sneddon, especialista en aprendizaje y enseñanza de idiomas, “los niños bilingües se concentran mejor, son capaces de descartar fácilmente la información que no es útil y tienen más capacidad para analizar y resolver problemas de lógica y matemáticas”. Cuanto más pequeño sea el niño, mas facilidad tendrá para escucharse, familiarizarse y aprender otro idoma. Las destrezas que desarrollan son de alguna forma selectivas, se conectan con los detalles y omiten información irrelevante. En mi caso, la lectura resultó de gran ayuda. Los cuentos con ilustraciones llamativas y temáticas de animales, colores y formas, cumplieron el objetivo de introducir el lenguaje de una forma amena y divertida, educando el oído según los ritmos y entonaciones en esta primera etapa infantil. Los niños que se ven enfrentados a dos lenguajes crecen como si estuvieran dos personas monolingües viviendo en su cerebro, por lo que si logran estar bien equilibradas, estos niños tienen una ventaja de pensamiento que tiene efectos muy positivos en su inteligenica. Los niños expuestos a varios idiomas son más creativos y solucionan mejor sus problemas y conflictos. Gozan de un conocimiento más amplio y un gran desarrollo intelectual. Transcurridos dos años, puedo decir que efectivamente los niños desarrollan el bilingüismo de forma natural y espontánea, gracias a la inmersión y a su natural sentido de exploración e imaginación. Los niños adoptan sin mayor esfuerzo el idioma del lugar donde viven, porque es el idioma predominante que se habla fuera de la casa. Mientras que su idioma nativo, lo aprenderán con mayor naturalidad con su entorno más directo y familiar. Además, los niños bilingües gozan de una amplia experiencia de cometer errores en la aplicación del lenguaje para cada situación y adquieren consciencia de que el resto del aprendizaje es una comprobación de hipótesis y representará un esfuerzo constante. Ahora mi inquietud es otra, ¿Cómo preservar el español? ¿Qué dificultad conllevará aprender a leer y escribir español en un entorno de habla inglesa? Por Pilar Cepeda

Fuentes: “El Maravilloso Mundo de los Idiomas” y “Native Tongues”, Charles Berlitz “El Bilingüismo induce una especialización cerebral en niños de 4 meses”, Núria Sebastián Gallés “Influencia del bilingüismo en la estrategia cognitiva y el desarrollo cognitivo”, Sandra Bez-Zeev. www.hacerfamilia.com/educacion/bilinguismo-idiomas-ninos-bilingues-lengu... “bilingüismo temprano, más capacidades para el futuro”, El Periódico (25/02/2018)

An accurate translation is a many-splendoured thing; offense arising through a failure to make one’s meaning clear is, well, whatever the opposite of ‘many-splendoured’ would be. Let’s say you’re at a formal event of some kind, the conversation flows freely and then, making use of the idiom whose complete mastery you have yet to achieve, you make a comment that immediately elicits exchanged glances and embarrassed titter from your interlocutors – not a nice feeling at all.

Translation is more than just a matter of replacing one set of words with another; it requires the wholesale transposition of information expressed within the framework imposed by one language into the very different framework imposed by another. The new language may make demands on the information thus expressed that the previous language did not, or may, conversely, call for the elimination of some of the information conveyed in the source. This is because every language expresses both linguistically and culturally important concepts, and, crucially, each language decides which linguistic and cultural concepts are important to its speakers and listeners (whether they know it or not).

Anyone who has studied French or German or any language which insists on every single noun having a gender and every single adjective agreeing with every noun knows what I mean. English does not require that the gender of all nouns be specified or that adjectives agree with the nouns they modify. English pronouns are only gender-specific in respect of entities deemed to have a biological gender. In some languages, like Turkish, pronouns are not gender-specific at all and questions of agreement and grammatical gender are entirely non-existent.

Gender and adjective-noun agreement are only two of the potential variables between one language and another and can, by and large, be dealt with in ignorance of the cultural niceties that underpin interactions taking place in, say, French, German or Turkish. There are, however, other, more menacing dragons to be slain if speaker (or writer) A is to communicate unproblematically with speaker (or writer) B. Among these, indeed, among the very worst of all, is the possibility of causing offence when none is intended. As someone who has offended vast numbers of people in multiple languages without wanting to, I can assure you, dear reader, that the experience is not at all a pleasant one – for the offender or for the offended.

Now, let us put aside the small beer of grammatical gender and agreement – it is, after all, a forgivable offence to get them wrong (again, this is the voice of experience speaking) – and consider the much meatier topic of culturally appropriate language and levels of formality. In some languages, such as Japanese, politeness is built in to every possible utterance in a very explicit way. So if you are going to say something in Japanese then you are going to have to think about politeness before you say it. Every student of Japanese learns this from the very outset of his or her studies and, although the field of Japanese linguistic politeness is pitfall-ridden, it is at least taught explicitly and, general speaking, signalled throughout the process of learning the language. Therefore, anyone who has learned any Japanese will usually be able to ask where the bathroom is without anyone being embarrassed.

But of course, there is so much more that can go wrong than the location of a bathroom. Japanese, seeing as I mentioned it above, is a veritable minefield of potential faux pas – but at least it is known for that. Portuguese, a language not usually handled as if it were a hazardous substance, nonetheless offers innumerable opportunities for the careless speaker to put foot in mouth. The same is true of Czech, Chinese, Spanish; indeed [weltschmerzy sigh], it’s true of any language I’ve ever spoken. The fact is that every human language comes with a pile of cultural baggage. It might be a language spoken on the other side of the planet or it might be the idiom of the folks in the country next door – there is always the potential to cause offense. That’s part of the reason why war is innate to the human condition.

The matter of getting language right is important always, but it is of especial importance at formal occasions. An international meeting, conference or seminar will almost invariably involve participants from a variety of linguistic and, by extension, cultural backgrounds, and all of these will need to be catered for.

And this is where translators and interpreters come into their own. It’s not enough to find any old willing and available bilingual functionary – what’s called for in such a situation is a professional. Any interpreter or translator worth his or her salt can advise a speaker about the appropriateness of a joke in a keynote speech, the correct way to address an honoured guest and such matters as whether to shake hands or bow, and so on and so forth. Pitfalls avoided, you can be sure no-one will be offended and your conference can proceed smoothly. Not quite universal understanding or a brotherhood of man, but a good start.

We’d like to share some good news: we held a successful medical interpreting workshop in our Wellington office on 24 March this year, with approximate 20 interpreters attending. It was very encouraging to see so many interpreters willing to turn up for such an event on a Saturday morning.

We were fortunate to have our experienced interpreter Ms Christalin Thangpawl and NZ registered psychologist Dr Celia Falchi as our guest speakers. Our Chief Editor Patrick King and interpreting manager Jessie Jia were also on hand for the workshop, sharing their views on healthcare interpreting as well as the professional Code of Ethics.

Ms Christalin Thangpawl shared her experiences as a medical interpreter, especially working in the psychological field.

Dr Celia Falchi shared her insights regarding self-care and how to master the psychological wellbeing of interpreters, for example, after completing interpreting assignments with disturbing content.

After receiving the relevant information from our guest speakers,

useful and stimulating further discussions ensued among the participants.

We also received positive feedback and constructive suggestions from our interpreters. We are planning more workshops for the future. If you have any advice or suggestions about any topics, please feel free to email us: interpreting@nztcinternational.com

Many thanks for all the support and we look forward to seeing our interpreters in person again soon.

While many companies trust NZTC International with translation of very important information, some of the most critical translations are for our clients in the medical equipment manufacturing sector. This is because their documents contain instructions that if carried out incorrectly could mean the difference between life and death.

A good example of this is our translation work for Ventracor Limited, a global medical device company which produces the VentrAssist® implantable blood pump, a new “third generation” left ventricular assist device (LVAD), designed as an alternative to heart transplantation for people with heart failure (www.ventracor.com).

The Ventracor communications team takes great care with producing clear and effective instructions for patients and clinical staff and accordingly, NZTC takes great care to ensure its translations are as accurate as possible.

NZTC’s Quality Assured Translation (QAT) process is particularly effective for translation of such important patient and clinical instructions, with a key feature of this process being our editorial stage involving a stringent review of the translation through a form of back translation by an expert in both the source and target languages. This is one of the most effective ways we can ensure all instructions have been understood and translated correctly.

For this type of work, NZTC employs translators who are skilled technical writers, as well as being experienced in translation of medical documentation. NZTC’s medical translators are supported with extensive medical reference material and we have employed a medical doctor to assist us with development of our foreign language terminology databases.

While NZTC’s QAT process involves very intensive quality controls, as additional peace of mind for medical translations we undertake an extra final check and sign-off process that targets critical areas of the document such as key numbers, volumes, warnings, cautions and contraindications.

The steps we follow for medical translation are much more stringent than “industry standard” translation processes, but are well worth the extra time and effort when translating information that literally can have life or death consequences.

When I was a kid, I never heard anything about Chinese New Year – I didn’t even know such a thing existed. Now that I’m an adult, I still hear nothing about Mongolian New Year, Ethiopian New Year or Mayan New Year; but Chinese New Year is big news.

In 2011 CNN Money published an article under the headline “U.S. Companies Fear the Chinese New Year”. In 2015 the Boston Globe published an article entitled “Chinese New Year and its Effect on the World Economy”. Both articles covered the negative effects of the holiday on American importers. Here in Brazil coverage is less focused on the economic significance of the festival (in large part, I expect, because Brazil imports fewer of its consumer goods from China than the North American economies do) and more on local commemorations and the local Chinese community. These two divergent foci reflect the two aspects of China’s ever-increasing significance around the world: hard power and soft power.

In the Year of the Dog, China is the world’s largest economy in PPP terms and the source of many of the world’s immigrant communities. China is the largest trading partner of the world’s major economies and the world’s largest consumer of a huge range of commodities. It’s only a matter of time before China’s nominal GDP overtakes that of the United States to become the world’s largest.

With economic growth comes linguistic and cultural importance. When I was a teenager in the late 1980s I studied Japanese at high school because that was the smart thing to do; ten years later the study of Japanese had progressed from an economic imperative to a matter of personal interest. That’s because Japan stopped being the future in 1992, when its asset price bubble burst and its remarkable postwar boom came to an end. In the mid-90s I studied Russian at university, but was twenty years too late in doing so – the Russian department at my university had a moribund feeling about it and was closed soon after I dropped out of the course. In 2000, when I moved to Taiwan and started to study Chinese, I was, at last, perfectly in step with history, or perhaps just a nose ahead of the curve: go to a bookshop nowadays and you can hardly move in the languages section for Chinese grammars. And as folks have started to learn to pronounce “Gong xi fa cai” correctly, they have also learned when and why they might say it.

In terms of its importance worldwide, Chinese New Year has been celebrated by Chinese people for thousands of years and has been commemorated by the Chinese diaspora for as long as one has existed. It has been the world’s largest annual movement of people for as long as Chinese people have been migrating from one place to another in search of a better job, i.e. since the beginning of the “Reform and Opening” period in the late 1970s, and has become a major event on almost everyone’s calendar, especially for marketing and similar commercial purposes, for the last ten or fifteen years.

This is a cultural change. Like me, most of you probably do not know much – or anything – about New Year traditions in Mongolia, Ethiopia or the Mayan regions of Central America. Like me, you may not have known much – or anything – about Chinese New Year until the start of the current century. Like the Chinese, you might hope for certain amount of prosperity from the year to come. I could at this point mention the very real virtues of our canine friends and extol their aptness as a lucky omen, but instead of that I’m going to say this: the year of the dog, like every year since the heaven-knows-when, is going to be a year of translation, and not least of translation to and from Chinese. When those of us who are not in China think about Chinese New Year, we would do well to reflect on the amazing transformation of our relationship with a country with which many of us had no real connection, commercial or otherwise, only twenty or so years ago. And if that reflection leads you to think more about quality Chinese translations as a way to help your business prosper, well, let’s just say that you won’t be barking up the wrong tree.

Before I moved to Brazil, when I thought of Carnaval I imagined that the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, with its incredible costumes, semi-nude samba dancers and competitive nature was what Carnaval is all about. Turns out there is a great deal more to it, and the Sambadrome parades are just one element of what is, without question, the world’s largest party. At the heart of Carnaval lie the “blocos”. Historically the term “bloco” has been used alongside other terms (such as “rancho” and “cordão” which are no longer current as far as I am aware, at least in South-eastern Brazil) to denominate large, organised (or disorganised) street parties or parades. These are attested since the mid-nineteenth century and it is probable that Brazil has been the home to the world’s biggest street parties since then. Blocos can be good, bad, beautiful and ugly. Crime and violence are endemic in Brazil, as are easy-going charm, gentility and an exceptionally democratic view of body image. At a bloco you might get drunk, hook up with someone (or several people), have your phone stolen, make and lose new friends, get lost in the teeming hordes of revellers and/or all of the above. There are gay blocos, Fascist ones, communist ones, “intellectual” ones and children’s ones. There are small, local blocos which might occupy nothing more than a stretch of street near your house, and massive mega-blocos covering a huge area of the city with hundreds of thousands of revellers present. When Carnaval starts and finishes depends on where you are. In theory, it ends on Ash Wednesday and starts a week or so before. In practice, the pre-Carnaval period can extend back to the beginning of the year or before and the post-Carnaval period can also go on for a while – in blatant defiance of Lent. Brazil has an incredible diversity of regional music styles, and Carnaval music and practices vary accordingly. The samba is only one of scores of popular Brazilian dance styles and is not native to every area of the country (although as the “samba nacional” it was promoted during the Estado Novo period in the 1930s, and the widespread use of radio to popularise Rio de Janeiro fashions led to a profusion of local samba forms). The northeast, in particular, has a rich Carnaval heritage, with its most famous expression in the city of Recife. The dances most readily associated with the Recife Carnaval are frevo and maracatu – but there are samba schools there as well. Until recently, São Paulo was not known for its Carnaval. It was a place to avoid in February. All that changed during the administration of the last mayor, Fernando Haddad, who was keen to incentivise the city’s street life. The results were explosive. Last weekend São Paulo was host to 187 blocos attended by 4 million revellers – and last weekend was just one of the pre-Carnaval weekends. Today (Saturday) the bloco schedule includes 47 separate parties. I’m going to the first one of the day after I finish this article. It’s hard to say what fuels the Brazilian appetite for fun. Alcohol, drugs and sex are an obvious component but there’s something more, something essentially, well, Brazilian. In my humble view, it’s the belief in the necessity for popular participation in an event for it to be worthwhile. In repressed Anglo-Celtic societies, parallel rows of people watching a parade is considered an event. In Brazil, you are expected to join in. There is no compulsion for you to do so, but there is no reason why you wouldn’t. Costumes tend to be silly and slapdash, no-one really cares how you look or how you dance and you can stay around as long as you like. It is really a lot of fun.

Throwback blog!! Here we have the the full transcript of a talk that Dr John Jamieson, senior translator at NZTC, gave to the Goethe Society of Wellington at Victoria University in Kelburn in 2014

In this talk I will try to express some thoughts about language and translation problems – specifically German into English – on three different levels: 1) purely practical; 2) language as it impacts on communication across cultural divides and our perceptions of other cultures and nationalities; and 3) how our languages may reflect some fundamental differences in subject-object relations, i.e. how we see ourselves (subject) in relation to the world around us (object).

The dominant model of linguistic communication today is probably that of a conduit, whereby language is seen as a medium used intentionally to communicate a message from a speaker to a listener. However I believe this model misleads, by treating language as a single phenomenon, as “one sort of a thing”.

Instead I have become convinced that there is a fundamental duality in human language, reflecting the dichotomy between change and stasis. If you watch people talking on the bus or train, or in any not entirely structured communication situation, on the listener’s face you will typically see an alternation of serious expressions and smiles or nods. A serious look generally accompanies the absorption of new, unfamiliar information, and the ensuing smile or nod tends to reflect some kind of consensus, acceptance of the new information, so that it is now familiar, shared between the parties.

These two phases might be called the communication “challenge” (for the potentially threatening incursion of new information content) and “reconciliation” (denoting acceptance of that new input).

They can be viewed on all sorts of scales – let’s start with the biggest, in the context of the evolution of human language: as animals we presumably made noises that were instantly intelligible to other members of our species, but severely limited in the scope of the information conveyed. Then the development of human language out of those animal noises would have created an outward movement from shared content, immediately intelligible and self-evident to members of the linguistic community (a “we” domain) to communications between individuals (the “I to you about it” domain).The birth of human language would then have been an explosion out from restricted communication on general, shared concerns, instantly understood by all members of the species, to the ability to communicate a wide variety of specific information on an individual basis, developed differently by all the sub-groups of our species.

But that huge expansion in our communicative capacities would have come at a cost, in the form of an alienation, estrangement, arbitrariness or lack of certainty in comparison with the certainty and spontaneity created by self-evident identification with the species to which we belong.

And on a much smaller scale, this duality can also be identified quite precisely at word and sentence level, simply by watching where the phonetic stress falls. Not surprisingly, it is the challenging content that is stressed, while unstressed material tends to be conciliatory.

The crucial point for us as translators is that challenging, innovative content tends to be important to translate, since it carries the essential content of the message. It is also easy to translate, even across cultural boundaries, because each element is typically opposed to something else.

