Mike W.

Using Japanese Business Etiquette to Give Yourself an Edge

July 5, 2012 By Mike W. Leave a Comment

As the world’s second-largest economy, Japan will almost certainly be a target for any company that’s looking to grow its stature internationally. Conducting business in the Land of the Rising Sun can be hugely profitable and lead to the establishment of excellent, long term relationships, but getting a foot in the door can be quite a challenge in itself.

The key to establishing good relations with Japanese business partners is paying heed to the nuances of Japanese business etiquette – act like a local, show them your skill and finesse, demonstrate respect, and you’ll win many friends, but put a foot wrong and you’re likely to cause an offence which could ultimately cost you that deal.

How to act in a business situation

Anyone who has had experience doing business elsewhere in Asia might be shocked to discover that the Japanese way of doing things is quite different. Japanese business etiquette is particularly nuanced, with many formalities that need to be observed, much like some kind of ritual. Even so, those who are about to set out to the Far East should try not to feel intimidated. Pay attention to the following tips and you’ll get along just fine.

Avoid blunt language and showing off: The Japanese tend to place more trust in people who come across as being compromising and humble. Those who appear to be rude, arrogant and confrontational will almost certainly be given the short shrift in any business negotiation. This extends to openly disagreeing about any point under discussion – rather than object loudly, the best way to disagree is to suggest that an alternative would be better.
Don’t be shocked by direct questions: For example, questions such as “how old are you?” or “how much money do you make?” would appear rude in the west, but in Japan they are an essential part of establishing relationships. Like all Asian cultures, Japanese is very hierarchal, and your new-found colleagues will be quite direct in their questioning so that they can familiarize themselves with you.
Exchanging business cards: This is done at the start of any meeting, as formal introductions are made. Be sure to prepare business cards with a Japanese translation on one side, as this shows you are respectful of your hosts and ready to do business with them. The actual exchange has its own little ritual – when handing over your card, you should bow slightly whilst holding it face up (Japanese side) so the person receiving can read it easily. When you receive your host’s card, be sure to read it carefully before putting it away, as not doing so would be viewed as disrespectful.
Translate all documents into Japanese: This will give you both credibility and legitimacy, and demonstrate that you are serious about doing business with your hosts.
Bring an interpreter: No need to explain this one, but bear in mind that even if you’re Japanese is quite proficient, hiring an interpreter would be taken as a sign of your seriousness to do business, and add prestige to your professional image.

A few notes about Japanese translations

When translating any official documents there are a few things to consider. Your reputation, or your ‘face’, is very important in Japan, and so you should strive to ensure that any translated documents you hand over are of the very best quality. Presenting poor quality translations, littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, will make you and your company look unprofessional in the eyes of your host, and image is everything as far as the Japanese are concerned. If your host decides that you’re unprofessional, he’ll almost certainly cancel the deal.

The other reason for ensuring high quality and accuracy is that you don’t want to distort your message. The recipient needs to understand every single aspect of your proposal, with no misunderstandings whatsoever. One simple misinterpretation of even a relatively minor fact could easily result in the deal going sour.

Finally, one more thing to consider, if you really want to go all-out, is Japanese localization. There are quite a few different dialects of Japanese language – for example Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto all speak slightly different variations. By localizing your company’s brochure or its proposal, this is a clear statement that you have done your homework and are striving to impress, and will almost certainly be well received.

Filed Under: Language

Website Translations and Chat-Up Lines

July 3, 2012 By Mike W. Leave a Comment

Small and medium business enterprises are always looking for fresh avenues they can go down to find new audiences and it’s no secret that using the internet is one of the best ways to do this. Internet marketing is highly targeted, which means that it often has a much greater reach than traditional advertising methods such as newspapers and radio ads, and of course, it’s almost always cheaper.

Even so, a website can only take a business so far – there are only so many potential customers out there searching for your products and services online, and once you’ve reached the number one spot on search engines, where do you go from there?

The logical answer, of course, is to target foreign markets, and to do so, you’re going to need to chat them up, and do it well.

