Abbreviation

The most general term, which loosely applies to all shortening of words or phrases, is “abbreviation”. This term covers all examples, from contracting the word “mister” to write “Mr.” to abbreviations from Latin such at e.g., or even the mysterious “OK”.

Acronyms

Acronyms, a subset of abbreviations, cover a wide range of examples and there are numerous subsets within the family of acronyms. They are characterized by combining the first letters or first couple of letters of a series of words to form a separate group that can be recognized as a new unit, which at times is pronounced as a unique word or can have its letters pronounced one by one.

Examples of this:

• UN, EU, and OAS are just some examples of international bodies that are instantly recognized by the first letters of the words that make up their name.
• Benelux, Interpol, and alphabet are the result of combination of parts of words and not just the initial letter.
• Scuba, laser, radar, and sonar are acronyms that have mutated into normal words in the English language, with almost no recognition of their original form.

There are numerous variations on these three general classes and several rules to consider when using abbreviations. The most vexing aspect for a translator is when documents, especially in the fields of finance and medicine, use acronyms or abbreviations that are rare and difficult for a non-specialist to divine the full phrase from. For a good list to use in your work with financial documents, for example, click here.

(Spanish version: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/siglas-acronimos-y-abreviaturas-2010-07-26.html)

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This type of text requires translators who are highly specialized in the field in question and who are also specially “picky” in matters of the correct translation of words.

Even though the translation of medical texts presents numerous complications, I would like to focus today on one aspect that appears consistently in a majority of the documents: drugs and medications. It is very important to clarify that “drugs” and “medications” are not synonyms. A medication is a substance that has a pharmacological effect, meaning that it is chemically active with an effect on the organism. Drugs, in the pharmaceutical setting, is the commercial representation of a medication, meaning that a drug is not just the active ingredient but also the final substance that is marketed to consumers, which includes excipients, the presentation of the product (powder, tablets, et al.), etc.

As this is all true, one of the difficulties that arise in handwritten medical texts in English is that they can use three manners to refer to drugs or medications, depending on the author:

• Use of the INN (International Non-proprietary Names), as recommended by the WHO.
• Use of commercial brands.
• Common names with no international validity.

Of the cases listed above, the first is the least complicated for the translator, since the equivalent in Spanish or other languages can be quickly and easily accessed. For the second case, there is a decision to be made about whether to maintain the commercial brand name (which is normally easily identified, since it appears in capital letters and joined by the sign for registered (“®”) or unregistered (“™”) trademark symbol) or to use the equivalent trademark for the destination country or even to replace it with the INN of the active ingredient.

The real problem arises in the third option, since the names used locally are different than those used internationally and even if the translator should translate using the INN, it is more complicated to find the correct term in the areas where he or she normally works. For example, in the United States, acetaminophen is used to refer to what is known internationally as paracetamol.

The examples above are only the tip of the iceberg as far as the possible complications that can arise when working on or reviewing a medical translation. For this reason (and many more), it is essential to rely on certified translators at every step of the process. Professional services are available for use and they can assure everyone involved in the process that the document has the correct professional rigor and clarity, thus ensuring that there will not be any problem that can have any effect at the material or personal levels.

For more information, see our Medical Translation page.

(Spanish version: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/traduccion-medica-medicamentos-y-farmacos-2010-07-23.html)

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Among other options, users are given the possibility of translating the interface (exactly the same as is done with Facebook) and the possibility of automatically translating tweets, in order to see the contents in any language, is also in the works. The idea is to make this available from within Twitter, in addition to being possible from applications such as TweetDeck or HootSuite.

In reality, tweets can be translated automatically through unofficial means, through certain Greasemonkey scripts, for example, but the idea is that they are done officially so that they are more practical, efficient, and user friendly.

At the moment, Twitter’s interface is currently available in English, Italian, Spanish, French, German and Japanese, and they are working on covering many other languages.

The community of voluntary translators is invited to provide their suggestions to increase the material at the fastest rate possible. This is the planned method for achieving social networks in other languages.

These are all useful tools, especially for any person who is looking to broaden their social networks in multiple languages.

For more information on handling multiple languages, visit Translation Services.

(Spanish version: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/redes-sociales-y-traduccion-automatica-2010-07-21.html)

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In this context, controlling the content of translations, in order to ensure that they reflect the original document with the greatest fidelity possible is of the utmost importance.

Global Databases Limited has launched its free online CrossCheck service onto the market. It incorporates artificial intelligence to check translations in over 30 languages. The system operates with all of the controls in the following languages:

Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Danish, Icelandic, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish.

For the rest of the languages used by the system, some controls are disabled or cannot be used.

This control is performed automatically through the comparison of the translation with its respective source in order to verify:

- omission of text;

- spelling errors;

- mistakes in the creation of lists;

- consistency in terminology, according to specific glossaries from the clients;

- formatting issues: and

- the layout of images and graphics.