Let me show you what I mean: if I say “It was nice weather, so I decided to walk up here tonight”, the sentence stress would probably fall on “nice” and “walk”. And even though my active German is not very good, the phrases schönes Wetter and zu Fuss spring to mind as the nucleus of a sensible translation into German.

But what about the other words? None of them hold very significant content, and instead all of them reflect consensus in some shape or form.

“It was” ahead of “nice weather” are words thrust on us by the mere fact that we speak English, and therefore, by implication, denote our shared membership of that linguistic community.

“So” simply links the two clauses, and adds very little information. However by choosing “so” rather than “therefore” I am establishing a friendly tone, whereby the linguistic community is perhaps the more intimate one of “you lot and me”.

“I decided to” is idiomatic padding, and best left untranslated.

“Up here” is again obvious content on the one hand – because we all know we are here – but it also defines a linguistic community of English-speaking Wellingtonians, through our shared knowledge of the university on the hill.

And “this evening” is again obvious, superfluous content given the current time of day, but such phrases have become a common way to soften what we are saying (as in “Would you like anything else with that today?”).

Now if we translate the sentence into German, some of those linguistic communities are not easily replicable.

“We English speakers” can easily become “We German speakers”, but there is less likely to be a community of “We German-speaking Wellingtonians”, for example. In any event the sentence will be much better translated as Es war schönes Wetter, so bin ich zu Fuss gekommen, than as Es war schönes Wetter, so habe ich mich entschlossen heute Abend hierauf zu Fuss zu kommen, or some such.

This is because entschlossen, hierauf, and heute Abend, being very awkward, would come across as challenging content rather than conciliatory clichés, and clog up the communication channel accordingly. If I was a native German speaker I might be able to find some equivalent clichés or pap, but still there would be little to be gained from doing so.

Accordingly it would seem that conciliatory language can often be difficult and unimportant to translate in any literal sense. This is because obvious content can – obviously – be expressed in many different ways, according to the speaker’s preference or the way a language typically goes about its business.

Let me take a couple of examples from my recent trip to Berlin to attend the FIT Congress. On the Berlin U-Bahn there was a sign reading Beförderung nur mit gültiger Fahrausweis. Since I was about to deliver a paper exploring these same categories of language, I mused idly on how I would translate this into English. I decided that the stressed, challenging content would have to be nur mit gültiger Fahrausweis, which could easily be translated as “only with a valid ticket”. Beförderung, on the other hand, is familiar and conciliatory, in the same way as “up here” and “tonight” in my previous example. The only reason I am reading the sign is that I am sitting in a train going somewhere – “man wird sowieso befördert” – so rather than floundering around with “transport” or some such, I used my imagination according to the “that’s what they say, what do we say?” rule (i.e. translating one linguistic consensus with another) and came up with “All passengers must hold a valid ticket”.

Some corpus-based text inspector could be surprised to see me translate the word Beförderung as “All passengers”, but in a sense I haven’t done that. I have translated the words nur mit gültiger Fahrausweis with an equivalent phrase, but perhaps rather “adapted” or “paraphrased” the rest of this sentence, which I have classified for myself as conciliatory, self-evident content.

Similarly the theme of the conference was “man vs. machine”, nicely translated into German as im Spannungsfeld zwischen Mensch und Maschine. Now this is fascinating, because Spannungsfeld is a word that regularly exercises the intellects of German-English translation hacks around the world. Yet here it has been generated quite spontaneously as the translation of “vs.”. Next time I come across it I will hopefully remind myself that as a cliché, Spannungsfeld is unlikely to carry any serious semantic weight, and should therefore be plugged into the translation with a phrase that will not attract too much attention, so as not to frighten the horses, so to speak.

So what are the implied consensus communities in these two cases? In the first case (Beförderung): possibly (1) German speakers; (2) people sitting in this train; (3) clients of a public service provider, therefore to be addressed impersonally (at least in German – more on that later), and in the second (Spannungsfeld): (1) German speakers; and (2) people who read and can be expected to understand a somewhat formally expressed document.

This of course barely scratches the surface of the consensus concept. As we speak or write we create a constantly changing and infinitely variable series of consensuses, probably all at the same time. But my interest for the moment is in the concept of a consensus as such.

Another type of conciliatory, familiar content that gives the appearance of conveying information but really just defines a consensus is the expansion and augmentation of simple terms on the basis of stylistic conventions or knowledge that the audience is supposed to share. Thus “The balding, softly-spoken 62-year-old Pukerua Bay resident admitted the charge of theorising without data” simply “means” that “the defendant” admitted the charge, but this information plugs into the expectations of a certain community of readers as to how a court report is, or used to be, written. Similarly, German corporate press releases, at a point roughly 2/3 of the way through, typically refer to the company in question as “the Mannheim-based SME founded in 1896 by out-ofwork baker Hans Schmidt”. Both these forms of cliché would tend to become challenge-type content if translated into another language, so the information either has to be omitted or, in the latter case, put earlier in the text where it can function as innovative content.

Another nice example in German is the phrase Der Metropole an der Isar which I am told is widely used by Munich residents to refer to their city, just as the Italians often refer to St Francis of Assisi as il poverello di Assisi. These are both clearly examples of conciliatory content, denoting “the Munich that we all love so well”, and “the saint we all love so much”, establishing a consensus of “we Müncheners” and “we Italians” respectively. Since those consensuses cannot easily exist in English, the word-for-word equivalents in English would be distinctly challenging, and patently ridiculous. So we can translate either by reduction and simplification: “Munich” and “St Francis”, or by making the familiarity and affection explicit: “our wonderful city” and “our beloved St Francis”.

A third category of conciliatory material comprises German adverbs such as konsequent, entsprechend and gezielt, usually glossed as “consistently”, “correspondingly” and “in a targeted manner”. Now if these were challenging, innovative expressions they would express the opposite of “inconsistently”, “non-correspondingly” and “in a non-targeted manner”.

Yet in fact they are merely clichés, gentle, homoeopathic semantic remedies with no known side-effects or indeed effects, other than conveying a sense that “we are educated German speakers, reading a non-fiction text with some stylistic pretentions, or that is trying to convince us of something”. In this case the best translation strategy is omission.

The argument so far has identified two modes of language, and noted three strategies for translating conciliatory content: 1) using your imagination; 2) reduction or explanation; and 3) omission (none of which are widely approved of in my profession).

This might be dismissed as just translation common sense – but now I would like to address some specific differences between German and English in how these two forms of content are expressed.

The point of departure here is the difference in the relations between grammatical persons involved in challenge and consensus mode respectively. Unless otherwise indicated, challenging content is implicitly communicated by an “I” to a “you” about an “it” (that is generally other than “I” and “you”). In other words, we have a clearly defined triangle of three semantic persons.

The acceptance and absorption of that content then has the effect of converting that triangle into a circle of “us”, eliminating the distinctions that were inherent in the challenging content.

I believe that in German texts the space between the poles of challenge and consensus, and within the challenge triangle, can be filled with the presence of the pronoun man, whether expressed or implied. The word man can refer to any or all of 1st, 2nd and 3rd persons, and hence this implicit man can do the same: in Heben Sie die Hände it adopts 2nd person to mean “your” (i.e. die Hände = mans Hände = Ihre Hände), while in Er hat die Hände in die Taschen gesteckt it moves into the 3rd person slot.

“Raise the hands” in English would be talking about the hands of a clock or something. And contrary to what we read in lesson 3 of a grammar book, it’s not just about the use of possessives with body parts. Think of the map you typically see outside botanical gardens or some such in Germany, with the word Standort. The English dictionary equivalent “location” would be innovative (as the only word in the sentence), and would imply something like “I tell you that something/someone is or was located somewhere”, i.e. it’s not about you, and it’s not about here.

Yet this is precisely what the actual meaning is about – “you are here”, i.e. “I tell you that you are here”. So this noun in German lacks the 3rd person content and otherness that would be implied by the equivalent in English.

Similarly, last year NZTC had to translate a set of facilitator’s instructions accompanying a PowerPoint presentation, telling the trainer what to do when. A previous translation had had a negative response, so I had a look at it. And I found, for example, that the phrase Vorstellung eigener Person had been translated as “personal introduction”. Again, the implied narrative of these English words is “I tell you that someone did, does or will introduce themselves”. Yet the sense was “I say that you should introduce yourself at this point”. So “Introduce yourself” would be much clearer. I resolved to do the whole translation accordingly. And indeed, this seemed to evoke a better response from the client.

Once again, there is no mystery here. We are often exhorted to translate nouns in German with verbs in English, for example. But my model of an inherent alienation in English that has to be disarmed to bring the message closer to the communication participants provides a useful way to conceptualise this translation problem, if problem it be.

A similar rift between the persons can be observed involved in another miniature linguistic drama. I was walking past the Lido coffee bar in Wellington one night, and read a sign “The Lido is now closed”. I felt extremely disappointed – presumably the receivers or the City Council had stepped in for some reason and closed down what had been one of my favourite establishments.

My analysis of my reaction goes something like this: I instinctively construed the message as an “I to you about it” communication, and assumed a third person agent for the café’s closure.

Yet it was open again the following night. On reflection I realised that the sign had doubtless been written by one of the young Germans working there. And the real sense was more like: “they have asked me to write up this sign to say that we’re closed right now”. From the German perspective, the message is less definitely the property of the writer, and the subject-matter can be commensurately closer to the “I” (and also more congenial to me as the recipient of the message).

So English imposes a very distinct separation of persons, whereas in the German substratum – again under the influence of man, I would suggest – the persons come much closer to merging – the “I” of the signwriter identifies with the “it” of the Lido, and I as the reader (the second person in the communication transaction) also feel informed as part of the establishment’s family.

The correct English could have been just “closed”. The mere fact of omitting all the other information would have created just the sort of familiarity that was needed (just as a nickname creates a sense of intimacy). (Otherwise the sign could have read “sorry, we’re closed right now”, making the identification explicit.)

So in German no disarming is necessary, since the possibility of a closer identification between the communication parties is already implied in the text, through the structures of the German language.

The problem is that as well as preventing effective communication across linguistic and cultural boundaries, these differences often become the stuff of stereotypes and prejudices, since as well as sending misleading messages about the content, they also convey the wrong impression of the speaker. Indeed, since one of the consensus communities very often created by language in use is “those of us who talk like this”, which easily morphs into “those of us of this nationality”, we are clearly on a very slippery slope.

Last year, my excellent colleague found a website – in English – produced by a major German company for employees seconded from other countries to work and live in Germany. It was headed “The Germans – and Why They Are the Way They Are” (capitals sic).

This immediately evokes the worst type of Basil Fawlty pro-British anti-German prejudice. This is because as English-speakers we construct the wrong “I”, one distant from the subject matter (the Germans), who is therefore not German. We then identify with that non-German “I” and collude in mocking the hapless Germans.

So: the third person is stated (the Germans), the first person is then definitely other than “the Germans”; and the second person (the English-speaking reader) immediately jumps on the bandwagon of prejudice, willy-nilly adding his/her thoughts to the existing canon of expressions of this sentiment in English.

The message of the original German – which was of course Die Deutschen – und warum sie sind so wie sie sind was more like “here’s what makes us Germans tick” – i.e., just as in the Lido case, the writer (“I”) is a member of the community of individuals being talked about, and is welcoming the reader to become associated with that community.

In other words, in German texts what appears to be third person content is disarmed, brought closer by its implicitly referring to 1st, 2nd or 3rd person plural entities, as the context requires, but in English the disarming has to be done explicitly in order to stop texts sounding cold and impersonal.

Now as English speakers we could respond to this situation as follows:

“Look how cold and impersonal the Germans are in the way talk about things”. Similarly, when we hear a Finn line up at the ticket office and just ask for a “single to Turku”, with nary a “please” or “thank you”, we might say x“ my word, aren’t the Finns rude”.

But on the basis of the challenge/reconciliation mechanism, these impressions can be shown to be necessarily falsified. Because of the sharp disjunct between challenge and consensus in English, straight talk is more challenging than it would otherwise be, and has to be disarmed more explicitly than would otherwise be the case. So the problem is that in English, more superficial politeness, use of conditionals, etc. is required to eliminate the appearance of brusqueness and rudeness.

For example, at one time NZSTI appointed a sub-committee of two – a Frenchwoman and a German woman – to draw up some guidelines for members of our profession.

I well remember my instinctive response – shared with many of my colleagues – when the text they came up with began with the words “All translators must follow these guidelines”. “Bloody Continentals telling us what to do” was more or less the thought that went through my head, I am ashamed to admit – and I was not alone. Again, note how national stereotypes come into play so readily in these situations.

Yet they – and I – were simply making a linguistic error. We English speakers identified the two ladies in question as the collective “I” originating the utterance, and took offence accordingly. Yet all they “meant” was “these guidelines apply to all translators” – which would have been fine. So the narrative in English was “I say that you must”, whereas the intended viewpoint was more like man sagt, dass wir sollen….

Similarly, English “should” is generally translated as soll rather than sollte in German, doit rather than devrait in French, since the latter would sound much too watered down in those linguistic contexts.

So the conclusion is that because English is rude, we have to talk polite, but since Finnish, say, is polite, the Finns can afford to talk rude; since English is impersonal, we have to talk personal, and since German is personal, Germans can afford to talk impersonal.

So at this stage we have reached the conclusion that we’re all the same deep down; understanding is marred only by linguistic habits, which can be compensated for and cancelled out in translation.

Yet some translation problems seem to be more intractable, and suggest more fundamental differences in world view between cultures.

For example, in modern English there appears to be a real problem of reference, whereby in some cases we find it difficult or impossible to be general and specific at the same time, as other languages can do.

Take the title of Les Misérables, for example, which slips easily into German as Die Elenden. Yet in English any kind of word for word translation is the very devil to concoct. For a start off we would have to choose between “poor” and “miserable” (which is another story). “The miserables” and “The miserable” are both arrant nonsense, and “The poor” would mean all of the poor, which is not the point.

In English we seem to have a sort of semantic Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, whereby if we concentrate on saying what something is like, we lose the ability to identify it, and vice versa. Similarly in Nietzsche’s “Untimely meditation” on history, at one point he compares our ability to perceive time and remember the past to the “here and now” existence of the animal world, as follows:

Der Mensch fragt wohl einmal das Tier: warum redest du mir nicht von deinem Glücke und siehst mich nur an? Das Tier will auch antworten und sagen: das kommt daher, dass ich immer gleich vergesse, was ich sagen wollte – da vergass es aber auch schon diese Antwort and schwieg: so dass der Mensch sich darob verwundete.

So what is an English translator supposed to do with Der Mensch fragt wohl einmal das Tier – “the man (human) might ask the animal”???. Which man or human? What animal are we talking about?

A good approach in such cases is to particularise and personalise, e.g. “Say I walked up to a cow and asked it…”. But why is this the case? Well, in my view the German successfully combines elements of both challenge (new knowledge) and consensus (what we already know). This notional conversation is not obvious, self-evident or already known. Yet der Mensch refers, not to a specific individual, but rather to an emblem of humanity as a whole (which is inherently known to all of us). Similarly, das Tier is not this or that animal in a particular herd in a particular field, but an emblem of the animal kingdom (which again is inherently known to us).

So der Mensch and das Tier contrive to be both general and specific in German. But on hearing the English phrase “the human” and “the animal” English native speakers would try, but in vain, to assign a specific, concrete reference, based on the question “which one?”. In addition, “the human” would tend to exclude the speaker, which is also rather ridiculous.

Thus the German phrases contrive to be both general and specific, but the direct English equivalents find it difficult to be either.

But by translating der Mensch with the first person “I”, and das Tier as an indefinite but particularised entity (“cow”), we form a meaningful statement towards the challenge end of the spectrum, combined with consensus because “I” as the speaker is self-evident. And these specific entities are then able to stand as representatives of the more generic categories of human beings and animals.

Similarly, when Walter Benjamin speaks of the encounter between der Mensch and das Apparatur, this is better conveyed in English in terms of an “actor” playing to the “camera lens”, rather than “man” confronting “technical equipment”, as one published translation has it.

Hence synecdoche (pars pro toto) is a very useful technique for producing idiomatic translations into English from a range of European languages, and I believe my view of the clearer split between challenge and conciliation in English than elsewhere explains why this might be the case.

So it seems to me that in German, a generic expression (consensus/familiar) can distil down into a specific concept (challenge), whereas the word for word English equivalent precludes specific reference. English instead has to start with a specific form (challenge mode) which can then be made to refer back into the shared, generic, familiar domain (consensus mode).

I believe this radical shift in what nouns in particular refer to in English probably means that we English speakers do in fact look at the world differently, that our view of the world is shifting inexorably from essence (the thing in term of its nature) towards existence (the thing in terms of its identity). Rather than letting us be part of the world we live in, our language may be forcing us to adopt a clearer division between subject and object.

This could even have implications at the foreign policy level. I fear that the radical “I” vs. a concrete “other” world can manifest itself in an “us versus the rest” mode of seeing the world, where “I” am immutably “I”, and everything else remains stubbornly “other”. The only viable path to consensus is then for a collapse of that dichotomy whereby everything else becomes like us. The “end of human history” argument advanced by the American historian Fukuyama is just one example of this.

