As the premier translation partner to Trivantis for its internationally popular suite of eLearning solutions, LinguaLinx has seen the good that comes from making education accessible to other cultures.

When we had the opportunity to attend the 2013 Lectora User Conference as an exhibitor and the Platinum Sponsor, we were excited to meet the rest of the eLearning community again this year.

Here are some of the highlights and takeaways:

Immersive Experience

There is an intelligent, creative and highly engaged community of eLearning professionals who use Lectora software.

The show did things right and created a valuable immersive experience.

Before Peter Bray (@PeterBrayTweets), Chief Marketing Officer, Global Marketing opened things up on stage – and before the conference even began – Trivantis released a mobile app with the conference schedule, map and speaker directory, social networking features and helpful information on the local San Antonio scene.

The show included 20+ informational sessions full of tips and ideas for beginner, intermediate and advanced users.

LinguaLinx President David Smith (@DavidSmithLinx) presented on how to localize eLearning courses, beginning with exporting material from Lectora and moving on to translation and localization issues. Developers also had the opportunity to network and share ideas.

Creative Atmosphere

Dynamic keynote speakers Erik Wahl, Jane McGonigal, Tom Wujec and THE PIANO GUYS inspired attendees to a high level of creativity and enthusiasm.

The result was evident on Twitter as the #LUC2013 hashtag was full of ideas including gamification, immersive learning environments and even consideration of future translation projects.

Cultural Awareness

The turnout at LinguaLinx president David Smith’s presentation titled “Now You’re Talking My Language: Translating and Publishing Lectora Courses” was a good indication that the need for cultural awareness is taking root.

You can view David’s presentation here.

Key points include:

• With Lectora Inspire version 11.1, the translation tool makes it easy to export content with just a few clicks into a format that translation companies can use. Translated content can then be reintegrated.
• Translating content is only one piece of the complete picture.
• Not only are there rules and needs based on the language of the content, but there are cultural considerations as well.
• These considerations impact everything from layout and browser compatibility to the appropriateness of content. Words, images, audio, and video all need to be accounted for.
• Lay it out for the world. Translations can expand or contract drastically in length. You do not want to spend time manually reformatting web content around rigidly designed templates.
• Avoid constrictive framed or boxed text. Any sidebar text boxes or captions must be able to automatically resize to accommodate different translations.
• Most date, address, and number formats differ from one country to another. Be aware that icons differ across borders.

The eLearning industry is a great match for translation and localization professionals. We’re happy to be working with Trivantis and networking with Lectora developers, and we are already looking forward to the 2014 Lectora User Conference in Los Angeles.

Photo Credit: Arek Olek via photopin cc

On a blog appropriately called “The Translation Blog, ” LinguaLinx took a look at cross-cultural business communication.

We focused on three common examples of cultural mistakes: mistranslations, cultural incompatibility and bad associations with the way a brand, product or company name sounds. 

You can read the full blog post here.

Some excerpts and paraphrases follow:

Cross-cultural business communications such as websites, documents, advertisements and product launches need thorough attention to details that are easy to get wrong.

Some of the most noteworthy concerns are translation mistakes, cultural incompatibility and bad associations with the way a brand or product name sounds.

Translation Mistakes
Translation mistakes are always good for a laugh (unless you’re the source of the joke). Not only do they literally send the wrong message, but they also imply you made a half-hearted effort to communicate properly and all you really want is their money.

Here are just a few examples of mistakes that convey the wrong message and undermine your credibility and professionalism:

• A telecommunications executive once told me their translator rendered “ground wire” as “earth wire.” This tends to happen when the translator doesn’t know specialized terms of a technical industry and turns to a dictionary for help.
• “Ladies are requested to not have children in the bar” – cocktail lounge sign in Norway
• “Our wines leave you nothing to hope for” – Swiss restaurant menu

Cultural Incompatibility
Brands and products have been introduced into other countries without knowing they’re incompatible with the culture. When Clairol’s Mist Stick curling iron was introduced to Germany, they didn’t know mist is slang for manure – not a very good ingredient for hairstyling!

How It Sounds
It can be notoriously difficult to bring brand and product names into other countries because of associations with embarrassing words and phrases. Consider the “Fartfull,” a children’s desk from IKEA. The word means speedy in Swedish, while the connotation in English is apparent.

Conclusion
Culture is a powerful force that can’t be separated from any international communication. Translation mistakes, cultural incompatibility and association with undesirable phrases can have a very damaging impact on your credibility and that of your company, brand, product or service. Culture is here to stay so be sure your product, marketing and translation teams treat it with the detail it requires.