Hittin’ on Them

Chatting people up sounds easy right?

Well, only if you’re fluent in multiple languages or your translator knows what he or she’s doing. The thing to remember is that there’s more to translating a website than simply changing the text from English to Chinese, or whatever language it is that you’re targeting. Just as with romantic relationships, things are not always that simple!

Even if your company website is successful at home, there’s a very good chance that translating your site’s content word-for-word into the target language won’t be able to replicate that success. You see, you’re forgetting one essential element – website localization.

When translating your website – or when hitting on a girl for that matter – you need to think carefully about the ‘target audience’ and what kind of ‘content’ is appropriate for them. Sure, the overall message needs to remain the same, but the method of delivery will almost certainly be different each time.

The way in which a website speaks to its audience isn’t that different from how you would approach a girl in the bar – in both cases, you have one chance to impress, so you’d better make sure your chat-up line is not just a good one, but also an appropriate one.

Translated websites need to be made linguistically and culturally appropriate for the target audience, just as your chat-up line would need to be ‘toned down’ somewhat if you’re trying to hit on a girl in a more conservative country. As far as your website goes, the only way to ensure this happens is by having the translation done by an experienced, native language speaking copywriter who is familiar with the marketing techniques used in that country.

So don’t go presuming that just any old translation agency can do the job for your website. You need to be sure they have what it takes to ‘impress’ your target audience in a way that leaves them totally dazzled – just like you do when you’re hitting on girls at the bar!

Filed Under: Localization

What is SEO Translation?

June 28, 2012 By Mike W. Leave a Comment

Just a few years ago, hardly anyone knew what SEO was all about, or even what the letters stood for. Times have changed however, and these days Search Engine Optimization is quickly eating up a huge percentage of businesses’ advertising budgets as companies large and small realize just how far they can spread online.

The internet has led to amazing opportunities for savvy businesses and entrepreneurs to expand their reach and target new audiences, even on a relatively small budget. But while many of these companies can succeed at home, they’re quickly learning that the penetration of foreign markets is not so easy.

There’s a reason for this – it’s one thing to hire a translation agency and ensure that your company’s website is localized for the target market, but that’s only half the story. Just because you’ve mastered the art of SEO at home, it doesn’t mean that your site will rank anywhere close to page one in search engines in other countries.

Humans are not the target

SEO Translation is vital to ensuring your company website pops up on the first page of search engines in whatever market you are targeting, but this cannot be entrusted to any old translation agency. Many make the mistake of thinking that translating your site’s content and keywords will be enough to ensure it gets ranked, but SEO doesn’t work like that.

What many forget is that with SEO translation, the target is not human readers but machines, or more precisely, search engines.

Search engines do a whole lot more than just read the text and keywords on your site – there are many other attributes which need to be translated to ensure a page can dominate the local target market. The text in its entirety must be translated, including keywords and expressions, as well as aspects like title tags, meta tags, script messages and anchor texts, to ensure that the page is as attractive for search engines in the target language as it’s possible to be.

Proper SEO translation by a professional translation agency is the only way to ensure that your website will rank in the target country when someone searches for one of your products or services in a foreign language – regardless of how well your site ranks at home. For those companies whose sites already rank well in their native language, professionally done SEO translations will all but guarantee a high ranking in their target markets, opening the door to more markets, more site visitors, and more sales.

Filed Under: Professional

ComTranslations “Honored” to be Commissioned for Vatican Book Translation Project

June 27, 2012 By Mike W. Leave a Comment

ComTranslations is pleased to announce its delight at recently being commissioned by the Catholic University San Antonio of Murcia (UCAM) to undertake one of the most exciting translation projects of the year – the translation of L’ Eucaristia grembo della Chiesa. In cammino verso il 50º Congresso eucaristico internazionale di Dublino – into Spanish from the original Italian.

Published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the official Vatican Publishing House, the volume consists of a series of pastoral, theological and historical reflections, created in readiness for this year’s 50^th edition of the International Eucharistic Congress, which took place in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, from June 10 till June 17.