In contrast, other languages seem to admit more readily of a more fluid, mutable “I” as part of a less alien world, perhaps viewed in more conceptual and less concrete terms.

So what does this mean for translators, and specifically those of us who work into English?

I believe that our task, too, addresses the challenge/consensus dichotomy. A work of literature, product manual or financial report of foreign origin clearly represents a challenge to the reader, and by using some of the tricks I have described here, we may be able to create a consensus.

That consensus refers firstly

– to the reader becoming at one with the content,

secondly

– to reconciling the reader as a member of his/her national and linguistic community with the national and linguistic community that originated the text; and

thirdly (possibly)

– to showing the reader, the wider community and even policymakers, that the “other” is not quite as alien as they may think. We may even prompt a suspicion that our readers may not be as self-sufficiently and immovably “I” as they were before.

More generally – and this is really my point – by looking at language in the right way it might be possible for cultural conflicts to be reinterpreted and redefined as linguistic issues, which, while stubborn, might be easier to address than cross-cultural conundrums.

Here’s hoping!

How different New Zealand is today from just a few decades ago. Once our population was almost entirely made up of Europeans and Māori. Now Statistics New Zealand tells us, according to projections, that by the year 2026 our population will comprise 3.3 million people of European descent, 820,000 Māori, 790,000 Asian and 480,000 Pacific Islands people. Then of course, within these main groupings will be peoples of many different cultures each with their own languages. Although these figures relate to the future, the process of population diversification is already well underway. We can all see this every day as we go about our work and leisure activities or at home just reading the newspaper or watching TV. We are already a nation of many different cultures. While no one can argue about the significance of the increasing number of New Zealanders with English as a second language, a natural assumption by some communications practitioners is that due to minimum English language standards for migrants, surely our English publications for communities are getting the message across? An increasing number of organisations we work with find that this is certainly not the case, and while the reasons to translate are many and varied, here are just some of the reasons that organisations have chosen to translate their material: • Basic English language skills within some NZ ethnic communities are not sufficient to ensure complete comprehension of information in English, which in turn can be a barrier to understanding, response and/or compliance • Providing information in the first language of key ethnic communities ensures the communities see the information as targeted towards them, and helps ensure the message is noticed and achieves wider community support • Translation is particularly key if the message is detailed or complex, or if the importance of understanding the message is particularly crucial for the wider community • For messages important for community welfare, providing translations ensures no particular community group is disadvantaged in terms of access to the information It’s worth noting that the size of a particular language group does not necessarily reflect their need for language services. For instance, a refugee group of just a few hundred may be small but the need for material translated into their language may be much greater than for a larger immigrant group with a higher level of knowledge of English. Last year was an election year, which helped focus our attention on practices and policies to take account of the varying needs of peoples of different cultural backgrounds. One such need must surely be to communicate effectively with each other within a multicultural society.

The twinkling lights strung along Oriental Plaza in downtown Beijing is a sign that Christmas is alive and well in China. Local teenagers can be seen wandering through the shopping malls wearing furry reindeer antlers or sporting red and white Santa hats. Christmas has become both a commercial and a fun fashion statement in China. However, in many troubled spots around the world, any hope of a joyful Christmas is somewhat remote. Like last year, there will be few Christmas lights or decorations in the shopping district of the Christian quarter in Damascus, where a bloody civil war continues to rage. Conflicts are often across cultural or ethnic lines – but the spirit of Christmas encourages to extend our goodwill to all people, irrespective of race or creed. While many of us will take a well-deserved break over the coming festive period, legions of translators around the world will still be working to bridge the linguistic and cultural divides that separate us from our global neighbours. In the true spirit of Christmas, translators have an obligation to take a strictly non-partisan attitude when conveying messages across different linguistic and cultural traditions. Christian or Jew, Muslim or Hindu, monarchist or republican, translators of all creeds and political views are expected to relay the intent of the original message irrespective of their own personal views. A deep knowledge and a sympathetic understanding of both cultures and languages is an essential part of the translator’s basic toolkit and requires a sense of goodwill. Accurately and impartially conveying pronouncements from the Al- Assad regime for a Jewish audience, or the Chinese position on global warming for Western ears is not only a feat of skill, but can be a test of the translator’s character. Santa Claus has come to personify the very spirit of goodwill. The roots of the story lie in 4th century Turkey where tradition has it that St Nicholas made gifts of money to the poor. Today, in Istanbul’s Nisantasi shopping district, fashionable boutiques are adorned with sparkling Christmas decorations and passersby in the large department stores are served with mulled wine. One might even spot the occasional costumed Santa Claus mingling with the shoppers. However, in a country with a 98% Muslim population, Christmas day is a regular shopping day like any other. Like any other work day in Turkey, scores of translators will be at work over Christmas. Servicing the needs of the mass media alone requires a huge effort – the major news sources are not only in English but in the languages of Turkey’s neighbours – Arabic, Hebrew and Russian – and translation into Turkish of breaking news is required on a daily, or even an hourly, basis. Over Christmas and New Year another band of translators will be busy on a variety of humanitarian projects in many of the world’s trouble spots. Ever since the devastating Haiti earthquake in 2010, Translators Without Borders (TWB) has been stepping up its efforts to provide multilingual communications for global aid agencies and NGOs who provide disaster relief and healthcare, or who sponsor critical education initiatives. Over Christmas this year, TWB will be providing translation work to international NGOs in an effort to combat the current cholera outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The spirit of Christmas encourages compassion for all mankind, for all our global neighbours. The work of translators, often hidden in the background, embodies this spirit by keeping communications open between culturally and linguistically disparate global communities. Let us not forget that the very spirit of Christmas has come to us via a story, itself translated into our own vernacular by the forefathers of our modern profession.

Patrick McGarvey, uno de los líderes de la tribu Tūhoe en la región de Te Urewera, nos cuenta cómo viven los maorís en el siglo XXI, cuáles son sus creencias y sus desafíos a futuro.

A muchos de los extranjeros o pākehā que vivimos en Nueva Zelandia, nos asombra la genuina y pacífica convivencia que el pueblo maorí tiene con los neozelandeses.

A simple vista, la cultura maorí se respeta y se muestra con orgullo. La mayoría de los barrios, escuelas y ciudades llevan nombres en Te Reo, el idioma oficial de los maorís. Su cultura y riqueza patrimonial se exhibe en parques, museos y espacios públicos. Sin duda que la persistencia y tesón del pueblo maorí ha sido clave para la subsistencia de su gran patrimonio y legado.

Para conocer un poco más su historia y aspiraciones conversamos con Patrick McGarvey, colaborador en temas maorí en NZTC y uno de los líderes de la tribu Tūhoe, de la región de Te Urewera, ubicada en la isla del norte. Con aproximadamente 40 mil habitantes, esta comunidad destaca por su fuerte adherencia a la identidad maorí y el uso del lenguaje.

Para mi sorpresa, la comunidad que habita en Nueva Zelandia es realmente numerosa. Según el censo realizado el año 2013, más de 561 mil personas son de raza maorí, lo que equivale a que 1 de cada 7 personas que viven en Nueva Zelandia provienen de esa etnia.

“Existen cientos de tribus maorís en Nueva Zelandia”, me aclara Patrick. “Es algo similar a lo que ocurre en Sudamérica, con todos los diferentes países y sus habitantes, aquí antes que los Europeos llegaran a Nueva Zelandia, eramos todos considerados de distintas etnias, con algunas conexiones y vínculos, pero diferentes”.

En la actualidad, hay cientos de iwi (tribus) que están asentadas en distintos extremos de este país y que luchan día a día por conservar y preservar sus tradiciones y su mayor riqueza: su lengua nativa, Te Reo Māori.

Se calcula que 10.000 de ellos viven en las fronteras y alrededores, y aún gozan de un sistema de vida estructuralmente muy tradicional: las familias están organizadas en hapū o sub tribus, en valles o en zonas de la región de Te Urewera, y hacen las cosas colaborativamente, tratando de adaptarse al contexto del siglo XXI en el que vivimos.

Patrick es uno de ellos, uno de los líderes de su iwi, impulsor de acuerdos importantes para su pueblo. Se ha desempeñado como traductor de maorí y colaborado en NZTC en un gran número de traducciones para programas educativos, entre otros temas. Asimismo, ha realizado trabajos de intérprete, todo esto con el fin de traspasar su idioma en las futuras generaciones.

Cuáles son las mayores dificultades para traducir del inglés al Te Reo? le preguntamos. “Algunas veces es difícil expresar el lenguaje maorí, ya que hay frases que no tienen una traducción literal al inglés, por lo que tienes que encontrar la frase equivalente. Además, la tribu Tūhoe a la cual pertenezco, tiene su propio dialecto, y debo ser precavido de no usar esos términos al traducir, de lo contrario ni la gente maorí lo podría entender”.

Una de las cosas que más me llama la atención es el sentido de trascendencia que tienen por su tierra, ancestros y legado. Patrick me dice que los maorís tienen una conexión especial con un lugar determinado, con una tierra, una historia que los precede “tenemos una responsabilidad por asegurar que nuestra cultura y patrimonio siga intacto para las futuras generaciones”, y me da un ejemplo para entender cómo se organizan las comunidades. “Hoy soy un maorí que vivo en una comunidad que ha existido por siglos, miles de años y tengo una obligación de asegurar que mi tribu permanezca viva por más siglos en el futuro. A diferencia de la cultura occidental (pākehā), en la que solo importa la vida diaria, naces en un período y eres solo un pequeño punto en la continuidad. Compras una casa, vives allí por un periodo, no tienes mayores preocupaciones por quien la comprará después. Pero en mi cultura, tú eres el guardián y responsable de asegurar que se preserve en buen estado. En tus manos está el patrimonio de la gente del pasado y del futuro, por lo que tienes una obligación de entregarla a tus propios hijos y los venideros”.

En la cultura maorí, las tribus o iwi, se subdividen en tribus o hapū, compuestas por diversas familias, y estas sub tribus se comunican e interactúan para la toma de decisiones, ya sea para pequeños o grandes proyectos que requieren un esfuerzo único y más organizado. “En nuestra cultura, el individuo no puede ser nunca más grande o importante que la comunidad. Somos parte de un colectivo, es parte de tus obligaciones y no puedes desligarte de eso. Si yo viviera en un mundo occidentalmente dominado, estaría libre de esas tareas, iría a trabajar, luego a casa, no tendría que ser parte de un colectivo. Puedes ver en política, que los individuos quieren ser líderes porque tienen ambiciones personales, en cambio en mi tribu el liderazgo tiene que servir los beneficios de la comunidad, si fallas y decepcionas a la gente, tienes que dar un paso al costado, para que reine la prosperidad”.

Uno de los grandes desafíos por delante para el pueblo maorí es cómo cautivar a las nuevas generaciones por mantener este legado y preservarlo en el tiempo. Para Patrick el lenguaje es una de las claves. “Hacer el lenguaje accesible a las personas y usar los recursos tecnológicos en beneficio del idioma, permitirá que las generaciones jóvenes que hablan maorí sigan interesándose en su propia lengua. En Nueva Zelandia, el inglés es el lenguaje predominante, por lo que la actitud de la familia es vital. Hoy tenemos mayores recursos y mayor visibilidad, nuestra lengua está en la televisión, en la radio, se escribe en diarios, es la actitud de la persona de tener la energía de mantener vivo nuestro idioma lo que importa”, asegura esperanzado.

Afortunadamente, hoy en Nueva Zelandia hay una gran cantidad de personas que trabajan aunadamente en eso y nuestro idioma está presente en escuelas primarias, secundarias y en jardines. “Si está esparcido por la comunidad es mucho más fácil su preservación. Pero la batalla para el futuro es mantener la actitud”, señala.

Respecto al rol que juega el estado en la preservación de la lengua, reconoce que ha habido avances y que hay un compromiso para una normalización del maorí en la sociedad en su conjunto, “algo de real importancia para entender la historia de Nueva Zelandia”, explica. “Mucha gente aún no entiende cómo Nueva Zelandia fue colonizada, no tienen empatía por los sufrimientos y apremios que los indígenas tuvieron que pasar para mantener la lengua y la cultura. La colonización sigue siendo muy fuerte en Nueva Zelandia”. Y agrega que es un proceso que tomará dos o tres generaciones a lo mínimo, “porque tú no puedes borrar el pasado de 150 años en un período tan corto”.

Sobre eso recuerda que una gran porción de su territorio fue confiscado en 1860 y desde ahí a la fecha han luchado y reclamado por la recuperación de sus tierras. “La colonización utilizó variados métodos, entre ellos la fuerza militar y legislaciones para desestimar y disminuir la influencia Tūhoe. Originalmente, con la idea de exterminar nuestro pueblo pero luego con la llegada de la paz, se hicieron leyes para continuar con el efecto colonizador, y posteriormente vino el sistema educativo, una forma más de atomizar nuestra cultura y asemejarla a la forma occidental. Yo he sido testigo de procesos de conciliación, en los que logramos que la corona asumiera sus errores, recibimos dinero y compensaciones. Pero hoy decidimos seguir adelante y aunar esfuerzos por reconstruir nuestra nación e infraestructura, para darle prosperidad a esas futuras generaciones”.

Sin duda que aún queda mucho por hacer, pero la mentalidad del pueblo maorí y la persistencia han sido claves en el respeto y admiración de un pueblo que ha mantenido sus tradiciones hasta el día de hoy. Para Patrick no hay fórmula perfecta, simplemente “hablarnos, entendernos, aceptar que estamos aquí para quedarnos, maorís y pākehā, así podremos asegurar que nuestra cultura sea aceptada y normalizada en el tiempo”, concluye.

Overcoming the language barrier is a dream as old as humanity, and every era has responded to the challenge in its own way, according to its abilities, needs, and technological means: multilingualism, lingua francas, artificial languages, standardised national languages, eradication of languages etc. Even miracles have been brought into play, as in the case of the Septuagint Bible when according to legend seventy-two scholars translating the Torah from Biblical Hebrew into Greek ended up producing exactly the same text. (Compared to that, immaculate conception must have been a walk in the park.) And, of course, there has always been common or garden translation (more blasted than blessed, perhaps). So it comes as no surprise that in the age of computers we have been trying to attack the Babylonian dilemma with automation.

The first serious attempts at automating translation started in the 1950s with rule-based systems (RBTM). These used various combinations of grammatical rules and dictionaries, and predicted a translator-free future within a few years, but in the end didn’t even get close to achieving that lofty goal. Language and communication, messy, unpredictable, creative – and, oh yes, rule-based, too – proved to be a code that was too hard to crack and translate into neat rules and algorithms.

The next surge in research, in the 1980s, coincided with the beginning of personal computing and office automation, and also with the birth of the translation industry as we know it today. When the world went global and online, the single- or multi-practitioner agencies serving a local clientele, and advertising in the Yellow Pages, morphed into Language Service Providers (LSPs). Thanks first to fax, then email and internet, these could now draw on talent from all over the world, and indeed offer their services to clients anywhere in the world. The increased amount of content available then inspired statistical machine translation (SMT), which drew on large volumes of analysed data for specific language pairs, and prompted hopes that “crowd sourcing” might provide the answer where linguistics had failed. In the famous words of the information theory researcher, Frederick Jelinek: "Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recognizer goes up." The SMT idea was used by Franz Josef Och to build Google Translate in the early 2000s. This approach, along with various SMT-RBTM hybrid and fine-tuning combinations, clearly seemed to be more promising. Since 2007, sophisticated platforms based on pure statistical machine translation for related language pairs have been built, along with hybrids in cases where the language pairs involved had little grammatical relation. One example is Moses, a statistical machine translation system funded by the European Commission that allows the automatic training of translation models for various language pairs. The training process was based on a collection of translated texts or parallel corpora. Once trained, the system could quickly find the highest probability translation among an exponential number of choices, with the help of an efficient search algorithm. Still, even these elaborate and costly systems were far from able to deliver the hoped-for quantum leap to full automation, or even a “good enough” quality of translation – as many a frustrated translator asked to “post-edit” still rather clumsy or even incomprehensible machine translated texts can testify. Also, with SMT humans are still needed to build and tweak the multi-step statistical models. The repeated rash promises to rid the world of expensive translators and interpreters within a matter of a few years became a bit of a joke among translators – even if the laughter was perhaps tinged with a sigh of relief – and further research into SMT stagnated somewhat. Apparently here to stay, however, as the most fruitful technological innovation in the translation industry, were the simultaneously developed, but much less ambitious CAT tools (computer-assisted translation tools) that could (and can) handle a variety of file formats, document formats, and tags – and into which MT options can be incorporated. Their translation memories and automated glossaries speed up the translation process, particularly for repetitive texts and updates, while providing easier terminology management and quality control (even though competitive pressures soon demanded that the initial profits of those technologies be passed on to clients).