LinguaLinx has announced a twenty year commitment to using an environmentally friendly solar power unit. Read about about how it works – and why it’s important – to the language translation provider in upstate New York. By utilizing solar panels, the company will replace much of its traditional energy consumption with environmentally friendly electricity. Excess power created by the solar panels can be provided to the utility grid, further increasing the availability and use of green energy.

Solar Panels on the Lingualinx building in Cohoes, NY.

By choosing to use green electricity, LinguaLinx is reducing environmental impact and supporting the development of renewable generation in New York’s capital region. This reduces the need for power from a utility provider and promotes energy independence.

While LinguaLinx estimates a 76.52% reduction in energy costs, the price to install and maintain solar power is often prohibitive. To overcome this barrier, LinguaLinx has entered into a 20 year Solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with New York Light Energy, a Latham New York-based company offering cost-effective solar power.

According to the agreement, New York Light Energy conducts a structural and electrical analysis of facilities prior to installation. The company then designs, installs and operates a photovoltaic (PV) power system. LinguaLinx pays for the green electricity produced by the solar paneling with no required investment in equipment or maintenance.

David Smith, president of LinguaLinx, said the company is active in practicing social and environmental responsibility. The company won the 2012 “Spirit of Cohoes” award for outstanding service to local community residents and businesses. The new 30,000 kW solar unit will help LinguaLinx maintain its environmental stewardship during periods of growth and expansion.

“Consistent with our mission to be an ecologically responsible company, LinguaLinx is pleased to be working with New York Light Energy in providing a solar power solution to help us increase our power independence and reduce our energy costs.”

Alex Lieb, New York Light Energy’s CEO, echoed Smith’s conviction that green energy is a win-win proposition for preserving the environment and reducing utility costs.

“New York Light Energy is proud to support LinguaLinx, a leader in multicultural marketing, during its transition to renewable solar energy that will power LinguaLinx for decades to come,” said Lieb. “Customers and employees will all benefit from a commitment to environmentally friendly renewable energy which will help to power the growth of LinguaLinx.”

While companies such as New York Light Energy make green power feasible, Smith also stressed that companies not taking advantage of green initiatives can start with small steps to lessen environmental impact.

Suggestions include recycling programs and reducing the amount of documents printed. For large documents that require printing such as business proposals, contracts and reports, it is beneficial to print two-sided on recycled paper when possible.

About LinguaLinx, Inc.

LinguaLinx, Inc. is a full-service international communications company providing an array of services ranging from outsourced documentation, XML migration and content authoring to multilingual solutions in over 100 languages such as translation, interpreting and desktop publishing. LinguaLinx partners with clients to enhance all aspects of their content lifecycle and achieve a greater return on their multicultural marketing efforts. More information can be obtained by visiting http://www.lingualinx.com

Roger The Robot, the official mascot of SEOMOZ, bears the gift of wisdom.

LinguaLinx and its clients were recently featured in SEOMOZ, a much respected blog for professionals in the marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) fields.The blog post was entitled Beyond SEO: Why Good Translation is the Secret Sauce for Successful International Projects. It made the point that technical SEO expertise on things like website architecture and page titles isn’t enough. Expert translation is also essential.

You can read the full blog post here. Some excerpts follow.

More and more companies are going global, especially in the eLearning, software, consumer goods and high tech industries. These days, product or marketing managers are often given ridiculously short deadlines to do multilingual product launches – everything from websites, to compliance documentation, to manuals, to brochures and marketing materials. And it’s all needed yesterday in a dozen or more languages.

Comme on dit en anglais: “Oy, Vey.” Or to put it a bit more diplomatically…

International SEO is part of this, but remains just that: part of a larger whole. Our advice is:

• Do not get obsessed with having a local IP for your ccTLD site, as it is now a minor ranking factor
• It is extremely unwise to rely on automated translation services, especially Google Translate
• It is equally unwise to rely on people in-house, who happen to know the language to be translated to.

Many people appreciate that machine translation or word-for-word human translation can lead to problems. But they think the best that can be expected of translation is to accurately convey the nuance of one language into another.

Not so! You need to take things a step further. What’s really needed is “cultural consulting” that solves business problems. You need to reach new target audiences in ways that best suit them.

Americans tend to see their brand of informality and directness as virtuous. Not everyone in every country agrees.

Whatever your product or industry, you need to send these crucial messages to your clients and prospective clients:

• We know you
• We respect you
• We have taken the time and trouble to get the details right

The alternative is to send the very bad message of: “We want your money, so please send it right away even though we can’t be bothered to appreciate what makes you and your culture special and distinctive.”

