Translation & More: English/German/Italian to Russian/Ukrainian

05/03/2021

Transcreation: Glory and Agony

There’s that cartoon, “Martha Speaks” – those who have kids will probably know. It’s basically about a doggie who eats ‘alphabet soup,’ which makes her speak. And there’s a lady who produces that alphabet soup. Let’s look at it from that lady’s perspective. Alphabet soup is a great business idea, especially if it makes dogs speak. However, such an idea is not likely to work in Japan… or China. Or, for that matter, in many other countries that have alphabets too ornate to be produced out of dough.
The same would be true for a host of great businesses. They are tremendously successful in one country, but would be a total failure in another. Some advertising ideas would simply make no sense, others would be culturally inappropriate, or plainly offensive. There’s that Czech Kozel beer; for a Russian-speaker (or, perhaps, a Russian drinker), ‘kozel’ is usually an insult, something like an “idiot.” So here we have it, that Kozel label proudly sitting on the shelves of Russian supermarkets, waiting for an adventurous customer.
Or think of all the fancy words and constructions, slogans and puns used in promo campaigns and product descriptions. All those would be totally lost if translated literally into another language. This would make a brand, a product, or an ad campaign fail on a new market. If it’s not TRANScreated.
A transcreator is your poet: s/he takes your melody, but fills it with the new words. S/he is both a top-notch translator and creative writer. This person understands the subtle nuances of both languages and has a deep insight into the target market. S/he takes the general sense of your materials and gives them a new cultural twist, filling them with the words that ring the bell for the new customers and trigger in them desirable associations.
Going international with your product is a brave and smart thing to do. But make sure to take along a team of well-trained and culturally competent translators and transcreators on that adventure. They might save you some embarrassment or even protect your campaign from massive blunders. They have the potential of turning it iconic or ironic in the long run.

24/02/2021

Linguistic QA Testing

Are you a web- or app- or soft- or game- developer? At some point you might start thinking big thoughts about making your program available in other languages. Russian has around 150 million speakers, so there’s a good chance you’ll be considering it, too.

After the translators and localizers have done their honorable work, linguistic QA testers should step in to polish the final product before it’s revealed to the user. What these testers do is basically hunting linguistic bugs in your newly-translated product. Apart from doing a usual QA check for typos, grammar and style, they ensure that there’re no strings left untranslated, no Unicode errors crawl in, no buttons or commands have text spread too far and beyond (aka truncation), and everything appears within its correct context.

The tricky part is that Russian text is usually 30% longer than, say, English, so your translators and QA testers will have to be very creative to “fit it all in” and not lose any meaning along the way.

24/02/2021

Machine Translation (MT) Engines and What They’re Good for

It’s a thrilling idea – just run your text in any language through an MT engine and get a ready-made text in any other language. Sort of a Language Fairy Godmother with her magic stick, modernized. Even translators want to believe in her. In the past few years, her persona seems especially real. Or doesn’t she?

I used to work training AI translation engines and leisurely wondering if they’ll eventually steal my piece of bread as a translator. Nah… I’ve worked enough with them to know that I’ll always be smarter (or at least able to avoid some co[s]mic bloopers they make). They have the threads of words, but I have the “feeling” – the feeling of the language. Still, as I train them, they’re becoming a better asset in making my work easier.

So what are MT engines good for?
They might give fair workable results in the related languages, like Russian and Ukrainian. I just need to go over the output text and catch some blunders like the word “undressed” taking place of a more sensible “chapter” [«роздягнув» и «розділ»], which is more appropriate for a research paper, wouldn’t you agree? ;)

If you need to get a general idea of a text, an email, a media piece – MT will be your [not-always-faithful, but fast] helper.

However, if you want to sound professional and to communicate your real meaning and intent (and not some hilarious word-play or a string of smart but unrelated words) – do use a (well-)trained human, not a trained machine! :)

24/02/2021

Let’s meet and make friends! :)
To introduce ourselves: Yevgeny & Kateryna Ustinovych. We are a family translation business with two decades of experience under our belts (for each of us) and two PhDs to back it up with (for just one of us ;).

We’ll share with you some insights into the translation process if you’re looking at (lovingly and carefully) translating your pet project without losing any of its charm. If you’re at the start of your translation career, we hope you’ll find here some tips about the industry. And if you’ve already been long in and thriving – we’ll be happy to meet and learn from each other.

We specialize in the following fields: Education, e-Learning, Marketing, e-Commerce, Websites, Mobile Apps, Tourism, Business, Management, HR, Real Estate, International Organizations, Humanitarian Work, Christianity, Literary Translation.

Learn more about us: https://translate2ru.com/

Accurate and creative translation from English into Russian by native speakers – professional linguists with two decades of experience.