The file formats that can be used with this software are all of those related to Trados (including Translation Memories), MetaTexis and even Adobe Acrobat PDFs.

For computer assisted translation programs (e.g. Trados and MetaTexis), any error is clearly outlined in an error report for them to be resolved through a human edition performed based on this error report. The system provides filters to select the checks that will be used for the project in order to activate all of the possible controls or only some of them.

For PDF files, the errors are shown as comments in the file. In this case it is necessary to the the Comments navigation panel from Adobe Acrobat to move from one error to the other.

(Spanish version: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/crosscheck-2010-07-20.html)

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In addition to providing various programs and majors, some universities offer the possibility of working and studying at the same time, which gives students a more vivid understanding of what the day-to-day life of a translator really is: endless research, constant debates with colleagues, continued training, among others.

I did a little reading into the best universities in the United States that offer undergraduate and postgraduate studies in the areas of translation and interpretation. They all offer different programs, with durations and purposes that vary greatly. The list below is not in any specific order.

• Kent State University

This university located in northeastern Ohio has 8 campuses and a diverse university system. The Institute for Applied Linguistics offers a two-year program resulting in a Master’s in Translation as well as a PhD in Translation. These programs emphasize the research necessary for a translation, specialized translation, computer assisted translation tools, software localization, among other purposes. Additionally, the study programs include different combinations of languages, such as French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and English.

• Monterey Institute of International Studies

This institute, located in Monterey, California, was founded as an multilingual institute and research center with a global vision and postgraduate programs. In 2005, it became affiliated with Middlebury College, located in Middlebury, Vermont. It offers a Master’s program in Translation and Management of Localization, Translation and Interpretation and Interpretation of Conferences.

• SUNY Binghamton

Binghamton is located in the central section of southern New York state. Unlike other postgraduate translation programs, the Program of Instruction and Research in Translation at SUNY Binghamton is based around a PhD degree in Translation.

• University of Texas

Founded in 1980, the University of Texas’ Center of Translation supports the formation of literary translators and scientific analysis. At the same time, it collaborators with writers, academics and editors around the globe. The Center for Translation and School of Arts and Humanities is located in this institution. Here, the professors work alongside the students to outline programs emphasizing translation studies.

• Gallaudet University

This Washington D.C.-based university is the only university in the world with customized programs for students who are deaf or have difficulty hearing. Gallaudet offers a Master’s program in Interpretation, with a specialization on American Sign Language.

(Spanish version: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/las-mejores-universidades-para-estudiar-traduccion-o-interpretacion-2010-07-19.html)

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I would like to take this time to make a brief summary on some of the main aspects to consider when working on an financial or commercial translation:

Numbers

It is immediately apparent that this is one of the fundamental aspects that must be considered very carefully. It is essential that no number is added, eliminated, changed, or moved. Also to be considered is the punctuation and annotation system in the target country, since the period/decimal system changes between the English-speaking world and the Spanish-speaking world.

False cognates

Another important problem are the “false friends” that can lead us to believe that we are doing an accurate translation when in reality we are translating something incorrectly. Some of the most common examples in English for a Spanish audience would be:

Controller: the literal translation would be “controlador”, but the correct translation is “supervisor financiero (de una empresa)”.

Hedge fund: the literal translation would be “fondo defensivo”, whereas the correct translation is “fondo de inversión de alto riesgo”.

Neologisms

This is possibly the most common problem for financial and commercial text translations, since new terms are created at a dizzying rate and language professionals do not have time to create a standard translation that applies to all individual markets. Thus, the translator must make the decision on his or her own and decide on a word or phrase that is adequate for the document and the target language and country.

Abbreviations

It is quite common to see abbreviations in these sorts of texts and, quite often, they are extremely rare and known only in the sphere of financial experts. It is therefore recommended that all translators take classes in the field in order to become completely familiar with all of the acronyms used in the profession as well as the proper translations.

Other typical issues with this type of document are:

• Figures of speech such as “bull” or “bear” (alcista and bajista)
• Puns
• Currency abbreviations
• Polysemes

It is thus very important to underscore the importance of relying on professional translators to perform financial translations who offer high-quality services and understand the significant ramifications that poor quality or incorrect translations can have for a company or institution.

(Spanish version: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/la-traduccion-de-textos-economicos-2010-07-16.html)

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The University of Gothenburg (Sweden), and specifically the Department of Science and Engineering, will be responsible for managing this project. The director of the Department, Aarne Ranta, asserts that the prototypes will cover the 23 official languages of the European Union with the goal being that all citizens of the community be able to access the full base of knowledge on the Internet with out any advantage for any particular language.

This project is designed to solve some of the problems currently present in automatic translators on the Internet, which have not been able to correctly address certain issues of grammar. As Ranta notes, as of now there is no translation tool that fully covers languages; even though there are several translation tools available on the Internet, such as the highly popular Google Translator, which improves the quality of its translators over time through automatic learning and information recovery mechanisms that help it learn from its own errors, they do not have any explicit grammatical rules that help their translations reach a level that can be considered perfect.