A few minutes of Googling can bring up many examples like these:

• In Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger-lickin’ good” came out as “eat your fingers off.” Not so good!
• Japan’s second-largest tourist agency was mystified to get requests for sex tours after it entered the English-speaking market. The name of the agency? Kinki Nippon Tourist Agency
• The correct Spanish translation for the dairy association slogan “Got milk?” is not, in fact, the equivalent of: “Are you lactating?”
• A coche is a car in Spain  but a baby stroller in much of Latin America!

If you get stuff like this wrong, it could be a bad mistake that costs you time and money. And it would all be because you came across as disrespectful, when you were probably just clueless. It’s all so needless.

You need to deftly address the critical cultural perceptions that make all the difference to the success or failure of your project. And that’s precisely the expertise LinguaLinx offers.

Translation projects can be an act of faith.

Your web site, brochure, advertisement, form or contract is important. There’s no room for error but if you don’t know the language, you’re flying blind. Having a certified translator makes you feel safer.

For the most common languages, a certified translator could be just what you need. Some companies and government agencies even mandate it. With other projects, your language service provider (LSP) needs to take more factors into account.

Availability

Certifications in the translation industry are very fragmented.

One of the most recognized certifications covers translations from English into fifteen (15) languages: Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian.

Translations from another language into English are a bit more limited: Arabic, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

To put it into perspective, Kenneth Katzner identifies nearly 600 languages in his book The Languages of the World.

There might not be a certified translator for your language combination unless you count your LSP. Many LSPs develop their own certification requirements, but it isn’t third party certification from someone else.

Area of Expertise

Some translation topics require special expertise. Certification exams include a passage on technical material, but it might not go into the amount of detail required.

Who would you pick to translate telecommunications materials into Spanish: a certified Spanish translator with general experience in technical translations, or an electrical engineering professor who moonlights as a translator and has provided good Spanish translations on other jobs?

I was personally told an anecdote from someone in this industry who complained their provider translated “ground wire” as “earth wire.” We’ve used very good certified translators and very good translators who are not certified. In the end, quality is what matters. It comes down to trusting your LSP and their choices.

Technical Skills

Professional translation requires skills in computer aided translation (CAT) tools. Translators need to be able to use translation memory software, terminology databases and style guides. These skills are not tested in certification exams.

As you can see, finding qualified linguists can be challenging. Before working with any LSP, you should ask about the specific qualifications of translators. Certified or not, you should be made to feel confident in your “act of faith.”

Sign image by Flickr user Mr Wabu

(COHOES, NEW YORK, September 13, 2012)

According to President David M. Smith, this will help clients as well as people searching for information to make the best possible choices on multilingual initiatives including translation, website localization, desktop publishing, interpretation, content authoring and cultural consulting.

“LinguaLinx and our clients have been recognized for our great success in multilingual communications this year. We believe that true expertise stems from a strong focus on the basics. We decided to cover the fundamentals on our blog to provide useful information and to build a framework that ensures each project is linguistically-accurate, culturally-appropriate and cost-efficient.”

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About LinguaLinx, Inc.

LinguaLinx, Inc. is a full-service international communications company providing an array of services ranging from outsourced documentation, XML migration and content authoring to multilingual solutions such as translation, interpreting and desktop publishing. As an ISO 9001:2008-certified company working in over 100 languages, LinguaLinx partners with clients to enhance all aspects of their content lifecycle and achieve a greater return on their multicultural marketing efforts.

Jim Rohn once said “Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.” The success of LinguaLinx and our clients has been

As a language service provider (LSP), every project hinges on attention to the basics of linguistic and cultural details. To keep this focus strong, we’re introducing an LSP 101 series to our blog. It will cover all of the basics to keep projects grounded in success and efficiency.

The first topic in the LSP 101 series is the difference between traditional and simplified characters for Chinese translations.

Traditional v. Simplified Chinese

In the 1950’s the Chinese government started to simplify written Chinese characters that were deemed overly complicated. They believed this would increase literary rates which in turn would improve socio-economic conditions.

While Simplified Chinese is easier to write, some issues still exist. That is why we carefully address intended target market and audience when discussing Chinese translations.

For example, while mainland China has adopted Simplified Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwan still use Traditional Chinese. Since the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan are taught the traditional characters, they usually can’t fully understand printed materials and websites that originate in mainland China.

If you are wondering about Mandarin and Cantonese, please note they are spoken dialects. Mandarin is more prevalent in Mainland China, an important distinction for interpretation projects. Simplified and Traditional are the written forms of the language.

Here is a summary of basic differences:

Image by Flickr user hsfournier

When you focus on price per word, there is a limit to how low you can negotiate your rates. After reaching this point – presumably with no problems in quality or service – translation savings will plateau.

Would you now consider your translation process to be optimized?