Due to this year’s congress coinciding with the Second Vatican Council’s 50^th anniversary, the importance of L’ Eucaristia grembo della Chiesa. In cammino verso il 50º Congresso eucaristico internazionale di Dublino could not be understated. The volume is seen as an essential part of efforts by the Vatican to promote the reconciliation and renewal of the Eucharistic worship, not to mention the renewed catechesis of the mystery of the Eucharist and its social-cultural celebration.

Considering its significance, the need for a highly accurate translation that paid careful heed to the religious text’s specific vernacular was absolutely imperative, to ensure that the original meaning would be preserved and the message of the interpreted version would remain clear and unaltered. As such, ComTranslations, which enjoys a reputation as one of the world’s fastest-growing translation agencies, was the obvious partner for the University San Antonio of Murcia (UCAM) to turn to.

Discussing the project, ComTranslations CEO Carlos Garcia admitted that he considered the responsibility of translating L’ Eucaristia grembo della Chiesa. In cammino verso il 50º Congresso eucaristico internazionale di Dublino to be a huge honor:

“We are humbled and honored, and extremely grateful to be considered for the translation of books of such value, significance and importance. This is a huge testament to the high-quality work provided by our company, for which we must pay thanks to our talented translators.”

Following the successful completion of the L’ Eucaristia grembo della Chiesa. In cammino verso il 50º Congresso eucaristico internazionale di Dublino translation, ComTranslations has since been commissioned by UCAM to undertake the translation of further religious texts published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana. These volumes will first be translated from Italian into Spanish, before being reproduced in other languages should the need arise.

Filed Under: Book

The Influence of Arabic on French and English

June 26, 2012 By Mike W. Leave a Comment

Strolling through some exotic bazaar in the heart of a Middle Eastern city, listening to the conversations of the locals, the casual French or English speaking visitor is unlikely to be aware just how closely their own tongue is related to the local language.

These visitors can hardly be blamed of course. For anyone but a student of linguistics or an Arabic translation expert, the French and English words borrowed from Arabic have become so corrupted that it’s almost impossible to identify where they came from. Yet there are some 3,000 basic words (in both French and English), plus another 5,000 derivatives of these, which can be traced back to the language of the holy Koran, and as many as 500 of these are commonly used in everyday language.

To understand the influence of Arabic on French and English, we must look back to the 7^th century and the spread of Islam as one of the world’s major religions. Arabic, being hugely revered as the language in which God spoke to the prophet Mohammed, spread like wildfire across the Middle East and beyond, as the Islamic armies sought to expand their empire.

Eventually, this empire stretched over many thousands of miles, from the Balkans and the Caucasus, all the way through the Middle East, across North Africa and eventually, up into the Iberian Peninsula. Arabic quickly became the intellectual medium for all scholars, poets and learned men throughout the Islamic world, which at the time was the most powerful empire on the globe.

The diffusion of Arabic vocabulary into the French and English languages actually began in Spain, where the Moors (as the Arabs of the Iberian Peninsula were known) established a network of libraries that contained some 500,000 manuscripts, dwarfing anything available in the rest of Europe. As such, Spanish institutions became something of a Mecca for hundreds of students from France and England wishing to further their learning.

It was in this way that Arabic words slowly crept into the French and English languages, later aided by the English and French translation of hundreds of Arabic language books when Spain and Portugal were recaptured in the Reconquista.

Leafing through a modern day French or English dictionary, it’s possible to find words that derive from Arabic under every single letter of the alphabet. Indeed, studies have shown that Arabic is the sixth most influential language on French and English, after the Greek, Latin, German, Scandinavian and Celtic language groups.

Arabic words have transmitted into just about every aspect of the French and English languages, which have borrowed phrases to do with food and drink, architecture, home and daily life, geography and navigation, mathematics and the sciences, trade and commerce and many more.