Now there is a new kid on the block, further proof not only of the impressive ingenuity of IT minds, but also of the enormous desire (and real or perceived need) of humanity to automate itself out of existence. The buzz word is “neural machine translation” (NMT) or – to be up to date, because processes and processors are heating up real fast again – “deep NMT”. The finer conceptual and technological minutiae of the process are somewhat beyond this translator’s mental capacity, but basically the starting point, as in SMT, is again parallel corpora. The difference this time around is that the “learning” the machine does in order to be able to translate between two languages is said to happen largely without human intervention – SMT meets AI. The magic words that make this “self-learning translation system” possible are “deep learning”, “black box system”, and above all “recurrent neural networks” (RNN) and “encoding”. Here is a (very, very) simplified explanation of how that works:

With simple neural networks the same input results always in the same output:

For some applications, that’s exactly what you want. Recurrent neural networks are a bit more “clever”. They don’t just use an input to produce an output, but save previous inputs and uses them as inputs alongside new inputs, thus learning patterns. If, for example, you enter a word sequence like “How” “are” “you?” once, next time you enter “How” and “are” the machine can predict that the next word could be “you?” because it uses the previous input as additional input:

That way the system doesn’t process only the new input, but previous inputs as well. It is said to “learn from itself”. If you now add word for word encoding into the mix to get a set of unique numbers for every sentence you feed into the machine, as well as a second RNN that decodes the unique numbers into words in a sentence of another language, you get basic NMT:

(Diagrams adapted from Adam Geitgey’s text on the Medium website)

Neural networks themselves are not a new concept. What is new is their utilisation for MT, and this has been made possible by GPUs – graphic processing units that are much more powerful than regular processors. The initial results are quite impressive! Here is one example:

German original:

Sollten sich Unklarheiten betreffend der Auslegung einer oder mehrerer der

nachstehenden Vertragsbestimmungen ergeben, gilt im Zweifel die für den

Auftraggeber günstigere Auslegung.

SMT translation:

Should ambiguities concerning the interpretation of one or more of the following provisions of the Treaty, is in doubt for the customer more favorable interpretation.

NMT translation:

In the event of any uncertainties concerning the interpretation of one or more of the following provisions of the contract, the interpretation which is more favorable to the contracting entity shall apply.

What stands out immediately is the quality of the syntax of the neural translation. NMT seems to cope significantly better with syntax and produces more “natural” sounding and therefore easier to edit sentences than SMT, at least in the context of medium-sized translation companies that don’t have the capacity to get involved in high-end training of SMT. The reason for this is that the system is able to translate the semantic meaning of entire sentences rather than working with individual words and phrases. This, at least at first sight, makes post-editing much more like an editing process than one of retranslation in disguise. According to assessments by a number of researchers, NMT also looks more promising for grammatically complex and highly inflected languages and needs less corpora input for its training.

From a translator’s point of view, this represents an amazing starting point for a new translation technology. Evaluations by the MT industry, however, have thrown up some predictable issues – although it has to be said that these evaluations, too, are still in the very early stages, considering that as recently as 2014, NMT was not what they were focused on. One of the main issues is specific terminology, an area SMT developers have spent a lot of time, money and effort on by incorporating glossaries and other linguistic information. The potential for further developments and refinements with NMT in this critical area for translation providers remains an unknown at this stage. Another very common scenario in a translation business environment – tags, strings, and marked-up content – also awaits evaluation.

More generally, NMT still processes only one sentence at a time and therefore can’t take the wider context – let alone knowledge of the world – into account. Here is a simple example that illustrates this particular limitation:

1st sentence

The water was cold and the current strong. I went to the bank. My feet sunk into the mud.

2nd sentence

I had run out of cash. I went to the bank. It had just closed.

In both of these sentences, NMT renders the English word “bank” as “Bank” in German, i. e. the financial institution. Also, the pronoun “it” in the second sentence is translated as “es” when it should be “sie” (because “Bank” in German is feminine).

Changing the first example slightly, on the other hand, illustrates the strength of NMT compared to SMT, in terms of its ability to encode all the semantic qualities of the words within the sentence, rather than operating by memorizing phrase-to-phrase translations:

The water was cold and the current strong, when I went to the bank. My feet sunk into the mud.

NMT:

Das Wasser war kalt und die Strömung stark, als ich zum Ufer ging. Meine Füße versanken im Schlamm.

This time “bank” is translated correctly as “Ufer”, i. e. river bank.

The same type of “correction” occurs in the second sentence, too, when we change it slightly:

I had run out of cash, so I went to the bank, but it had just closed.

NMT:

Ich hatte kein Bargeld mehr, also ging ich zur Bank, aber sie hatte gerade geschlossen.

Again, within a sentence NMT is able to synchronise linguistic qualities, this time the grammatical agreement between noun and pronoun gender. A real breakthrough with NMT in this area, it seems, will depend on whether it will be able to consider whole chunks of text or even whole texts.

There are other, more mysterious, problems with NMT. For example, it sometimes leaves out whole chunks of sentences or adds chunks for no apparent reasons. This brings us to the peculiar fact that we actually don’t know exactly how NMT works, yet. By this I don’t mean that linguists like me don’t fully understand the technology, but that nobody fully understands what this technology does linguistically. Until this has become a bit clearer, it will be hard to fix existing problems technically. (Having said that, who fully understands what’s going on in a translator’s mind?)

NMT is undoubtedly still in its infancy. Even Google, Microsoft and Facebook’s foray into NMT is barely a year old and the existing NMT engines are so far only general-purpose solutions. Other issues to consider, particularly for LSPs, are data security (NMT systems generally run on the cloud), the evaluation of quality across different text types and purposes, and the incorporation of NMT in existing technology and business models. On the other hand, things are moving fast. Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) has already been integrated into SDL Trados Studio 2017 via an API and is available for 20 USD / one million characters (including spaces), while a new smaller player in the NMT market, DeepL (ex-Linguee), is hot on the giant’s heels. The company launched its DeepL Translator in August 2017, boldly claiming “a new standard in neural machine translation”. They, too, have announced the release of an API in the coming months.

So what will this new technology mean for LSPs? Should LSPs who have invested heavily in SMT count their losses and start over, or will the two technologies complement each other? Is this a new chance for smaller LSPs who have never had the resources to catch up with high-end SMT technology to become competitive again? At this point in time, pending further tests and developments, there are few certainties regarding the future of NMT. One is that given the more sophisticated starting point of this new technology, translation providers, big and small, can’t afford to ignore it and should be trying out the options already available and keeping a close eye on the rapidly developing situation, because NMT may well bring yet another change in what and how we translate, perhaps in a very radical and fundamental way. But the other certainty is that it is not going to replace human translators anytime soon. With NMT, the future of automated translation may indeed have arrived, but the future of a world without translators – automatic translation requiring no human input – most definitely has not.

There are many hilarious stories concerning translations where the intended meaning of a message was literally “lost in translation”. While these miscommunications can be humorous, they can also have serious consequences. No company wants to be sending the wrong message to their clients or potential customers, but they don’t always get it right!

For example, Japanese gamers (paying clients of game-maker, Activision) playing a game known as “Call of Duty” were left confused and frustrated by a major mistranslation of a comment in the game. “Remember, no Russian,” a reminder to characters in the game to speak no Russian, was translated as “Kill ’em; they’re Russians”.

Lack of research can also lead to problems. A hair product manufacturer was left wondering why their new hair-curling product was experiencing such slow sales in Germany. They marketed the product in Germany under its English name: “Mist Stick”. Little did they know that, in German, ‘Mist’ is slang for manure. A simple enquiry to their local translation consultancy firm would have saved them some grief!

On a more serious note, during South Korea’s 2011 Free Trade Agreement with the European Union, critical documents were left with missing content, mistranslations and major grammatical errors. This major embarrassment to the Korean government highlights the need to use credible translation partners for translation projects of national significance. The Korean Trade Minister attributed the mistakes to a cost-cutting measure gone wrong.

Most manufacturers now know ‘LOCALISATION’ is the key that opens doors into new and different international markets. Their products must be LOCALISED (adapted) to suit the tastes and expectations of consumers of different cultural backgrounds.

LOCALISATION is however easier and less costly if products are right from the start, designed in ways which allow them to be easily adapted, without the need to extensively re-design. This practice is called INTERNATIONALISATION.

GLOBALISATION is the term referring to the process that addresses business issues associated with launching a product globally, such as integrating LOCALISATION throughout a company after proper INTERNATIONALISATION and product design.

Implementing GLOBALISATION requires what is called a GLOBALISATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (GMS). When applied in the translation industry, GMS manages the translation and LOCALISATION cycles, synchronising these with a source CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS).

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (CMS) are used to store, find and retrieve large amounts of data. In the translation industry a CMS provides the capability of centralising linguistic assets in the form of translation databases, leveraging glossaries and branding standards across global content.

Walter Ng, NZTC Administration and Finance Manager, tells us about his recent adventures in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina.

For many New Zealanders, South America is a fascinating but remote region, hard to get to and perhaps even dangerous – a destination that calls for a fair dose of intrepid spirit.

For Walter Ng, NZTC Finance Manager for more than 23 years, South America represented the perfect opportunity to reconnect with a language that he had studied in his youth while living in a shared flat and dreaming of travelling abroad and learning about foreign cultures.

“A few years ago I had a flatmate who was interested in travelling and learning about other cultures. We decided to study Spanish together and so we learned a few basic words, how to pronounce the language and read a little. I’ve been to Europe and found that one of my favourite places was Barcelona – I thought knowing Spanish would be a great help,” he recalls.

Keen to make a trip, Walter got together a group of six friends and relatives who decided to plan a journey that would take them to various remote and fascinating parts of South America over three weeks.

It was to be a trip that he describes as unique, magical and special, in which the group travelled to four countries – Peru, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina – as well as making a stop in Santiago de Chile, where “we could take in the majesty of the Andes”.

Why did they opt for South America, when there are so many other places to choose from? “To begin with we hadn't included South America in our plans. We had intended to go somewhere in Asia, but then we remembered that we had been to Europe a couple of times, to America twice and to South-East Asia too - and it was when we were looking at prices that someone mentioned that there were some good deals going on flights to South America.”

That's how a trip that Walter had only ever dreamt of became a reality. The thing that really got him in the mood was the idea that he could get back into his Spanish studies from years ago. “I knew that of the seven of us I was the only one who spoke any Spanish, and although we had already come up with a good itinerary, I thought that I could help out with communication. As a matter of fact, this was one of the high points of the trip as far as I’m concerned. Being able to communicate with local people; helping resolve problems; organising our daily itinerary; talking with taxi-drivers and receptionists, in local markets, in restaurants when we ate out at night ... people were surprised to meet someone like me – an ethnic Asian, but a New Zealander – who could speak a little Spanish. It was a real treat, and I got a lot of compliments,” he recalls with a big smile.

When asked which were the most fascinating places that he visited, Walter answered without hesitation: Machu Picchu: “I was really excited to be able to do the famous Inca Trail. Making the climb and getting to know the history and the culture was really spectacular! We were very lucky to be able to do it. We could see the Inca structures and the famous terraces where the farmers built their houses. I had always imagined that it would be a difficult and demanding hike but it turned out to be very pleasant – something that anyone could do. I had also heard that the altitude could make it hard for us to make a lot of progress in each day's hiking, but it had no effect on me. There was only one night when we woke up with headaches and nausea, and we realised that it was because of the altitude.”

Arriving at the lost city of Machu Picchu, Walter was astonished to see what a vast area it occupied. He recalls making some fascinating discoveries, such as the fact that the quality of a person's house and the type of construction employed depended on that person's position in society; and that in order to reinforce the houses and make them more earthquake-resistant, doors and windows were built in trapezoidal walls – which had enabled them to survive for many years in an area of constant seismic risk. “I can't help but wonder why we don't adopt these trapezoid structures in Wellington” – Walter was amazed by how Inca civilisation was so much ahead of its time.

Another incredible experience was climbing Huayna Picchu, a large mountain located behind Machu Picchu, considered one of the five most dangerous in the world. “My sister counted her footsteps... there were more than 1000 steps! There was no railing or anything to protect us – but we did it and survived," Walter laughs. "Still, there were moments when the steps were so steep and narrow that we had to crawl. I can clearly recall seeing the steps winding down behind us and the clouds below; without a doubt the best thing was the incredible view.”

What was the most memorable thing about Ecuador? “The most famous part is the flora and fauna, which you can see only there. I was also pretty excited about seeing the giant tortoises. We went to the Charles Darwin Centre - Darwin based his theory of evolution on his studies in the Galapagos Islands. We were also able to dive and swim with the iguanas – it was all spectacular.”

Walter confesses that he would like to have spent more time in Brazil and Argentina, but only spent a few days in one city in each country. “But we were still able to appreciate the two cities. In Brazil we went to Rio de Janeiro, where we able to take in the view from the statue of Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Hill. While there we met with Fraser Robinson – a linguist and part of the NZTC team in Brazil – who was a great guide: very informative, friendly and helpful. Without question he made our time in Rio all the better. We saw the famous aqueduct and visited the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. In the distance we could see the favelas, the poorest parts of the city,” he recalls.

In Argentina, the food and the beauty of Buenos Aires did not disappoint. “I loved San Telmo, a very special neighbourhood of Buenos Aires and very lively on Sundays, with a little square where you can watch people dancing the tango. We also visited an antiques market and, of course, we bought some of the leather products, which are so reasonably priced and of such good quality. We had been advised to try the beef, and it turned out not only to be succulent and delicious but also served in huge portions. We also made it to La Boca, a neighbourhood famous for its colourful buildings, houses and restaurants, and even caught the end of a football match and saw the fans with their flags filling the streets, shouting and singing.”

After Walter had recounted each of the stories from his big family adventure, I asked him if he'd like to go back to South America. “Most definitely! South America is a great place to go because so much of its beauty is unspoilt. That's why three and a half weeks were only enough to get a first impression. I would love to have more time to spend in Brazil and Argentina, and – why not? – to other places too, like Bolivia, which we heard a lot of good things about during our trip, and Chile and Patagonia.”

Quality is at the core of our business. With that in mind we are delighted to announce that we have once again been certified to the ISO 17100 Quality Standard for Translation Services, following completion of our most recent audit by the Language Industry Certification System (LICS).

ISO 17100 is an internationally recognised standard for translation providers which covers the key processes needed for supplying quality translation services. A key provision of the standard is that translation work must be reviewed by a second linguist who checks that the target text is a complete and accurate translation of the original text. This quality assurance step has been an integral part of our work process since our establishment in 1985. We are delighted that our work and processes have stood up to this rigorous standard and look forward to continuing to provide you with quality translation services.

Machine translation (MT) technology has gone through several phases. Starting with rule-based MT in the 1950s, it moved on in the 1990s to statistical machine translation that drew on the huge bodies of data able to be exploited thanks to advances in data storage. In the 20 years from 1990 to 2010, the focus has been on developing and refining the capabilities of the data-driven statistical model. The latest trend, neural machine translation, has created considerable excitement in the MT industry because of the quality improvements it promises. Neural MT uses the concept of neural networks, similar to the structure of the axons in the human brain, to translate text. Initial results seem to indicate that languages like Arabic, Korean and Japanese, which have proven particularly challenging for MT to date, show significantly greater improvements in performance than languages that are easier for conventional MT systems to handle. Both Microsoft and Google translation services now use neural MT. While there will long continue to be a need for the quality of translation that only humans can produce, MT can fill the gap when huge amounts of text are needed to be translated quickly, or even in real time. But for now, the output of MT is still largely of the “quick and dirty” level of quality. Watch this space!

Shenzhen, China was the location of an unfortunate “lost in translation” incident last month when Welshman Leigh Simmons inadvertently had his dog shaved almost completely bald. Simmons wanted to give his dog a pre-summer trim but unfortunately he does not speak Mandarin and his dog groomer did not speak English. To overcome this he mimed a shaving motion and made a buzzing sound. His efforts to communicate these requirements failed and he was left with an almost completely bald dog. “I came back and saw the dog and just started laughing so hard I could barely stand,” Simmons recalled.

Walter Ng, Manager de Administración y Finanzas en NZTC International, nos revela parte de sus recientes aventuras por Perú, Ecuador, Brasil y Argentina.

Para muchos neozelandeses, Sudamérica es una región fascinante pero remota, de difícil acceso, inclusive peligrosa, y que requiere de una buena cuota de intrepidez.

Para Walter Ng, Manager de Finanzas de NZTC International por más de 23 años, Sudamérica representaba la oportunidad perfecta para reencontrarse con un idioma que aprendió en sus años de juventud, cuando compartía departamento con un amigo y quería viajar al extranjero y aprender de culturas foráneas.

“Hace algunos años atrás tenía un compañero de departamento que estaba interesado en viajar y aprender de otras culturas. Decidimos entonces aprender un idioma juntos, el español, y fue así como aprendimos algunas palabras básicas, como pronunciar el idioma y leer un poco. También había viajado a Europa, y resultó que Barcelona fue uno de mis lugares favoritos, por lo que pensé que saber español sería de gran ayuda”, recuerda de esa época.

Motivado por las ganas de viajar y conocer, este año Walter junto a seis familiares y amigos, decidieron planificar un viaje que los llevaría durante 3 semanas a conocer lugares remotos y fascinantes de Sudamérica.

Un viaje que describe como único, mágico y especial, en el que pudieron visitar 4 países -Perú, Ecuador, Brasil, Argentina- incluyendo una parada no programada en Santiago de Chile, en la que “pudimos apreciar la majestuosa Cordillera de los Andes”, enfatiza entusiasmado.

