inWhatLanguage makes children's wishes come true

In the couple of years that I’ve been working regularly for inWhatLanguage, it’s been easy to realize that this company was more than just a mere translation agency. The people in charge of it, the warmth, the communication with the clients, the attention to detail, the care in each and every project. It felt like a young person who just got out of college, bright and eager, perfectionist and ambitious. And the good thing is that, as time passed by, its spirit hasn’t changed.

Now, however, inWhatLanguage has gone a step beyond in its commitment with society by participating with the Make-A-Wish® Foundation in a hopeful and adventurous goal: raising money to help children in need.

The Make-A-Wish® website explains their goals and dreams clearly: “Make-A-Wish® grants the wish of a child diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition in the United States and its territories, on average, every 38 minutes. We believe that a wish experience can be a game-changer. This one belief guides us. It inspires us to grant wishes that change the lives of the kids we serve”.

Their story began with the fulfillment of Chris Greicius’ dream, a kid who died of leukemia at the age of 7, but not without experiencing his long-desired wish of becoming a policeman for a day.  Chris died with a smile, but it was not only his life that changed that day – the police officers that helped realize his dream felt also different, like brand new people. Such is the power of a child’s dream.

inWhatLanguage wants to be a part of that. Our focus on languages has always been a way to realize our clients’ goals, helping them go beyond their geographical frontiers and reaching people out there who would otherwise remain forever unaware of their intention and their services. If with our skills we can help making children’s wishes come true and become universal, it is without saying that our skills will be put to good use.

That is why we are helping with Make-A-Wish’s main fundraising event, the annual Rubber Ducky Derby, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary and will take place on August 10, at Seven Peaks Salt Lake, 1200 West 1700 South. As a company, we have donated $600 to the cause, and we have also created our own fundraising page to get donations from people who wants to share this beautiful dream.

Do you want to make countless children’s wishes come true? Make a donation now!

“Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.” American author H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Summer: the perfect season to explore the world!

It’s SUMMER TIME!!    

Okay, so I may be writing this from a country where it has been raining cats and dogs for the last 48 hours (and, on a totally unrelated note, I’d love it if it rained cuddly little doggies – I’m not a cat person), but still. Today is the first day of summer! Let’s celebrate the arrival of warm weather, the time for barbecues in the park and dining on the restaurant terrace, sunbathing on the beach and, above all else, VACATION TIME!

inWhatLanguage wishes you an awesome summer season 2013, hoping that you enjoy it to the fullest, and of course, don’t hold back on travelling!

Summer vacation is the best time of the year to explore new countries and cultures, and now more than ever: if you didn’t do it before because you felt scared of going to places where you don’t speak the local languages, you can rest assured! As long as you know who to put your trust in, you can step on the four corners of the world, and you will always have someone by your side to help you communicate as much as you need.

inWhatLanguage has extensive translation and interpretation experience in the travel and tourism industry. It doesn’t matter if you are the tourist or the travel agency: we have experts to cover all your needs. Of course, we also offer excellent on site interpretation services in case you need someone to lend a helpful hand wherever you are – and if an emergency arises, we can assist you via telephone at any time. Just call us toll-free at 800.580.3718 or contact us through our website.

So what else do you need to get your tickets and start your summer adventure? Don’t let languages hold you back – make this your best summer ever!

And to get you started, here is a cool –and when I say cool, I mean ‘real cool, mon’- summer song that will make you want to start planning your trip right away!

Never let a machine do the job of a human...

This week, a so-called breakthrough in real-time, automated translation has made the headlines in the languages and translation sections of the international press. Not in a particularly flattering way, though.

The new technology is called “Lexifone”, and it’s main innovative feature is that it is not a machine translation along the lines of Google Translate or Babelfish per se, but rather a real-time interpreting service for eight languages that works with “nothing more than a phone”, according to information provided by the Associated Press: “The service translates spoken conversations in real time, which Lexifone says is an improvement over free, Web-based services that are typically limited to typing in text”.

Practically all Science fiction shows and movies that involve space exploration feature a highly advanced, real-time translator devices that allow seamless communication between entities from different planets –not to mention countries-, and we have now reached a point where we don’t even question the complexity behind such a technology. But when it comes to the present and our current level of technological prowess, an announcement like the one of “Lexifone” does sound quite far-fetched. Mainly, because it involves two fields where we, translators and transcriptors, see how technology fails miserably every day: machine translation AND automated speech transcription. The first, albeit useful for separate words and simple sentences, proves useless when it comes to idioms and intricate text structures. As for the second, just try throwing in a strong accent – then sit back and have a laugh watching the machine spell utter nonsense.

Those two factors already make me feel somewhat skeptical about this particular software’s functionality. But what really makes me dismiss it as a potential tool for my job as a translator is the fact that it emphasizes its low costs: “Lexifone allows people to get translations without paying hundreds of dollars for human interpreters”, writes Associated Press. Specifically, the service costs 15 to 40 cents a minute.