Readers can see the huge contribution that Arabic has made to French and English in the following tables:

Food and Drink:

Arabic	Arabic Meaning	French	English
al-briquuq	yellow plum	l’abricot	apricot
al-jarshuuf		l’artichaut	artichoke
al-kuHuul		l’alcool	alcohol
al-quTun		le coton	cotton
al-’arruuz		du riz	rice
as-sukkur		le sucre	sugar
an-naranj	bitter orange	l’orange	orange

Mathematics and Science:

Arabic	Arabic Meaning	French	English
al-jabr	break into pieces	l’algèbre	algebra
al-qilii		l’alcali	alkali
al-maTnuukh		l’almanach	almanac
al-’iksiir	powder	l’élixir	elixir
al-kymyaa’	chemistry	l’alchimie; la chimie	alchemy; chemistry

Miscellaneous:

Arabic	Arabic Meaning	French	English
maskiin	poor person	mesquin	miser
wa -shaa’ Allah	God willing	je souhaite	I wish…
al-Hashaashii	hashish user	l’assassin	assassin
al-qaSr	palace	château	Castle
al-makhzan	store/warehouse	le magasin	magazine

Even in modern times, the diffusion of Arabic into French and English has not stopped, particularly where food and drink is concerned. Such foods as “kebab” and “falafel” are both commonly found in France and the UK today.

These few samples make it clear that Arabic has made an immense contribution to both French and English, and is can be taken as proof that we have much more in common with our neighbors than perhaps we first assumed. The next time you go strolling through some exotic bazaar, keep an ear out for what people are saying – you may just understand more than you realize!

Filed Under: Language

Travel and Tourism Promotions Hugely Benefit from Asian Language Translations

June 19, 2012 By Mike W. Leave a Comment

Travel and tourism is fast emerging as one of the favorite leisure activities all over the world. The ability to communicate and access the most remote of all locations has catalyzed this activity, not to mention the higher spending power of people from some of the really fast growing economies in regions. Some of the most popular holiday locations are from Asia since they have not been traditionally very tourist friendly in the past and are only recently becoming conscious to the fact that travel and tourism can be a lucrative industry for their economies.

Asian countries have a rich treasure of culture, art and history and are blessed with some of the most beautiful natural spots on the earth. Countries like China, India, Malaysia and Japan have a lot of mesmerizing sights to offer tourists from different places. Showcasing these tourist destinations is a great way of promoting your travel service. Unfortunately many service providers restrict their marketing efforts to a language in which they are comfortable. Isn’t this a common and silly mistake when the people who wish to travel and visit your location are based in geographically distant locations and are not even familiar with your language!

So how does a foreign tourist who is not familiar with the local language get to access these enjoyable holidays? If you belong to the travel and tourism industry, you should be easily able to figure this out. Any translation company adept in Chinese translation or Japanese translation can help you to market your services to potential customers who do not understand the local language. Translating your website and business promotion material will not be a major investment as you will realize if you get a translational quote; if you consider the revenues you will earn from the same in future.

Remember you do not have to translate huge amounts of text and vocabulary. All that you need to do is to translate the main highlights in your travel promotional material. This would spark of curiosity in the minds of foreign tourists. Once they are aware of what entertainment and comfort value you can bring to their travel plans, you can interact and answer their specific queries with help of services of any good translation company. Attracting travelers to your business even before they set foot on the foreign soil is a major deciding factor in impressing a tourist. Start immediately if you do not want to miss this opportunity.

Filed Under: Industry

Huge Demand for Professional Translation Services at Euro 2012

June 11, 2012 By Mike W. Leave a Comment

Huge Demand for Professional Translation Services at Euro 2012

The 14^th installment of UEFA’s European Football Championship kicked off this month, with host nations Poland and Ukraine bracing themselves for an influx of thousands of soccer-mad fans, company officials, tournament sponsors and media journalists from across the continent.

With over 1.4 million supporters expected to attend the Euros this summer, the vast majority have landed up in Poland and the Ukraine before the big kick off which was on June 8, when Poland took on Greece in the tournament’s opening match.

But what will fans and visitors expect upon their arrival in these two exotic and relatively unvisited lands?