Pero por qué eligieron Sudamérica entre tantos otros países? “Inicialmente no estaba entre nuestros planes Sudamérica. Cuando organizamos nuestro viaje, teníamos la intención de ir a algún lugar en Asia, pero luego pensamos que habíamos estado en Europa un par de veces, y también habíamos ido a América en tres oportunidades, al igual que a países del Sudeste Asiático, por lo que cuando empezamos a cotizar alguien comentó que Sudamérica estaba con buenas ofertas”.

Fue así como uno de los continentes soñados de Walter se hizo realidad. Lo más llamativo fue que este viaje lo inspiró nuevamente a retomar el lenguaje que había aprendido hace años atrás. “Sabía que de los siete que viajábamos nadie más hablaba español, y no obstante contábamos con un buen itinerario, pensé que podía contribuir en la comunicación. Y en realidad, para mí fue uno de los puntos más altos de este viaje. Tener la posibilidad de comunicarme con las personas locales; ayudar a resolver situaciones; organizar nuestra agenda diaria; hablar con los taxistas, los recepcionistas, en los mercados locales, en los restaurantes cuando

salíamos en la noche...se sorprendían al ver cómo una persona con mis características -de aspecto asiático pero neozelandés- podía hablar un poco de español. Fue muy gratificante y recibí muchos elogios sobre lo bueno de mi español”, recuerda con una gran sonrisa.

Le preguntamos cuáles fueron los lugares más fascinantes de esta aventura y, sin pensarlo dos veces, nos responde Machu Picchu: “Me entusiasmaba de sobremanera poder hacer el famoso Camino del Inca. Escalar el lugar y conocer la historia y la cultura, fue algo realmente espectacular! Fuimos muy afortunados de poder hacerlo. Pudimos ver la estructura inca y las famosas terrazas donde los granjeros asentaron sus villas. Siempre pensé que sería un camino difícil de hacer y muy demandante, pero en realidad fue una caminata muy placentera que cualquiera puede hacer. También había escuchado que la altura podía impedirnos hacer el largo trayecto, pero para mí no fue ningún impedimento. Sólo tuvimos una noche donde despertamos con dolor de cabeza y náuseas, y nos dimos cuenta que era por la altitud”.

Comenta que fue muy impresionante llegar a la ciudadela perdida de Machu Picchu y que le sorprendió lo grande y vasta que era. Recuerda que descubrieron cosas fascinantes, como por ejemplo, que dependiendo de qué rol cumplía la persona en la sociedad era la calidad de la vivienda y construcción; y que para reforzar sus casas y hacerlas más seguras contra terremotos, construían las puertas y ventanas en los muros con formas trapezoidales, lo que les permitió sobrevivir durante muchos años en una zona de riesgo sísmico constante. “Me pregunto por qué en Wellington

no imitamos las formas trapezoidales”, se pregunta sorprendido de constatar cómo una civilización antigua era tan avanzada para su época.

Otra de las experiencias más osadas que recuerda, fue escalar Huayna Picchu, una gran montaña que se ubica detrás de Machu Pichu y que se considera una de las 5 más peligrosas del mundo. “Mi hermana contó los peldaños...eran más de 1.000 escalones! En el límite de la montaña, sin ningún tipo de protección o baranda para afirmarse, lo hicimos y sobrevivimos -ríe- pero habían momentos que los peldaños eran tan empinados y angostos que teníamos que usar nuestras manos. Recuerdo mirar las escaleras hacia abajo y ver las nubes detrás mío, sin duda lo mejor fue llegar y apreciar la vista desde la cima”.

Qué fue lo más llamativo de Ecuador? “Lo más famoso es la flora y fauna natural, que se puede ver sólo en ese país y en ninguna otra parte del mundo. Además estaba muy entusiasmado de ver las tortugas gigantes y fuimos al Centro de Charles Darwin, creador de la teoría de la evolución, quien basó sus estudios en las Islas Galápagos. También pudimos bucear y nadar con tortugas gigantes, todo un espectáculo”.

Confiesa que le hubiera gustado pasar más tiempo en Brasil y Argentina, pero que sólo estuvieron dos días en cada capital. “Pero aún así pudimos apreciar la ciudad. Nos arreglamos para llegar a Río de Janeiro en Brasil y ver desde lo alto de la colina el majestuoso Cristo Redentor. Allí nos encontramos con Fraser Robinson -linguista

y parte del equipo de NZTC International en Brasil- quien fue un guía espectacular, muy informado, amigable y colaborador. Sin duda hizo nuestro día muy ameno. Vimos el famoso acueducto y visitamos la Playa de Copacabana y la Playa de Ipanema. Desde lejos pudimos ver las Favelas, la región más pobre de la ciudad”, rememora.

En Argentina, la gastronomía y la belleza de Buenos Aires no lo decepcionó. “Me encantó San Telmo, un lugar muy especial de Buenos Aires y muy popular en los domingos, con una pequeña plaza pública donde se puede apreciar a gente bailando tango. También recorrimos el mercado de antigüedades y, por supuesto, aprovechamos de comprar productos de cuero tan convenientes y de buena calidad. Nos habían recomendado probar la carne, ya que habíamos escuchado que además de ser deliciosa era suculenta, con porciones muy grandes y deliciosas. También conocimos La Boca, famoso barrio por el colorido de sus edificios, casas y restaurantes e inclusive nos topamos con la final de un partido de fútbol donde

pudimos ver las barras bravas con banderas, gritos y cánticos invadiendo las calles”.

Luego de recordar cada una de las historias de esta gran aventura familiar, le preguntamos si le gustaría regresar por más a Sudamérica. “Claro que sí! Viajar a este continente es una ventaja, porque gran parte de la belleza se mantiene intacta, por lo que 3 semanas y medias fue sólo una primera impresión, pero me encantaría tener más tiempo en Brasil y en Argentina, y por qué no, poder viajar a otros lugares también, como Bolivia que me lo recomendaron muchísimo durante el viaje, Chile y la Patagonia”.

With more than 3 billion searches conducted each month, YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine, bigger than Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL combined. With more than 100 hours of video uploaded each minute there is no doubting the popularity of this channel.

While YouTube has massive global reach and an estimated 1 billion users (about one third of total internet users), the service has been criticised for its lack of accessibility to non-native English speakers. YouTube does have an automatic captioning function available in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, but this service has a long way to go. This is despite YouTube’s claim that the function is a great way to make content accessible for viewers. Its automatic subtitles or closed captions for deaf and hard-of hearing users have been criticised by prominent vlogger Rikki Poynter as making “absolutely no sense 99% of the time”.

A more effective, productive and inexpensive way to create multilingual YouTube videos is to do this yourself. The steps are quick, easy and can be surprisingly affordable.

Get your content professionally translated – NZTC can help you with this. YouTube videos for advertising purposes are generally under one minute long and about 200 words. The professional translation cost for this will likely be less than the price of printing a small brochure.Once you have the professionally translated content, log onto your YouTube account and select Video Manager, which is beside the editing link.Select Subtitles and CC from the dropdown menu beside the edit button.From here, select Add new subtitles or CC which is on the right hand side of the screen.Click create New Subtitles or CC.Select the relevant language and then type or paste your professionally translated content.

NZTC can provide fully editing translated content in a time-coded script so you know exactly where the content needs to be uploaded. We can also proofread your translated videos once this has been completed, ensuring the text is positioned correctly and giving you total confidence in your multilingual videos.

By translating and subtitling your videos on YouTube you gain access to a large non-English-speaking user base. With these tools, and the right professional assistance, you can be confident you are putting your best foot forward in any language.

To learn more, email Robert at

robert@nztcinternational.com

Example 1: “Every translator has their own style”

It has become almost standard usage in English to use the forms “they”, “their”, “themselves” etc in place of “he/she”, “his/her” or “himself/herself ”. So we find sentences like “The individual translator should monitor their own business”, “The driver is responsible for the safety of their passengers”, or even “You can place your baby on their back to avoid harming themself ”. The “correctness” of this construction can be debated endlessly and many speakers of English find it awkward and ungrammatical. Nevertheless, it is used in many of the texts we are asked to translate.

We find as a result that translators often replicate this plural form “they” unnecessarily. After all, in some Asian and Polynesian languages, no distinction is made between “he” and “she”. For example, “ia” in Maori, Samoan, Tongan, Cook Islands Maori etc., “siya” in Tagalog, “dia” in Indonesian. These are all neutral pronouns that do not specify the gender of the person referred to. So when you see “they”, “their”, “them” etc in English, STOP and ask yourself if it is referring to one person or several, and then translate accordingly.

Example 2: “A translator is a person who converts one language into another”

Definitions of this type are sometimes used in informational texts of the sort we are asked to translate. In some languages it may be the case that the translation of the word being defined is the same as the explanation. For instance, “A pedestrian is someone who walks along the road” might be translated as “A person who walks is a person who walks”. In a case like this, it would be preferable to put the English word in quote marks followed by the explanation in the target language. Another option would be to drop such a sentence altogether. This may be quite justifiable depending on the nature and purpose of the text, but should always be pointed out in your translation – otherwise you might get a note from the editor/reviser or even a puzzled customer reminding you that you have missed a sentence out!

Example 3: “Please send any queries to the Ministry of Translation”

The question here is “To translate or not to translate?” First, consider whether the words “Ministry of Translation” are going to appear on the actual envelope posted to this organisation and which form will be able to be used by the postal system in the country it will be sent to. In New Zealand for example, many government departments have bilingual names and the postal system should be expected to be able to handle either the words “Ministry of Translation” or its Mäori equivalent “Te Manatü Whakamäori”. However, translating this for use in New Zealand as “Te Matagaluega Fakamatalaupu” in Samoan or “Übersetzungsministerium” in German may cause a delay in the mail delivery, if it arrives at all! The solution we suggest is that the first time the departmental name appears in the text, you provide a descriptive or explanatory translation in brackets. You can then continue to use either the English words or your translation throughout the text, depending on what best suits the individual style or typography of your language. Having now explained to the reader what the words mean, it becomes much more reasonable to simply leave the English words as they are for the postal address details.

The question of how you actually translate such proper names or titles could take several pages to examine. But as a general rule, if the text is to be used in New Zealand and there is a commonly used translation of the organisation available, then that can be used throughout the text, as long as the English equivalent has been indicated at some stage, preferably the first time it appears.

Where the title refers to an overseas organisation with no accepted translation or local equivalent in the target language, appears only once or twice, and has general information value, rather than being used for an address, it should generally be translated into the target language. For instance, “This guideline has been approved by the Australian Electrical Normalisation Committee”. The primary consideration here is to make it clear to the reader in his or her language what the organisation referred to is.

In making these sorts of decisions in your translation, it may be useful to imagine what effect it would have on the reader if the name of the organisation was given in a totally different script e.g. “Please send any queries to ΡΦχωπϊ”. Is this going to be of use to the reader or not? If those are the actual words that need to appear on the envelope in the destination country or refer to an entry in the phone book(e.g. Refer to “Ministry of Translation” in the Yellow Pages), then the answer is yes. If the reader is simply being told where to enquire (e.g. Please enquire at your local branch of the Ministry of Translation office) then the answer is no.

Those of us who work with ‘foreign’ languages - i.e. languages not widely known in our local community - often have to respond to questions such as “but what does it actually say?”, as if the mystery can be penetrated by drilling down from text to paragraph, paragraph to sentence, sentence to phrase, phrase to word. I remember a lawyer ordering a translation of an e-mail in Spanish, but requesting an interlinear version, slotting the English lines in between the Spanish, presumably to see whether I had really put ‘what it said’. Yet as we know, the question of what the original says may be a little more complex than this.

Some time ago, under a previous presidency, there was a demonstration by Latin Americans living in the USA, with the rallying cry “Yes, we can!” (as reported in the English-speaking media). Now that’s not a bad slogan, as Bob the builder and Winston the political jack-in-the-box have been quick to note. Yet that isn’t what the protesting Latinos were shouting – they were actually saying “Sí, se puede!”, and I would have had to tell my lawyer customer that this ‘actually’ said “Yes, it is possible”. Now this would never get a street march cracking, and it could well be argued that such a literal equivalent is a much less ‘faithful’ translation than “yes, we can”, which for my money catches the message perfectly.

Another wonderful example of the same problem occurred recently in Italy. Like most other stories in Italy today, it’s all about their wayward prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. After being criticised for keeping company perhaps more attractive than dignified, he responded with an attack on the Socialist political leader Rosy Bindi, who does not fall into the starlet category, claiming that she was more beautiful than she was intelligent. This angered many of Berlusconi’s critics, particularly women, and started a T-shirt campaign with the slogan “I am not a woman at your disposal!” (again as reported in the English-language media).

This is the inverse situation to “yes, we can”. It tells us exactly ‘what it says’ on all those T-shirts, i.e. “non sono una donna a sua disposizione”, but it doesn’t sound like much of a slogan to me.

Before thinking about a more eloquent alternative, let’s pause to reflect on what happened with “yes, we can”. What was the problem there, and how was it solved?

For reasons I won’t bore you with here, English does not particularly like general, impersonal expressions, so increasingly “it is advisable to” becomes replaced with “you are advised to”, or “we recommend that”. And indeed, this was one of the tenets of the ‘assertive language’ movement”- to make it clear whose opinion is being stated.

Accordingly “yes, it is possible” would have been far too impersonal in English, whereas “sí, se puede” is a lively and motivating statement in Spanish. The solution was therefore to find an equivalent ‘personalised’ expression in English.

So what about our current translation problem, i.e. what to put on thousands of T-shirts to protest against Berlusconi’s chauvinism (in English)?

I think there are two problems with “I am not a woman at your disposal”. The first is that “at your disposal” is much less idiomatic in English than the equivalent phrase is in Italian. For us this is a bookish cliché, lacking the ability to carry strong emotions. So might it be better to say “I am not a woman at your beck and call”?

The second problem is that English nouns, such as “woman” or “man”, tend to be more specific and less generic than nouns in our sister languages in continental Europe. The Italian really means “I am not the kind of woman who ...”, but perhaps we would take a different tack in English. If I had to come up with a slogan for white ribbon day, rather than “I am not a man who accepts violence!” I would cut the noun out, and go for something like “I don’t accept violence – do you?”.

On the other hand, English is rich in nouns with adjectival force, particularly when it comes to insults. In the light of this argument, my preferred translation would perhaps be “I’m not your floozy!”, or “I am not one of your floozies!”.

I have just returned from attending the 2017 Congress of FIT in Brisbane, with “disruption and diversification” as its overarching theme. In this article I try to formulate some of my impressions from the event – no easy task, given the wide span of topics covered.

The keynote addresses may be a good place to start, in view of their consistently high quality and impact. Immediately following the official opening there was a presentation on the interpreting of indigenous languages in Australia. Colleen Rosas provided a useful outline, but the real highlight here was the personal statements of three indigenous interpreters, describing how and why they were working to keep their communities well informed, and above all to ensure the survival of their respective languages. I doubt that anyone in the auditorium will forget the video showing the speaker’s mother teaching kids to read, illustrating the letter “m” as two anthills, and then getting the pupils to write it with their fingers on each other’s backs. This was indeed diversification with a capital “D”.

We then launched into the “disruption” side of things with Eric Yu’s presentation on “big data” based language services in the AI age. However, these and other presentations focused on future developments provided little to convince the translators in the audience of impacts here and now, and were mainly confined to impressive PowerPoint slides and statistics. I, and probably many others present, would have welcomed some examples of output and actual case studies.

Prof. Antony Pym, an internationally known translation theorist, managed to cover both aspects of the theme, placing the current paradigm of “fidelity” in translation in the context of views of translation that preceded it, and those that may be about to follow it. His description of the reluctance of Chinese translation students to translate the concept of China’s “bullying” behaviour towards its neighbours in the South China Sea accurately proved both memorable and provocative, as a questioner from the floor insisted that indeed it should not be translated to mean this, since China was not a “bully”, but a “big brother” in this context. So was the obligation to be “faithful” to the word on the page or the situation on the ground, as the translator sees it? Anthony Pym’s argument that the Chinese reader would not know what the Australian writer was thinking if the word was not translated across as “bullying” appeared to fall on rather deaf ears. This motif of the political, indeed geopolitical, nature of information became something of a motif throughout the conference.

More interesting to me was the point where Professor Pym argued that the subject of translation studies was coming ever closer to translation practice. The group of translators I was sitting with begged (silently) to differ, and I was right with them. There was ample evidence during the congress of theory taking the high road while practice takes the low road, with little indication of any common destination.

Friday morning’s keynote from Prof. Jemina Napier really did disrupt and break new ground, since it was delivered in sign language. Prof. Napier is an internationally known researcher on the topic, and a “native speaker” as the daughter of deaf parents. So as we watched her we heard the disembodied interpreter’s voice from back stage. Memorable stuff indeed!

Then Dr Glenn Flores presented on health interpreting, and the dramatic positive and negative consequences of getting things right and wrong respectively in this area. Even though we have heard all this before, his address was more packed with facts and figures than most, including one extremely interesting statistic – a study showed that after 30 years’ experience, health interpreters were still making the same categories of mistake as when they started out, yet with as little as 100 hours’ training – yes, just 100 hours – the incidence of errors was cut dramatically.

