Author Archives: Alison Tunley

Specialist translation: Experts in the field It is a frequent misconception that every translator can handle every type of text that’s thrown his or her way. Wrong! In fact, if sourcing a translator privately, you should be wary of translators that do accept anything and everything from legal texts to…

Top 10 interesting facts about translation With all the doom and gloom we’ve been experiencing in recent times with an uncertain political and economic climate I thought we’d keep it upbeat and light-hearted in today’s blog post. Let’s dive into some interesting facts about translation! Translation is a Latin word…

In our past 2 posts we’ve looked at the good and bad points of Google Translate. 10 years down the line it is undoubtedly helping many people with their language quandaries. That said, it’s important to look at the flip side of the coin: are we becoming too reliant on…

So, Google Translate (let’s call it GT from now on) is blowing out 10 candles on its birthday cake, and in part 1 we looked at how the tool can bring communities and people together, breaking through language barriers. Yes, granted this a handy thing to have at your disposal…

  Believe it or not Google Translation was born in 2006, and so celebrates its 10th birthday this year. From its original 2 languages the tool can now deal with 103 languages including Hmong (a dialect spoken in China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand), Shona (a Bantu language native to Zimbabwe)…

In the first part of this article we started to look at the different types of translation technology and how translation memories (TMs) can assist translation projects.   Terminology management is an integral part of translation technology and these tools are important to translators and clients alike. First of all,…

  Outside the translation and language industry little is really known (understandably perhaps) about translation technology. Machine translation is a type of this technology, for example Google Translate and Babelfish, of which many people have heard of. But, tools used by translators, translation companies and the people who require translations…

  In this series so far we have looked at the difficulties of the fields of medical and legal translation. Translating within the fields of marketing and media brings its own set of issues. As our readers should all be aware by now translation isn’t simply a case of replacing…

  Translations of a medical or pharmaceutical nature can be highly sensitive, and the implications of an incorrect translation for dosage, for example, could prove to be catastrophic. This is why it’s vital to have a highly skilled and trained translator translate your medical text. A mistranslated drug leaflet or…

    Translation in and of itself is never a straightforward case of taking one word and translating it into its equivalent form in another language. Each type of translation presents its own difficulties, and legal translation is by no means an exception. Here we look at the two main…