The goal of the MOLTO Project is to develop a system of grammar rules and standards. Molto will use a grammatical framework (GF) where different languages are related through a common abstract syntax. The GF is applied in several fields on a small or medium scale, generally to work with up to ten languages; MOLTO is looking to expand this aspect for greater productivity and applicability, which will consist of increasing the number of fields and languages. One important thing will be having the technology available for experts in the field who do not have experience with the GF and thereby minimizing the effort necessary for creating the translator.

The experience will be based mostly on the interoperability between Web Ontology standards (OWL) and the GF and the extension of translations based on rules with statistical methods. Such interoperability shall allow for multilingual interaction based on natural language with knowledge that is valid for machines.

Even though, as with all occasions when we collect information on potential automatic translation tools, we cannot help but be incredulous about the real quality that this type of programs can offer, mainly for technical and grammatically complex texts since, generally, the result is more often than not lacking.

The MOLTO Project began on March 1, 2010, and shall continue until February 2013. The following timeline lays out the main milestones for the project:

June 2010: online demo at www.molto-project.eu

November 2010: infrastructure of knowledge representation.

March 2011: GF grammar compiler.

(Spanish version: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/el-proyecto-molto-2010-07-14.html)

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Smart Translator is a series of software programs that translates technical texts originally in English into other languages, which makes it highly useful for engineers and technicians who must familiarize themselves quickly and thoroughly with new technologies.

These software programs use artificial intelligence to provide precision in style, grammar and semantics in sentence construction through a series of plug-ins for Frame Maker, Microsoft Word, Arbortext Editor and JustSystems XMetaL Author.

This system works with what is known as “controlled English” in order to eliminate ambiguities, highly technical technical terms or jargon, odd expressions and idiomatic phrases. It uses dictionaries to produce precise translation from a clear English document and relies on a final edition by a human, which means that a translator is responsible for this last step.

(Spanish version: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/smart-translator-2010-07-13.html)

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Here are some examples of tongue twisters from a few languages, and I would invite you to post your own to show off the various possibilities.

English

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.

Luke’s duck likes lakes. Luke Luck licks lakes. Luke’s duck licks lakes. Duck takes licks in lakes Luke Luck likes. Luke Luck takes licks in lakes duck likes.

Spanish

María Chuchena su techo techaba, y un techador le pregunta:
“¿Qué techas María Chuchena? ¿O techas tu choza o techas la ajena?”
“No techo mi choza ni techo la ajena. Yo techo el techo de María Chuchena.

El tomatero Matute mató al matutero Mota porque Mota el matutero tomó de su tomatera un tomate. Por eso, por un tomate, mató el tomatero Matute al matutero Mota.
Me han dicho que has dicho un dicho, que han dicho que he dicho yo. El que lo ha dicho mintió, y en caso que hubiese dicho ese dicho que han dicho que he dicho yo, dicho y redicho quedó, y estará bien dicho ese dicho que han dicho que he dicho yo.

French

Si mon tonton tond ton tonton ton tonton sera tondu

Les chaussettes de l’archiduchesse sont-elle sèches ?

Gros gras grand grain d’orge, tout gros-gras-grand-grain-d’orgerisé, quand te dé-gros-gras-grand-grain-d’orgeriseras-tu? Je me dé-gros-gras-grand-grain-d’orgeriserai quand tous les gros gras grands grains d’orge se seront dé-gros-gras-grand-grain-d’orgerisés.

Portuguese

Essa casa está ladrilhada.
Quem a desenladrilhará?
O desenladrilhador que a desenladrilhar,
Bom desenladrilhador será !

Disseram que na minha rua tem paralelepípedo feito de paralelogramos. Seis paralelogramos tem um paralelepípedo. Mil paralelepípedos tem uma paralelepipedovia. Uma paralelepipedovia tem mil paralelogramos. Então uma paralelepipedovia é uma paralelogramolândia?

And the wildest one has to be one I found in Spanish:

El otorrinolaringólogo de parangaricutirimicuaro se quiere desotorrinolangaparangaricutirimicuarizar. El desotorrinolaringaparangaricutimicuador que logre desotorrinolangaparangaricutirimucuarizarlo, buen desotorrinolaringaparangaricutimicuador será.

As a translator, there are occasions where you will have to come up with a plan for dealing with a tongue twister, such as “Erre con erre, guitarra;│erre con erre, carril:│rápido ruedan los carros,│rápido el ferrocarril”. It might takes hours to come up with an adequate representation of the phrase, and that is after you have made the decision to translate it by following the literal meaning or simply deciding on a tongue twister in the target language that fits in the same context. This can be a vexing problem, but the process can be quite fun if you allow it to be.

(Spanish version: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/se-me-%E2%80%9Clengua-la-traba%E2%80%9D-2010-07-12.html)

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1. Mandarin Chinese

2. Spanish

3. English

4. Hindi / Urdu

5. Portuguese

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