Language Problems

One thing visitors need to be aware of is the level of English ability in Poland and the Ukraine. Many visitors may well be surprised to discover that the two host nations, neither of which have a well-developed tourist industry, are not the most proficient of English speakers. As such, the language barrier is one of the biggest problems that visitors will face.

For visiting fans, the potential problems on a day-to-day level are obvious. Even relatively simple tasks such as traveling on buses and taxis, booking a hotel room or ordering food in a restaurant can become a real hassle. While individual travelers can probably muddle their way through, the potential for misunderstandings becomes far greater for those traveling in larger groups, so much so that simply ‘pointing and shouting’ may not be enough to avoid difficulties .

For traveling sponsors and corporate officials, the language barrier presents a far more formidable challenge. Anyone traveling to the Euros on business is likely to have a million and one things to organize – and they simply cannot afford misunderstandings getting in their way.

No matter if it’s simply organizing corporate events or dinners, holding a press conference, or something more complex such as the translation and distribution of company marketing materials for local consumption, officials cannot do without professional translation services.

Translation Solutions

With so many thousands of visiting fans, sponsors and officials set to descend on Poland and Ukraine this month, the demand for specialized UEFA 2012 translation services is sure to be huge. Everyone from fans to visiting business people – and even the football teams themselves – will be relying on translators to ensure their trip goes smoothly. One thing’s for sure, quality translators in Poland and the Ukraine will surely be at a premium next month

The benefits of having a competent interpreter on hand to guide visitors through their visit cannot be overstated. Similarly, the advantages of using qualified translators who not only speak the language, but understand the culture of the two host nations is huge. By having someone at your side who knows both the local language and the local customs, all of those worries about mistranslations and making a cultural faux pas can be put to one side.

Filed Under: Professional

SociaLingo: Global Outreach through Social Media Localization

June 7, 2012 By Mike W. Leave a Comment

Localization is nothing new, but social media localization? What’s all that about then?

Internet marketers will be well aware of the importance of tailoring a website’s content to specific target markets, and doing so is more complex than it sounds. Localization is not merely a case of translating a website and hoping for the best, there is far more to it.

A website not only has to be understood by the target audience, but it also needs to appeal to them. And perhaps even more importantly, it must be culturally appropriate (i.e. not causing offence!) for those it is directed to. As such, web localization involves a combination of translation, careful content creation, design aesthetics and imagery in order to make that site as appealing as possible in the country it’s intended for.

Why Social Media?

So why do we need social media localization/translation? Because, let’s face it, a website is nothing these days without a carefully coordinated social media campaign. Social media does more than just drive traffic to a website – it helps companies to establish their brand in new markets, providing a vital outlet for communication with customers, and allows them to build a community of loyal followers.

SociaLingo

When expansion into foreign markets is the goal, companies are going to need local expertise to get their message across. Products such as SociaLingo, which offers a comprehensive social media translation and management service, are the future of global outreach. Social media is the future of advertising, and SociaLingo and services like it are set to become vital marketing tools for all small-to-mid sized businesses.

SociaLingo is far superior to using tools such as Google Translate, Babylon and Babel Fish, which up until now have been the only choice for businesses trying to reach out to foreign markets via the social sphere. Machine translations, for all their developers’ good intentions, remain an inferior choice compared to the human-led translation management of SociaLingo.

It’s not just poorly translated messages we have to worry about with these services – the cultural impact is also a consideration, and at present, Google Translate and the rest have no way of telling us just what is and isn’t an appropriate colloquialism in other languages. What may seem humorous or amusing in English has the potential to be downright offensive when translated into another language.

SociaLingo means that campaigns are handled by local, native speakers who are experts in social media outreach. They can provide convenient, real time translations of Facebook posts, tweets, comments and more, or they can take full control of a social media campaign for maximum efficiency, tailoring various content and promotions/discounts to a language that maximizes their appeal.

The benefits of social media localization will become immediately apparent. It’s not just an effective tool to reach out to a wider audience; it will also bring companies closer to their audience as well. Fans and followers will genuinely appreciate a company or service that makes an extra effort to communicate with them in their own language, and that appreciation is sure to translate into business success.

Filed Under: Professional

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