The next keynote highlight was the anthropologist Dr Sarah Kendzior, a committed pro-democracy activist focused particularly on recent developments in the US, and more particularly the extremely difficult situation for those seeking human rights and change for the better in Uzbekistan. She highlighted the importance of using the local language, yet the difficulty of communicating widely in that language when it is not yet translatable by Google and similar tools. And more particularly, social media – formerly a tool for the promotion of freedom and human rights – are increasingly being used by the authorities to crack down on dissent, she argued.

I was unable to attend the final keynote, given by leading translation theorist Dr Michael Cronin from DCU, Ireland. However his topic was “Why translation should not cost the earth: towards geocentric translation studies”, and he sums up his argument as follows in his recent book on the subject: “Translation as a body of ideas and a set of practices is central to any serious attempt to think about [our] interconnectedness and vulnerability in the age of human-induced climate change”.

Meanwhile, there was also much to reflect on in some of the individual sessions. Interest in literary translation at the FIT Congress has diminished over the years, yet, true to form, it was here that some of the most fascinating discussions of practitioners grappling with everyday problems were to be heard. My personal highlights included Eva Dobos speaking on translating the understated tone of Norwegian fiction into the loquacious and eloquent Hungarian tongue, of which I am hoping to see some examples in the near future!

Te Tu Matakuru O’Connell kept the New Zealand flag flying with his presentation on the Maori language localisation and disruptive technology, followed by an absorbing talk by Tea Dietterich and Tieneke van Beukering on localising texts into rare and emerging indigenous languages, including many of the Polynesian languages we work with at NZTC. This was billed as a “true to life” picture of what happens, and indeed it was. Everything they said about the conflicts between customer demands on the one hand and the reality on the ground on the other, the use of translation memories, but in a context of little or no familiarity with these tools, had a very familiar ring to many of us in the room. In fact, one of the most rewarding aspects of attending such a conference is to realise that you are “not alone”, and to share and commune with others dealing with exactly the same challenges as your own.

In discussions of the use of translation memories, I found that freelancers are generally well disposed towards them, which is understandable given the major difficulty of managing the large volumes of text arising in larger agencies. Trados remains a firm favourite with many, although MemoQ continues to make inroads, it would appear, largely on the basis of very good customer relations.

I was not able to attend all the technology sessions – and this is not my area of interest – but I came away with more impression of promise than actual delivery. One very interesting exception was a session I had to chair, given by Helene Jaccomard, who teaches in West Australia. She set out to chart how far the performance of free MT tools had improved over the decades. She actually managed to find short passages of texts translated between French and English back in the 1990s, and reran the same texts recently. There were indeed dramatic improvements, without getting to a fully convincing result.

So overall my feeling was that the future is not quite here (otherwise it wouldn’t be the future, I suppose). I was unable to attend the presentations on “how to survive in the future translation environment”, of which there were quite a few. However the mood was convivial rather than apprehensive, and I remain convinced that as the ongoing development of translation technology will continue to open up niches for smaller operators to work along more subtle and creative lines.

‘La música salsa me contagió desde muy pequeῆo’

• Qué es lo que lleva a un profesional colombiano radicado en Nueva Zelandia, a entrenar y competir en la salsa?

Todos los días Rafael Laverde -casado, 45 años, de origen colombiano y con más de una década en Nueva Zelandia- llega a las oficinas de New Zealand Translation Centre, para desempeñarse en su cargo de Ejecutivo de Ventas y Asesor de Lenguajes e Idiomas.

Junto a más de una veintena de Traductores, Linguistas y Project Managers, trabaja en NZTC asesorando a las empresas que necesitan traducir sus marcas y productos para entrar a los mercados internacionales, ‘porque una cosa es decirlas en inglés y en japonés, y otra cosa muy distinta es en chino, aquí contamos con expertos y eso el cliente lo sabe’.

Casado con una neozelandesa y con dos hijos, Santiago de 8 e Isabela de 3 años, compatibiliza su vida familiar con su trabajo, como cualquier otro extranjero residente en este país.

Lo que principalmente diferencia a Rafael de sus compañeros es un hobby -que describe tan rico y diverso como el lenguaje- y el que lo motiva a entrenar 3 veces a la semana por tres horas y combinar su trabajo con su pasión: el baile y la salsa.

‘Vengo de un país latino y caribeño, por consiguiente la música y la salsa me contagiaron desde muy pequeño. Me considero un salsómano, me encanta escuchar música salsa y el baile es un instrumento más, porque tú la interpretas con tu cuerpo y existen muchas derivaciones, como el estilo cubano, colombiano , puertorriqueño, entre muchos otros más’.

Cuenta que ha vivido en Edimburgo y Londres y que siempre se las ha ingeniado para practicar salsa. Al igual que el lenguaje, es un estilo musical que se ha ampliado y adaptado a las características de muchos países, y hoy en la actualidad, no hay lugar en el mundo que no cuente con una escuela o club de salsa.

‘Imagínate que en NZ tenemos 13 escuelas de salsa. Pero aquí en Wellington ocurre algo muy peculiar. Es muy fácil compaginar los horarios, ir de un lado a otro, trabajar, tener a tus hijos, dejarlos en el colegio, todo se puede terminar perfectamente a las 19 horas y de ahí, estar en la escuela de baile es muy simple’, enfatiza.

Esa es la razón por la que años atrás decidió entrar al nivel semi-profesional y co-dirigir la escuela de baile Salsa Magic, junto a dos amigos, Jaboc Rosevear (neozelandés y abogado de profesión) y Chloe Robinson, actualmente radicada en Milán. Este es el fruto de un trabajo arduo, incansable pero motivador, sueño que junto a un equipo de 8 profesores, comparten para crear el semillero de nuevos talentos en la capital.

‘Desde que llegué a Wellington, siempre hubo una comunidad grande de salsa, pero sólo se dedicaba a bailar socialmente en una fiesta que se hacía una vez al mes. Cuando ingresé a dirigir la escuela hace 6 años atrás, empezamos a cambiar muchas cosas y una de ellas fue nuestra imagen, para motivar a más gente de todas las edades a bailar’.

En la actualidad, son casi 90 estudiantes los que integran las 6 clases (beginner, intermediate y advance) y de ellos, 45 componen el equipo de bailarines de competición, el que tiene a su haber importantes logros, como haber participado en el Congreso de Los Angeles, uno de los eventos de salsa más grandes y antiguos del mundo.

Cuenta que el año pasado, presentaron cuatro coreografías, y que una de ellas, la coreografía del Señor de los Anillos, fue elegida para el cierre del evento, gracias a su magnífica puesta en escena, a cargo de su Director Creativo, Jacob.

Además, destaca que los bailarines han ganado importantes premios en competencias internacionales en Australia, lo que es muy importante porque allí el nivel es muy alto, recibiendo elogios en diversas categorías ya sea en individuales y en duplas, y en ritmos tan variados como cha cha, bachata, mambo, entre otros.

Tan sólo en julio del año pasado, ganaron el primer puesto en 'Coreografía más creativa’ en el Sydney Latin Festival, otro de los eventos masivos a nivel mundial y en el que destacaron gracias al profesionalismo, entrega y lograda puesta en escena.

Para este colombiano amante de la salsa, los sueños a futuro siguen intactos: mantener la salsa viva y auténtica. ‘No queremos que la salsa muera en el sistema de salsa de salón, porque eso es totalmente distinto. Las competencias de televisión como Dancing with the Stars, donde se baila rumba y paso doble, no son los pasos tradicionales de la salsa, son adaptados. Nuestro sueño es mantenerla en su forma original y esparcirla por todas partes del mundo’, recalca con entusiasmo.

Y agrega, ‘La salsa es un baile incluyente, la idea es que el estudiante confíe en nosotros y pueda ver los resultados rápidamente. Pero también algo que crea la salsa es una comunidad de amigos, de familia, de gente que se pueda relacionar por un motivo, no importa que seas de un color, raza, etnia o nivel socio-económico’.

Si te apasiona este ritmo y tienes ganas y aptitudes para el baile, visita la página web www.salsamagic.com y únete a este grupo de profesionales que comparten una misma pasión: bailar salsa.

Un estudio reciente reveló cómo las personas bilingües procesan el tiempo de manera diferente, según el idioma que estén empleando.

Los idiomas son mucho más que palabras para expresar acciones o definir objetos. Ya en el año 1921, el filósofo austríaco Ludwig Wittgenstein se refería a este tema. Su célebre cita “los límites de mi lenguaje son los límites de mi mundo”, parece cobrar mas sentido, tras revelarse un estudio que ahonda en el procesamiento de informacion en las personas bilingües.

El análisis, a cargo de Emanuel Bylund y Panos Athanasopoulos para la revista “Journal of Experimental Psychology” -recientemente publicado por la American Psychological Association- concluyó que los patrones de un idioma tienen un papel causal en la construcción de nuestro modo de pensar y percibir el tiempo.

Para este estudio se realizaron 162 ensayos a 40 personas cuyo idioma nativo era el sueco pero que hablaban español con fluidez. Se les pidió describir en ambos idiomas cuánto tiempo transcurría al observar el crecimiento de una línea en una pantalla.

Cuando a los encuestados se les preguntaba en español, respondían con estimaciones temporales percibiendo el tiempo como volumen. En tanto que al consultárseles en sueco, rápidamente cambiaban su comportamiento en base a estimaciones de longitud.

Por ejemplo, en español y en griego, la duración se refiere en términos de cantidad y tamaño. “Mucho”, “poco” o grande”, son comunes en el uso diario: un pequeño descanso, un gran matrimonio, una larga entrevista.

En cambio, en idiomas como el sueco y el inglés, se marca la duración del tiempo en base a distancias físicas, empleándose frases como “short break”; “long talk”, or “long wedding” para referise al tiempo de determinados eventos.

En la práctica, esto ocurre a diario con la mente de extranjeros que viven en otros países. Con frecuencia, les cuesta encontrar una palabra o frase para describir un hecho, que en su idioma nativo les resulta de gran facilidad.

Como consecuencia, aprenden aquella frase en el nuevo idioma, que les sirve para definir algo en un contexto determinado.

Los científicos le llaman a este fenómeno flexibilidad cognitiva, pensar en el tiempo de manera diferente dependiendo del idioma que se esté empleando. De esta manera, este estudio representa la primera evidencia científica del fenómeno también descrito como “cambio de código”.

Para Panos Athanasopoulos, “el lenguaje puede alterar nuestra percepción del mundo y hacer que experimentemos el paso del tiempo de una forma muy específica en función del idioma empleado. El hecho de que las personas bilingües sean capaces de cambiar desde una percepción a otra sin apenas esfuerzo y de forma totalmente inconsciente, demuestra la facilidad con la que el lenguaje puede influir en nuestros sentidos más básicos, alterando nuestras emociones, la percepción visual y hasta el sentido del tiempo”, revela.

Otro estudio en torno a esta temática, es el de la investigadora de ciencias neurocognitivas Lera Boroditsky, que buscó analizar la percepción del tiempo, las formas y colores en personas que viven en diferentes idiomas.

“Mi intención era demostrar que el lenguaje no afectaba la percepción pero encontré exactamente lo opuesto. El lenguaje sí interviene en niveles básicos de percepción y, sin tener conocimiento o consentimiento, transforma la sustancia misma de cómo vemos el mundo”.

Ejemplos de estudios que ahondan en la lógica del pensamiento humano son amplios y variados. "Effects of language on color discriminability”, es un estudio que habla de cómo el color es percibido de distintas maneras dependiendo de qué idioma se esté usando.

Otras investigaciones, han demostrado cómo el género gramatical influye en la descripción de objetos en personas que hablan alemán y español, los feminiza o masculiniza, y hace que sean asociados a cualidades de manera casi instantánea.

Por ejemplo, la palabra “llave” que en alemán es masculina, se asocia a palabras como “metálica”, “pesada”, “dura”. En tanto que en español, se emplean adjetivos calificativos como “brillante”, “pequeña” y “dorada”.

Si esto ocurre en la forma de representar fenómenos espaciales, por qué no pensar que existen otras percepciones en la lógica del pensamiento humano que pueden verse afectadas al hablar dos idiomas, como los números, la música, la moral, las emociones, el razonamiento, la construcción mental de eventos, y así un amplio e infinito espectro psicológico y sociológico de un individuo.

Por Pilar Cepeda

Fuentes

“Journal of Experimental Psychology” or Emanuel Bylund y Panos Athanasopoulos “How does our language shape the way we think”, by Lera Boroditsky. “When language can hold the answer” (New York Times) “Words help us see” (University of Chicago) “Bilingual speakers experience time differently” (The Independent)

Dr John Jamieson is one of NZTC’s longest serving and most respected translators. He is well-known in New Zealand and abroad and has delivered papers at many international conferences. John can translate in nearly thirty different languages. His opinions about language and language translation are always interesting and entertaining. Translation is essentially a long series of linguistic decisions, some easy, others more difficult. This brief article will provide some examples of both categories. Easy decisions often refer to ‘getting it right’, and avoiding what we call ‘false friends’. Well-known examples include the German word “Handy”, which is a mobile phone, and “Beamer”, which is a data projector. Nobody seems to know how these English words came to be used in Germany as terms no English speaker would understand, but it is worth noting that a word borrowed directly from another language will often mean something slightly different in its new context. For example “building” in French tends to refer to a large apartment or office building, and “meeting” is usually a political meeting.

In any event, knowing a foreign language clearly includes being aware of these apparently familiar words that mean something quite different. In other cases the meaning is quite clear, but the other languages come at the idea from a different angle as compared with English usage. For example what we call “health insurance” is provided in Germany by “sickness insurance funds” (Krankheitskassen). Similarly, our “lost proper ty” becomes “found objects” (“objets trouvés”) in French. Same story, from a different perspective. There are some slightly more subtle examples of this – in the area of veterinary medicine English-speaking officials speak of “control” where in French, German and other European languages they “fight” the disease (“lutte” in French, “Bekämpfung” in German). And some languages “launch” or “initiate” a software program where we just “run” it.

For problems of this kind the trick for the translator is to present the concept from the correct angle or perspective in English, or whatever the target language may be. At other times we also come up against slightly more difficult problems of ‘making sense’. One of my favourite examples is the word “information”. In English it mainly refers to data, facts that I can pass on to you, and you to someone else. But “information” in French can just as easily denote the action of communicating information in some way, so “études d'information” are probably “media studies” or “communication studies”, i.e. about the art of communicating information to the public. A “voyage d’information”, at least when under taken by members of parliament, is a “fact-finding trip”. i.e.a trip for the parliamentarians to “inform themselves” of what is happening. And an “informationsrum” in Swedish is a briefing room. To ‘make sense’ in this situation the translator often has to project the familiar, general idea into the specific context to figure out exactly what is happening, and then come up with a term that will send the right signal in the target language - not always an easy task!

Dr Paul Sulzberger interviews veteran translator Dr John Jamieson on translation technique

I recently saw a beautiful book about Mercedes. It's all pure glossy prestige — 400 richly illustrated pages in German, English and French. But there's a catch...

A translation catch.

The text begins with a story...

Es ist der 19. August 1997, so um 9 Uhr vormittags herum. Die Verbindung funktioniert, auf der anderen Seite der Leitung Herr S...

... with a translation into English:

It's 19 August 1997, around 9 AM. The link is OK, and Mr S... is on the other end of the line.

... and one into French:

Nous sommes le 19 août 1997, vers neuf heures du matin. Le téléphone sonne, c'est un certain monsieur S... qui m'appelle.

From these translations it appears that the English and French translators don't agree on the meaning of the German phrase "Die Verbindung funktioniert" (literally "the connection functions"). The English translator has figured that it means that the call has successfully gone through (i.e. it didn't fail) and that the telephone connection between the storyteller and Mr S... is working.

The French translator, however, has decided that it simply means that the phone rang ("Le téléphone sonne").

Has an error of interpretation been made? Who is right? How did this happen? What can translators learn from this example? I posed these questions to veteran translator Dr John Jamieson.

Paul: What's going on here, John? Why did the English and the French translators come up with differing interpretations of the original German?

John: The French translator got it right. The phone rang. The English translator didn't recognise that the German word for "the connection" (die Verbinding) is a derivative, an oblique expression which refers back to the more specific concept of “telephone”, or “telephone connection” (die Telefonverbindung). Similarly, “functioned” was a derivative expression from the more informative “rang”. So in other words, what happened was simply that “the phone rang”.

Paul: You'll need to explain what you mean by derivative.

John: This sort of translation problem can be very nicely described in terms of rudimentary calculus. If you have the coordinates of the location of a moving body (such as a train or an automobile), over a period of time, you can calculate its velocity using a simple mathematical rule. If you apply the rule again you can then calculate its acceleration. From position, we can derive velocity and from velocity, we can derive acceleration.

In the example from the Mercedes book, the expression ("the connection functions") is derived from and refers back to a specific concrete event — "the phone rings".

Paul: So a derivative expression is more ambiguous?

John: Yes. Just like in calculus, every time you apply the rule to form a derivative, there is some information loss. In this case, the "phone" is lost and we are left with a more ambiguous "connection". "Rings" is lost and is replaced by "functions".

Paul: Can you give me some more examples of such derivatives in language?

John: Take for example a newspaper headline "Tremor shakes capital". Tremors come in many guises, but according to the convention for newspapers in our part of the world, it is taken to mean “earthquake”. And the more general term “capital” is readily understood as the more specific “Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city” — but only for New Zealand readers.