Now, that is plain suspicious. I know that we all live in a world where we want more for less, but one thing still stands: if, apart from quantity, you want quality in your translations, it comes at a price. And even if we are talking about a machine, there should be people behind it constantly working on improving its interface, its voice recognition system and its vocabulary banks, trying to keep the languages as fresh as possible every day. And that should cost quite a bit of money.

Unsurprisingly, the Associated Press goes on in its article to say that “tests conducted by AP reporters in Mexico, France, Israel, China and the U.S. show that Lexifone is still far from delivering the quick and seamless translations it advertises. Using the service proved frustrating, both in the quality of translations and the length of time it took to complete phone calls”. It shows promise, AP writes, and it could help in emergencies, but it’s definitely not fit for everyday use. And whereas the project deserves praise for the idea and the effort, the truth is, a machine will never beat the quality and flexibility of a translation job done by humans.

Because, just as humans, languages are alive. And in inWhatLanguage, we acknowledge it.

Inspiration in languages

Today, I have been inspired by languages.

I went to a poetry event dedicated to one of Spain’s most prominent Spanish poets, Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), a fact which, in itself, is not that amazing, albeit certainly special. The amazing part was… The event took place in Germany.

Sure, it was in the context of a Spanish learning class. But still. We are talking about some of the most complex poetry Spanish literature has seen. And yet, as soon as those complicated words were accompanied by a guitar and sung by the amazing vocal chords of an opera singer, everyone – and I mean everyone, Spanish speakers and non-Spanish speakers alike- understood it perfectly. Or, more likely, they felt it.

Poetry is a whole other dimension of language. A dimension where words are as important as their rhythm and their musicality, even if they are not meant to be put into a song. And translating these can be the work of a lifetime, or an eternal nightmare.

I have never translated poetry. I have never had the chance, but I really don’t know if I would be able to do it. It just requires a little too much of just one person: it requires not only the total dominance of a language, but juggling it to fit the cadence of a verse, not missing the subtleties of the original language, the metaphors and the hidden messages. Generally speaking, poetry is made in and for a language, and trying to change that, for many, is impossible. That’s probably why García Lorca’s work was recited in Spanish… Even in the heart of Germany.

But the beauty of it is that, if it’s done right, if it’s given the attitude it is supposed to have, even those who are not familiar with the language do feel its meaning. If, by trying to make it more understandable, we translate a poem to other languages and, in doing so, we manage to make it lose this quality, that translation is a failure.

Or maybe poems are not meant to be translated at all. Maybe there is such a thing as a message impossible to translate. Or maybe the language of poetry is just untranslatable in itself.

Furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

This is a haiku by eminent Japanese poet Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). It was translated by American poet Robert Hass as follows:

The old pond--
a frog jumps in,
sound of water.

I guess one has to be a poet to understand the secret technique of translating a poem. A world reserved for a chosen few. I will continue to admire their works from afar – they deserve it.

The dangers of a language barrier

A couple of days ago I found this article on the net:

"Translators were asked to sit in on more than 3,600 driving tests in the Black Country and Staffordshire because new motorists were not confident in their grasp of English, it can be revealed today."

As a person who has been living in a foreign country for a number of years, I have pretty much experienced it all already. I have grown accustomed to certain situations, and even if my control of the local language is far from perfect, I have my little “vocabulary departments” for each and every situation that I encounter in my daily routine: buying products over the counter, asking for information on train routes, that sort of thing. However, I do not cope well with unforeseeable eventualities.

The other day, for instance, a nice couple asked me for directions, and for the life of me I couldn’t seem to be able to put two coherent words together. Okay, partly because a, I wasn’t sure how to reach the desired destination, and b, because my dyslexia makes it naturally difficult for me to know which way to go anyway. But still. Up until now, I haven’t had to drive around here, and after this, I don’t think I ever will.

Not being able to understand basic information in dire situations, like driving –where there really is no time to look up stuff in the dictionary-, can be a terrifying thing. Just imagine the following: you are in the passenger seat with a foreign driver, and you see that he is going way too fast. You smell the danger. You shout: “Break!” And he doesn’t understand.  Not a pretty picture.

Probably that’s why the people doing the driving tests in Black Country and Staffordshire thought it would be worth it to pay professional interpreters to help them. And you know what? It surely was. If you are driving alone, you are guided by your own sense of direction, but when you have to follow other’s instructions, a language barrier is an obstacle only for those who want it to be.

With years of experience, inWhatLanguage's worldwide network of clients relies on our interpreting services because our interpretation firm goes the extra mile to ensure that we work with the most talented and professional interpreters in the world. And we work both via telephone and on-site, in more than 160 languages.

Don’t take any risks – where there is a will, there is way. And inWhatLanguage is definitely the way.