So the writers of headlines such as these expect you to know the specific information from which they have been derived. We know that “tremor” means “earthquake” because of journalistic speech habits in English, and we know that “capital” refers to “Wellington” because (or if) we are in New Zealand. In other words, the use of derivative expressions presupposes the existence of some sort of “in-group”.

Paul: ... so they often present particular difficulties when they come to be translated.

John: Yes – because foreign readers are unlikely to be in that same in-group. If the differentiated phrase is translated directly they may well miss the intended meaning.

Paul: So how can the translator avoid such errors?

John: Firstly, the translator has got to spot that the phrase is actually a derivative. Once spotted, the translator may have to modify the expression to ensure it is meaningful to readers in the target linguistic or cultural context. This is often best done by anti-differentiating the phrase.

In mathematics, the reverse process of differentiation, anti-differentiation, is called integration. When you integrate acceleration you get velocity and when you integrate velocity you get position. But integration is not as easy as differentiation because you have to restore the lost information.

This was the approach taken by the French translator in the Mercedes book. He recognised that "connection" was a derivative of "phone" and "functions" was a derivative of "rings" and so he integrated the phrase, restoring the original missing information.

The English translator didn't recognise that "the connection functions" was a derivative and he rendered the surface, literal meaning in his translation. There is no way that "The link is OK" can be interpreted in English as "The phone rings".

Paul: So how can translators spot what is derivative and what should be taken literally?

John: As we discussed in our previous conversation the translator can often disambiguate tricky text by establishing where the primary and second stresses lie. Some material in a text is new information, which tends to carry the primary stress, whereas other information is secondary and derivative, referring back to that primary information, and generally carries a lesser degree of stress. But with a sentence like "die Verbindung funktioniert" both terms are derivative, so you try putting the stress on the first main word, then on the second, and see what happens.

If I read "Die Verbindung funktioniert" ("the connection functions") where "functions" carries the primary stress, then I will assume that some sort of connection is working as opposed to not working. But if I read it as “die Verbindung funktioniert”, I assume that the "connection" is doing something or other. I then realise “it must mean Telefonverbindung”, interpret it as “telephone”, and the meaning of “funktioniert” falls into place as a matter of course.

Paul: Are you suggesting that all derivatives need to be integrated when translating?

John: Not necessarily. But we have to remember that 1) these derivatives are often based on writer and reader being in the same in-group, and 2) the reader of the translation may well not be in that in-group. So we must be careful to use expressions that allow the reader to recognise the antecedent it refers back to.

We need to be aware of the differing conventions in different languages. In French, for example “échéances” (= deadlines) can be derivative shorthand for “échéances électorales” (= “electoral deadlines”, or just “elections”). We can’t force the literal English equivalent “deadlines” into that straitjacket, but we could use “poll” as the English conventional derivative from the primary concept of “elections”. So in that case we would be translating a conventional derivative in French with a differential conventional derivative in English.

As translators, we have to distinguish between primary and secondary beats in the text, to detect what is new and what is derivative and then reflect the different weightings of the two categories in the target language. This may involve some manipulation of the text and the restoration of some "missing information" — something that would not be approved by some of my colleagues in the profession, and indeed by some translation examiners!

Even the most boring, everyday texts are imbued with their own form of prosody and music — strong and weak beats dictated by the semantic flow of the communication. Reading difficult texts aloud to find these beats, as musicians do when they read a score, can enrich the reading experience, particularly in the case of good or great writing.

John has been a professional translator for more than 35 years working in both the government and private sectors. John translates into English from the majority of European languages ranging from French and German to Slovenian and Finnish.

John completed a PhD in French Literature in 1983 at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and has presented his novel ideas on translation technique at a number of international conferences, including FIT 2014. Currently, John works as the Senior Translator at NZTC International in Wellington, New Zealand.

‘I caught the salsa bug when I was just a kid’

Every day Rafael Laverde, originally from Colombia and resident in New Zealand for more than a decade - arrives at the offices of the New Zealand Translation Centre, where he works as a Sales Executive and Linguistic Consultant.

Together with more than twenty translators, linguists and project managers, he provides consultancy services to companies that need to communicate about their brands and products in international markets, ‘because something you might say in English or Japanese will need to be reworked entirely to be said in Chinese; we have experts in this field here, and that's something our clients recognise’.

The thing that really makes Rafael stand out is his hobby - one that he describes as just as rich and diverse as a language - which keeps him busy training for three hours at a time, three times a week, and which combines his work with his passion: dance and, more specifically, Salsa.

“I come from a Latin country on the Caribbean, so I caught the Salsa bug when I was just a kid. I consider myself a ‘salsómano’, as we say in Spanish: I love Salsa music and the dance itself is yet another instrument, because you interpret the music with your body and there are lots of different styles, such as Cuban, Colombian, Puerto Rican and many others.”

Rafael has lived in Edinburgh and London and has always found a way to practice Salsa. Just like a language, Salsa is a musical style which has grown and adapted to suit the characteristics of many countries, and nowadays there's no place on Earth that doesn't have a Salsa school or club.

“Imagine: there are 13 Salsa schools in NZ. But here in Wellington the situation is particularly special. It's very easy to work things out to fit in with your timetable: work, time with the kids, taking them to school - you can get all this done and still have time to make it to the dance school at 7pm - it's really simple,” he says.

For this reason Rafael decided several years ago to get involved at the semi-professional level and took up the reins as co-director of the Salsa Magic dance school, together with two friends, Jacob Rosevear and Chloe Robinson. The dance school is the result of plenty of hard, tiring but inspiring work - it was a dream that brought together a team of eight instructors, who comprise a seedbed of new talents in New Zealand's capital.

“Ever since I arrived in Wellington there has always been a big Salsa community, but it's only ever been focused on social dancing at monthly get-togethers. Since I started getting involved with directing the Salsa school six years ago, there have been lots of changes, and one of the things we changed was our image, so as to encourage more people of all ages to take up dancing.”

At the moment, there are almost 90 students spread across six classes (beginner, intermediate and advanced) and 45 of these make up the competitive dancing team, which has made some major achievements, such as taking part in the Congreso de Los Angeles, one of the largest and oldest Salsa events in the world.

Last year they presented four choreographed routines, and one of them, called The Lord of the Rings, was chosen to close the event, thanks to its magnificent staging under Creative Director, Jacob.

What's more, the dancers have won major prizes in international competitions in Australia. This is a real achievement because the standard of Salsa in Australia is very high. The team has been singled out for praise in a range of categories in singles and doubles, and in rhythms as varied as cha-cha, bachata and mambo, among others.

Only last July they were awarded first place for 'Most Creative Choreography’ at the Sydney Latin Festival, yet another of the large world events at which they stood out for their professionalism, delivery and staging.

The dream of this Colombian Salsa lover remains intact: keeping Salsa alive and authentic. “We don't want Salsa to die in the Salsa dance salon system - because that's something completely different. TV competitions like Dancing with the Stars, where people dance the rumba and the two-step, don't depict the traditional Salsa steps - they are adaptations. Our dream is to keep Salsa in its traditional form and spread it around the world,” says Rafael enthusiastically.

He adds, “The Salsa is an inclusive dance, the idea is that the student trusts in us and can see rapid results. But there is something else that dancing Salsa creates: a community of friends, a kind of family, people who get together for a reason, regardless of colour, race, ethnicity or socio-economic status”.

If you like the sound of Salsa and would like to give the dance a try, visit www.salsamagic.com and join this group of enthusiasts who share the same passion: dancing Salsa.

With increased globalisation and eye-opening statistics illustrating quite massive numbers of non-English-speaking internet users, it’s no surprise that the number of companies developing multilingual websites is increasing rapidly. In this article we look at the latest approaches to translating websites and key considerations when planning a multilingual online presence.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

In ‘the old days’ translating a website required translators to edit ‘static’ HTML code directly, or provide translations to web developers to edit in HTML. These days most websites use ‘content management systems’ (CMS), which store your web page contents in databases and display pages automatically using pre-determined styles (often referred to as CSS). Popular CMS systems include WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, to name just a few.

These CMS systems enable content to be entered online using a content editing interface, and translations can also be entered online using the same interface as used for the original language. It’s common for web developers and website owners to assume this is the best way for the website translation to be carried out. However, in order to translate content efficiently it’s best for translators to work offline using the latest translation assistance tools (often call ‘CAT’ tools). These tools, such as NZTC’s “SDL Trados” systems, enable translators to apply content repetition leverage, terminology management, advanced spell checking and assorted QA checking, in addition to ensuring that all translations are stored in an easily leveraged translation memory format for future re-use. If a translation is done directly in the website CMS, these tools can’t be used, which can be a significant setback.

CONTENT EXPORT/IMPORT

Most popular website CMS systems recognise the need to enable translation of content outside of the CMS and have features available (often called “Internationalisation modules”) that allow your web page content to be exported in a format that can be processed by popular translation tools, then re-imported to your website in the same format following translation. These export/import formats are typically XML based, with XLIFF being a common interchange format for localisation. If you don’t have such a content export/ import feature, a common solution is manually copying content out of the website into a format that can be translated offline, then copying it back into the website after translation. However, that can be a very time-consuming affair!

If your website CMS doesn’t offer this feature and you want to develop it, NZTC can advise you on how it can and should be structured, including providing XML schema examples that are ideal for the translation process.

Hands up anyone who has not had a problem reading and understanding the instructions on some overseas produced product they have recently purchased? A survey undertaken by an American company ‘Wordbank’ produced the following feedback from 1,250 interviews with consumers in Europe, Asia, South America and the Middle East.

• More than 80% of survey respondents expect a product or service they are purchasing to be explained to them in their mother tongue

• Nearly 75% choosing between two similar products will purchase the one supported by product information in their own language

• 70% said they would not purchase a product if they could not understand the packaging

• 61% were reluctant to purchase if the information has been badly translated into their own language

The products and services most important to have accurately described in the respondent’s own language were, in order of importance, banking and financial services, medical, pharmaceutical and beauty products, business equipment, home entertainment and consumer electronics.

The growing demand for translation and localisation will continue to escalate as manufacturers and service providers reach out into new markets. NZTC will continue to assist with this need by enabling high quality and efficient translation and localisation services.

A colleague of mine has a story he likes to tell about a client taking possession of a translation from English into Arabic. ‘Amazing,’ the gentleman said and then ran his forefinger along the text, resting it on each letter in succession. ‘So,’ he went on, ‘this is ‘s’, this is ‘h,’ this is ‘e,’’ and thus he continued.

Even those of us who don’t speak Arabic can be quite sure that the letters this man identified did not have the value he assigned to them; when we see some text written in an unfamiliar and indecipherable script, the one thing we can be surest of is that we have no idea how it gets its message across – but of course, if it is the work of a reputable translation provider, we may confidently hope it tells its reader what we want it to.

Sometimes we can understand enough of the target language to pick out some of the words in a translation, and they are not always what we might expect. Once, while in the Czech Republic, I went to a showing of the film Easy Rider, whose Czech title was Bezstarostná jízda, which literally means ‘Carefree Journey.’ I thought the translation rather tame, and as the film progressed my bemusement increased. The subtitler had chosen to translate the lyrics of the songs in the film, and before long a bouncing ball appeared on the screen so the audience could sing along to the soundtrack. ‘Born to be wild’ was translated as ‘Jsme děti přírody’, which means ‘We are children of nature.’ It didn’t seem quite right.

I am not a native speaker of Czech, however, so I can’t judge; and I have found in my last few years working in the translation industry that apparent non-correspondences of this type are commonplace. Sometimes there are subtleties in the target language which cannot be anticipated in the English; sometimes there are words or phrases that are best avoided.

A German word which some translators like to avoid is Führer. Unfortunately the corresponding English word, ‘leader’ is currently enjoying the apogee of its popularity, especially in business texts. One writer after another exhorts us to be leaders in some or other field of endeavour. A German translator may avoid this by employing such terms as Führungsqualitäten (‘leadership qualities’) or Leitung (‘leading’).

Conversely, there are words that English abhors but which German embraces, ‘problem’ being a good example. Many writers using English will talk about ‘issues’, ‘opportunities’, ‘challenges’ or even ‘valuable learning experiences’. In German all of these might turn out to be nothing more than ‘Probleme’.

So, translation is not always a ‘carefree journey’, but I suppose you could say that juggling words around is part of the fun; at the very least, it can be a ‘valuable learning opportunity.’

Here we’ve compiled here a quick list of the most useful writing tips which will help save time and effort and reduce costs:

First decide and select only what you need to communicate – don’t include what is not important, or perhaps not so important.Think carefully about your project from the perspective of the recipient. Do some research if you are uncertain about this. You will need your recipients to feel that what they are reading is natural to them – that it fits with their own language, culture, customs and other characteristics of their locale.Think about and perhaps discuss with your translation firm, the order in which your material should be presented, especially if your budget is pushing you towards a ‘phased’ presentation or implementation.For printed material, planning layout in advance of writing copy can be helpful. Understand which factors can influence the ease and cost of managing your project.Discuss with your translation firm how best to present your copy to them to save time and expense, both at your end and theirs.Create simple, concise, straightforward text. Where possible, keep sentences short and limited to a single idea.If English copy already exists for your pending translations review and revise it.Avoid words with double meanings and references or metaphors that may not make sense in other cultures. Don’t use buzz words, abbreviations, industry jargon, colloquial expression or humour.Where possible, create standardised text. It will save time and money if you can re-use blocks of text from one document to the next and help provide consistency in your presentation.Beware that despite your best efforts, some copy may translate more easily into some languages than others. Be sure to talk to your translators about any possible difficulties.Provide only fully proofed final copy for translation.

Don’t translate ‘works in progress’.

New Zealand local and national news reports tend to have a very different character from those in Brazil. Some New Zealand headlines I found in a quick survey of recent news included “One-Armed Man Pleads Not Guilty To Bar Incident”, “Sewage Leak Turns Creek Black” and “Information Sought On Skate-Park Tagger”. I think I can guarantee that these stories would never make the news in Brazil. Here the news is more like this: “70 Confirmed Deaths in Three States Due to Yellow Fever”, “120 Murdered In One Weekend Due To Police Strike”, and “São Paulo Military Police Use Bombs To Disperse Carnival Revellers.” Brazilian news tends to be of a serious and urgent character – people are murdered, kidnapped, dismembered and infected with lethal viruses in a truly gripping 24-hour news cycle – by contrast, New Zealand news tends to be, well, boring and, for the most part, trivial.

In the last year, the main serious news story in New Zealand concerned the November earthquake, which caused extensive damage, followed perhaps by the resignation for no scandalous reason of the prime minister. Ongoing news stories concern property prices, especially in Auckland, the economy (‘doing well’) and inward migration. These stories are of a piece with all New Zealand news throughout my lifetime: natural disasters are major events and duly treated as such; prime ministerial resignations are rare and therefore newsworthy (the last significant one was that of David Lange in 1989) but (given the totally dominant socio-economic consensus agreed between the factions governing New Zealand since 1984) represent exactly nothing in terms of the broader direction of national politics; property prices are of constant news interest in a society in which ownership of residential property is the decisive factor determining wealth or poverty; the endlessly improving economy is a mainstay of government propaganda; and migration, inward (Polynesian in the 80s, Chinese and of assorted famous oligarchs now) and outward (New Zealanders to Australia – a big deal until recently) is a constant source of angst which can be boiled down to the grave questions “why are they all leaving?” and “why are they all coming?” alternating in prevalence in ten-year cycles.

If therefore, you want to hold a conversation in New Zealand, you would do well to learn the vocabulary of plate tectonics and the property market, learn the names (or nicknames) and foibles of one or two key politicians (personality being the key to politics in a situation where no policy alternatives exist), learn to talk about how amazing the economy is and come up with a neutral but interesting position on migration. And if you are really desperate you can always talk about rugby.

Now let’s consider Brazil over the last year: an ongoing corruption scandal has engulfed the entire élite political class, ensnaring several high-profile politicians (including the speaker of Congress and several state governors); a nominally left-wing president was impeached after a series of massive, highly orchestrated right-wing protests (in which demonstrators called for domestic and international military intervention, the establishment of a dictatorship, an end to affirmative-action programmes and the introduction of the death penalty, among other things (and, for some reason, set up giant inflatable ducks in public places)); a new, all-male, all-white, right-wing government was formed from elements of the former military dictatorship and the main opposition targets of the ongoing large-scale judicial investigation into corruption, which then set about imposing a radical, Blitzkrieg-style policy agenda totally opposed in direction and emphasis to that of the previous government; there was the Zika outbreak and microcephaly epidemic; the Olympics were held, leading to the bankruptcy of the state of Rio de Janeiro and the collapse of its public services; the new government imposed a twenty-year cap on public expenditure; there was a yellow fever outbreak; the police went on strike in Espírito Santo state, leading to a massive violent crime wave; the terrifying story of the ‘prosthetics mafia’ broke; the three wealthy southern states voted on secession from the union; and a gang war between the São Paulo-based PCC and the Rio-based CV spread over into the north of the country, leading to an outbreak of horrific prison violence between the PCC and the another group known as the FDN (acting as proxies for the CV) in which prisoners from one group (about a hundred of them) were beheaded and dismembered by prisoners from the other, a genuinely shocking incident, made all the more shocking when the links between the FDN and the state governor of Amazonas became known, and which was hailed by some elements of the new government as a cost-effective way of reducing the prison population.

As you can see, dear reader, there is plenty to talk about. Some good new additions to my Portuguese vocabulary in the period Carnival 2016 – Carnival 2017 include: chacina (massacre); caixa dois (a secret account held by a politician for the receipt of bribes); foliões (revellers – in the news today for being attacked by the military police); doleiro (bag-man – to be fair, probably a 2015-2016 acquisition); desquartejado (quartered, as in ‘drawn and quartered’ – the sad fate of many prisoners in Amazonas); delação premiada (plea bargain, a common occurrence as imprisoned politicians and their associates fight to save their skins); and posse (inauguration, of President Michel Temer once he had seen off the hapless Dilma Rousseff).

Of course, if you are desperate, you can always talk about the football.

Por muy raro que parezca, que se hable español en gran parte de Latinoamérica no significa que todas las palabras tengan un mismo significado. Latinoamérica es una región fascinante, de una gran diversidad cultural y riqueza lingüística, con la que muchos neozelandeses y extranjeros sueñan conocer. Pero, ¿Qué idiomas se hablan en esa región y cuántas de esas personas hablan español?

Existen tres lenguas romances como idiomas oficiales: el portugués, español y francés. No obstante a ello, América Latina es la región del mundo con mayor número de habitantes de habla hispana, con más de 500 millones de personas, distribuidas en 19 países del mundo, según el último estudio del Instituto Cervantes. El español es una lengua importante no sólo para comunicarse y entenderse en el día a día, sino que también para la política, los negocios, la cultura y las comunicaciones. Este idioma es fundamental para las relaciones entre estos países, y también para comunicarse con otros del mundo como España y algunas ciudades de Estados Unidos.

El español, por consiguiente, es un patrimonio cultural altamente valorado, que se debe preservar, proteger y promover. Es la lengua que nos permite gozar de un sentido de pertenencia con otras tierras lejanas y nos posibilita el intercambio de bienes, especialmente con Estados Unidos y el mercado de Asia-Pacífico. Quizás una característica que llama profundamente la atención al visitante es que en Latinoamérica, a pesar que el idioma español es mayoritario, existen muchas variedades lingüísticas dignas de analizar, como son los modismos. Por muy raro que parezca, que hablemos español en Latinoamérica, no significa que todas las palabras tengan el mismo significado. Muchas de las frases que son usadas a diario no son comprendidas, como si literalmente se estuviera hablando otro idioma. Los modismos altamente populares en esta región, son palabras o frases que forman parte del lenguaje informal de un país. No pueden interpretarse de manera literal sino como una expresión singular. Dicho de otra manera, son juegos del lenguaje.

En ocasiones, los modismos pueden confundirse con los refranes, que aunque aportan una característica particular de cada país, son más bien dichos populares que tienen una enseñanza y algún tipo de rima (como por ejemplo ‘a quien madruga Dios lo ayuda’, ‘más vale pájaro en la mano que cien volando’ o ‘de tal palo tal astilla’.) De esta forma, el español que se habla en Argentina es distinto al peruano, boliviano o chileno. Resulta muy interesante analizar cómo una lengua tan diversa como el español, tenga tanta variedad de uso. Así como las comunicaciones evolucionan, el lenguaje también está en constante cambio, lo que se refleja no sólo en la gramática y ortografía, sino que también en el léxico y en la manera de hablar y expresarse. Si se está de vacaciones en Chile, se escuchará frecuentemente la palabra ‘cachai?’ (que en castellano quiere decir entiendes?; también se utiliza ‘altiro’ (en seguida), lo que vendría siendo en Peru ‘al toque’, y en Colombia ‘de una’. En Argentina es usual escuchar el ‘viste’ (te das cuenta) y en Peru el ‘pe’ (pues).

La ‘palta’ que se come en Peru y Chile, se le llama ‘aguacate’ en Colombia y México. Y si se va a alguna playa, no olvidar llevar ‘ropa de baño’ en Perú, ‘traje de baño’ en Chile y ‘chingue’ en Colombia. No tan sólo los modismos y las palabras son diferentes, también las pronunciaciones varían y cada país tiene su propio acento. De los colombianos se dice que tienen un acento ‘cantadito’, de los peruanos que vocalizan muy bien cada palabra y en el caso de los chilenos que no modulan y no pronuncian la ‘s’. La constante evolución en la lengua, va de la mano del vertiginoso avance en el uso de internet y las redes sociales, que hoy permiten estar conectados y adoptar términos locales o típicos de una región, los que se vuelven virales y comienzan a usarse en otros países.

Los factores que inciden en el nacimiento de nuevos términos son múltiples, entre los que se incluyen las costumbres, herencias, raíces, inmigración, lo que posibilita aportar nuevas frases y refranes a una región. El uso del español en Internet no tiene fronteras y hoy en día es el ‘tercer idioma mas utilizado, tras el inglés y chino, con un crecimiento sostenido de mas del 800% en los últimos 10 años’, según la publicación Social Bakers. En Facebook también su uso avanza en expansión, con más de 80 millones de usuarios; en tanto que en Twitter, es la segunda lengua más utilizada después del inglés, superando al portugués, francés, alemán, ruso, japonés e italiano. Este crecimiento del uso del español en las comunicaciones, nos permite intercambiar un mundo de experiencias, compartir ideas y formas de vivir y pensar, lo que posibilita el nacimiento de nuevas palabras y acepciones.

Cada año se realizan análisis de las lenguas existentes en América Latina, de las que destaca el Anuario 2016 ‘El español en el mundo’ del Instituto Cervantes, el que reconoce que sin lenguajes no hay posibilidad de realizar actividades comerciales, ni políticas, ni de comunicar nada. ‘La importancia económica de una lengua se mide teniendo en cuenta diferentes factores, como su número de habitantes, su extension geográfica, el número de países en los que tiene rango de oficial, la capacidad comercial de los países donde esa lengua es oficial, su tradición literaria o científica y su papel en la diplomacia multilateral’. Por: Pilar Cepeda Fuentes Infolatam, Madrid Enero 2013 Anuario 2016 El español en el mundo del Instituto Cervantes Publicación Social Bakers Los modismos de Chile, Perú y Colombia (Claudia Jiménez) El español y su diversidad en Latinoamérica (Gabriela Ríos)

Do you know that NZTC International is part of Global Communications Business Group (GCBG)? With this alliance, we have more than 5000 linguists to ensure that your requirements are well taken care of by the correct person.

The Global Business Communications group (http://www.gcb-group.com/) is a joint venture business project initiated by five of the world’s most highly skilled and respected language translation and localization companies, each of whom is a market leader in their own diverse locations – Robertson Languages (UK), Kocarek (Germany), Lingua Technologies International (Singapore), Prolangs (Korea), and NZTC (New Zealand). https://www.linkedin.com/company/global_communications_business_group

By combining the vast range of linguistic and technical skills and experience of its member companies, GCBG finds no language project beyond their capabilities no matter its nature, size and complexity. Then there is the added advantage of being able to assure clients their project being reliably handled by linguists who are native speakers of languages involved and who actually live in the cultures in which they are spoken. This produces a higher quality result at a more competitive cost.

About Prolangs Inc. Prolangs Inc., a leading total language service provider, based in Seoul, South Korea since 1988 and is highly regarded both at home and abroad. With an ISO 9002 Certification awarded in 1998, Prolangs Inc. is known for its professional software localization services and solutions for foreign languages into Korean. By applying more than 20 years of accumulated technical know-how in software and language services, Prolangs proudly takes credit for making extensive contributions to the development of solution programs that perform real-time automatic translation of Internet communications. http://www.prolangs.co.kr/english

About Lingua Technologies International Established in 1996, Lingua Technologies International is one of the pioneers in translation/localization in Singapore. Today, it is the leading language service company and is one of the most successful ones in Singapore. The company offers turn-key localization solutions to both local and foreign government agencies, Fortune 500 companies as well as high-growth SMEs in the region and worldwide. For more information, please visit: http://www.translationsingapore.com

About Kocarek Established in 1976 and based in Essen, Germany, Kocarek GmbH is a full-serviced localization company committed to providing high quality translations certified under European quality standard DIN EN 15038 certification and the international standard for quality management systems ISO 9001:2008 through the DEKRA certification organisation. https://kocarek-gmbh.com

About Robertson Languages Founded in 1989, Robertson Languages has won four awards from UK Trade & Investment International, including Best Language Company in UK, and is certified to ISO 9001 and EN 15038. Robertson Languages provides cultural briefings and language training to business clients throughout UK and in many locations worldwide. Robertson Languages provides translations between English and all world languages and have particular experience in the automotive, pharmaceutical, legal and financial sectors. http://www.robertsonlanguages.co.uk

About NZTC International NZTC International is a New Zealand-based global language service provider specialising in written language translations in over 70 languages including most Pacific Islands languages. We offer foreign language desktop publishing, software and website localisation, simultaneous and consecutive interpreting services, subtitling and voiceovers. Based on 30 years of focusing on building its in-house resources, NZTC offers an unrivalled pool of the very best language professionals, translation technologies, quality assurance systems and experience. http://www.nztcinternational.com

There are times where straightforward translation can’t adequately convey an intended message to its target audience. When a message is aimed at users whose language and culture is completely different from the place it originally came from, it must be adapted using the process called ‘localisation’. The challenge faced by translators is to get the original message across to its target audience in ways they can completely understand, without losing or altering its original meaning. In some cases this may entail extensive copy editing or re-writing by someone who belongs to the same culture and speaks in the same language as the target audience, but who at the same time must be familiar with the originating language and culture. This is where the word TRANSCREATION fits.

Transcreation, even more than localisation, is sometimes described as the act of using the original text as a ‘brief ’ for writing completely new copy in the language of the target audience, in ways they can easily relate to, and as if it was originally written for them. Transcreation becomes especially important in the case of complex marketing campaigns where products are being launched into completely new and different markets. Transcreation can involve even removing or adding content, provided that the client is aware of this and has approved.

Meanwhile, back at NZTC, our objective is always to produce natural-sounding text that does not seem like a translation. Editorial director Patrick King explains, “This is what we aim to achieve in the promotional, marketing and similar texts we are asked to translate.” In addition, all NZTC translations incorporate our standard quality assurance procedures:

• First have the document translated by an experienced translator who must be a native speaker of the target language and also be completely conversant with the culture in which it is spoken. • Second, have that translation checked and edited by another experienced linguist with a solid command of both languages. • Any suggestions or corrections required are discussed between the editor and original translator, if necessary in consultation with the client.

So NZTC often already does what is called transcreation, in the course of our normal work. Perhaps leave the last word to the company’s Senior Translator, John Jamieson, who does top quality translations into English for nearly 30 languages. John says that much of his work involves “reading a chunk of text then putting it aside and writing the same thing in your own words, in your own language.”

So you’ve recognised the great opportunities to target non-English speaking customers by translating your website content – now how do you get all these potential customers to find your website?

Google AdWords is becoming an increasingly vital tool for driving targeted customers to your website and NZTC uses AdWords for our own online marketing too. NZTC is now assisting an increasing number of customers to use Google AdWords in multiple languages. Because we use AdWords ourselves we are able to stay on top of methods and new developments, which is important because there are a number of unique challenges involved in setting up and running multilingual Google AdWords campaigns. Some of the main considerations for AdWords translations are:

Character restrictions – The number of characters allowed in the headline, description line one, description line two and the Display URL is restricted and remains the same across languages with Roman script. This can be very challenging in some languages, for example German, where words tend to include more letters compared to English. This requires translators to try to say the same thing with fewer characters and to be constantly checking for character overruns. Furthermore, in languages with Asian characters the character restrictions also differ and need to be considered.

Localised ad copy – It’s imperative the ad copy isn’t a literal translation of the English original as this will come across as a clumsy translation and is likely to put off potential consumers. Instead, the content must be localised to reflect the specific local industry and cultural environment, while conveying the same intended message and tone as the English original.

Keyword translation – There are no character restrictions on the keywords applied to trigger your ad to be shown, however there are other aspects to take into consideration. There are a number of requirements when writing the original English copy, such as identifying and selecting possible spelling variations, broad matches, phrase matches, exact and negative matches. In addition, translators need to consider further foreign-language variations such as foreign accents, umlauts and synonyms not applicable in the English version.

It’s also important that the keywords selected are applicable to the specific local culture and industry, while maintaining the tone and message of the original keyword list. A method of achieving this is applying a “transcreation” process, where the original English isn’t translated but instead used as reference by translators. The goal is to produce a new foreign-language keyword list that includes localised synonyms and possible spelling variations. The task of “translating” misspelt keywords needs to be considered and NZTC is familiar with this process. It requires close communication with the client to work out the best approach for each specific market and language.

During the keyword translation process, it’s also important to implement important keywords within the ad copy, the keywords list and the website landing page, as this increases the ad performance. In addition to using the

English keyword list as a base, the Google AdWords Keyword and Traffic Estimator tools can also be used for your target market, and help develop effective foreign language keyword lists.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you with your Google AdWords, in any language, please contact our Sales & Marketing team at sales@nztcinternational.com

How often do we stop to think how ethical considerations impact upon where and how we work. We like to think that in the public sector ‘ethics’ always count. The private sector, however, can sometimes be different. Here what matters most is financial success, and ‘means’ can sometimes become subservient to ‘ends’.

The December issue of leading translation industry magazine Multi-Lingual focuses almost entirely on ethics. It features articles on ethics as related to e-learning courses, localisation, training for translators and interpreters and ‘personal ethics and language services’. This is an indication that ethics is a subject our industry is concerned about, on a personal level for translators and others working in the industry, and for the translation firms who employ them.

Multi-Lingual’s editorial by Katie Botkin provides an interesting and perhaps familiar introduction to the subject –

Business ethics may be tidy on paper until your own humanity hits the page. Capital vices flit through our business psyche daily, until your own humanity hits the page – be they in the form of gluttony (if I take these delicious free cookies, does that obligate me to actually care about this product?), pride (my talents are better than that guy’s, right?), greed (can’t I pad my bonus a little?), sloth (will anyone notice if I call in sick?), wrath (do my colleagues have any idea how frustrating it is when they act like idiots?), envy (why did he get promoted when I didn’t?), or possibly the most delicate of all, lust (just how interested can I act before this crosses the line into potential harassment or weirdness?).

Many of the ethical questions faced by translation firms are common to all businesses, and occur in such areas as treatment of employees and sub-contractors, financial management including pricing, payments, and debt management, and relationships with clients, suppliers and competitors. Particular to our industry however, is the level and complexity of team effort required to make everything happen. Marketing specialists, project managers, translators, editors, artists/designers, technical experts and finance managers must work and ‘partner’ together to successfully produce what clients ask of us. There is little room for promoting me, me, me instead of we, we, we. As one columnist puts it in his Multi-lingual article ‘Business ethics and the language industry’ – “Our industry depends on people working together in our complex eco-system, and ethics unquestionably has a role in maintaining its balance and overall health.”

Of course translators also face potential ethical issues in their own practice. Their work sometimes entails a challenge to their own personal values, such as a non-smoker being asked to translate material promoting cigarettes, a person who is against war being asked to translate documents for the military, or someone with strong views about so-called ‘adult entertainment’ being asked to translate pornography. But then, translators choosing to only translate material they ‘agree with’, may then have to think about, in a competitive marketplace, whether it is more important (ethical) to earn the money they need to support their family.

It is of crucial importance that translators, (whatever their personal values or beliefs), exercise complete impartiality and neutrality. This may not always be easy. Unintended transgressions are of course likely to be picked up during the editing stage which follows, but better if they don’t occur in the first place.

In 1977, US President Jimmy Carter made a stopover in Poland to deliver a major speech on peace and human rights. The interpreter selected by his officials was born and educated in Poland and had some interpreting experience, so at the time seemed like a good choice for this assignment. Without any advanced notes of the speech and in freezing rain, the young interpreter made a reasonable job, but managed to suggest that Carter had left the US permanently and that his love of the Polish people was more carnal than presidential. Still, the main intent of the message was clearly conveyed and these slips of the tongue would probably have gone unremarked if it had not been for certain Polish journalists stirring the pot. They told their US counterparts that, according to the interpreter, Carter was lusting after the Polish people and would never return to the US The reports of the alleged gaffes went truly global and caused a major scandal in Washington. Presidential interpreter Harry Obst also caused outrage when he judged that in the political context it would be judicious to translate Jimmy Carter’s statement made in a speech in Frankfurt: “We pray that Germany will be reunited one day” by “We hope that Germany will be reunited one day”. There was fury among Germans at his use of ‘hoffen’ instead of ‘beten’, because the intention of the President’s aspirational message had been weakened.

Another legendary gaffe is said to be courtesy of President George W. Bush, when he mispronounced the name of the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, calling him “Ansar”. In Spanish this word also has the meaning of “goose”. Hillary Clinton will no doubt be very sensitive to the perils of mistranslation. Her experience of the infamous “reset” switch incident (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/06/ clinton-reset-button-gift-to-russian-fm-gets-lost-in-translation/) will have taught her that even a minor spelling error can turn a well-intentioned gesture into a global joke, with incalculable political and diplomatic consequences.