Happy Chinese New Year with iWL!

inWhatLanguage wishes you all a very happy Chinese New Year!!

On this day, January 31st, half of the world celebrates the passing of the Year of the Snake and welcomes a new and exciting Year of the Horse. The British newspaper "The Independent" gives us a brief explanation as to what this means in this article written by FelicityMorse: “It will be a fast year full of conflicts according to some astrologers, who see wood as providing fuel for the energetic horse sign. (…) If you have a business involving wood or fire you will do well, according to Canadian Feng Shui expert Paul Ng. This includes lumber companies, agriculture and media companies. Property companies won’t do as well (…). Metals and waters will do badly: this will affect metal mining and precious metals as well as fishing. Financial businesses also have the potential to be unstable.”

The team at iWL definitely sees this year as a big opportunity, and not only because of the experts' predictions, but also because we have a valuable asset at our disposal that goes very well with today’s celebration: an excellent team of professional Chinese translators that are guaranteed to provide the best service in this department.

inWhatLanguage provides superior quality Chinese document translation services worldwide by combining exceptional, in-country translation, streamlined processes, and an unmatched client support during the whole procedure. And most importantly, inWhatLanguage offers a reliable source of translation services in and to a language that’s not only one that is considered to be one of the most complicated in the world, but also one that is gaining great momentum every day.

Chinese, as a matter of fact, doesn’t exist as one particular entity. It is a group of related language varieties, several of which are not mutually intelligible, and is variously described as a language or language family. There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 960 million), followed by Wu (80 million), Yue (60 million) and Min (50 million), according to Wikipedia.

This is why, when it comes to Chinese translations, it is vital to know who you are dealing with, whether or not the translation agency is trust-worthy, whether the translators are native Chinese (or rather, native to the regional language you want your documents translated from/to), and, ideally, whether the translator actually lives in the area your documents are targeted to. All of this is something that few translation agencies can guarantee, but iWL is definitely one of them.

Not only that; inWhatLanguage services every industry, specializing in providing precisely accurate, insanely fast, and surprisingly affordable Chinese document translation services worldwide. You can rest assured knowing that whatever your Chinese document translation project might consist of, our translation firm can handle all subject areas and file types.

So let us celebrate the Year of the Horse with lots of great translation projects with the assurance that your translations are in good hands. And don’t forget that, until February 10th, we have a special 20% off offer on all translation projects! Get a quote now!!

IWL Book Club: The Difference Medical Translation Can Make

You won't find any higher stakes for translation than you find in the medical industry. In some cases, communication between providers and patients can make the difference in the success of a treatment. Intake forms, patient education materials, and patient treatment instructions must be translated accurately. Proper medical translation makes for effective communication, which in turn can be the key to proper treatment and healing.

In Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the author recounts a lovely and sad tale of one Hmong family's attempts to obtain proper medical treatment for their young daughter Lia who suffered from severe epilepsy. Because of both linguistic and cultural barriers, Lia's parents, first-generation Hmong immigrants in California struggle to understand the treatment hospitals suggest for Lia and the instructions for in-home treatment. As a result, Lia is unable to receive the treatment she desperately needs to improve and preserve her young life.

This wonderful book is a sad tale of what happens when communication between healthcare providers and patients is impeded, as well as the difference that can be made when both parties come to understand each other. Though just one piece of the puzzle posed by interlingual medical relationships, proper and accurate medical translation can make a big difference in helping streamline and optimize medical processes. We're proud of the work we've done to help make healing possible by providing affordable medical translation services to hospitals, doctor's offices, medical schools, drug companies, and many other clients within medical industries.

For more information on medical translation services and our full array of multilingual translation and interpretation services, contact us today.

Localization: the key to a perfect translation

The world of translation is a fascinating one, and definitely way more complex than simply taking a text and just converting it into another language. There are other aspects that a professional translation agency will always take into consideration – namely, the details of its target audience: what countries will that document reach? What regions within those countries? In what context will it be read? What will the average age of the reader be? The gender? Social class?

No amount of information is too much when it comes to translation. The reader of the final text not only wants to read it in his or her own language, but also wants the text to feel familiar, close. That makes it more trust-worthy and valuable. And that is the magic of localization.

Patrick Donahue, in his article “The Importance of Localization Engineering”, explains the concept clearly enough: “As a key part or the localization process, localization engineering makes it so that the final version of the content:

• ·         Appears custom built for the target audience’s cultural and linguistic background
• ·         Maintains its original meaning
• ·         Is appropriate for the target locale business and cultural norms."

This is especially important when a company wants to launch a product on a global market. Even in the countries where supposedly the same language is spoken, some words have simply different meanings and/or connotations. Something as simple as selling “pants” in England could end up in a hilarious misunderstanding, and that is just one innocent mistake. Many cases could potentially lead to offensive and negative outcomes.

Perhaps the main difference between localization and translation is that, in the former, one should not be afraid to take a little “poetic license” and completely change words in order to avoid these situations. And the best mean to explain this is by way of providing funny examples. In the 1950s, a Swedish car magazine titled “Speed” made its way out of the country, looking for “greener” pastures. Problem was, they didn’t want to change the registered trademark. And… Well, guess what the Swedish word for “Speed” is. Fart. Just what you’re looking for in your monthly car magazine.

Other commonly known examples are the bakery company called Bimbo, which in Spanish sounds nice but in the US it sounds… Well, not like bread, precisely, and Coca Cola, a name that, transferred to Chinese, turned out to mean “bite the wax tadpole”. Quite the unfortunate slogan.

To sum up, whereas all of this is golden material for analysis and for a few laughs within the translator community, I’m sure that no businessman would like to be taken as a future example of how NOT to globalize their products. Not to worry, though: the trick is to choose a translation agency that will take care of all this with maximum efficiency and professionalism.

iWL is there for you.

iWL: a positive future for a positive company

So much stuff has been happening in inWhatLanguage in the last months that I have hardly had the chance to write a blog post just for the simple pleasure of writing lately. With the recent additions of two new members to the inWhatLanguage core team, Brian Palmer and Sondra Creps, iWL’s change of offices, our Christmas campaign to help those in need and, well, our little review on the goals reached in 2013 and the challenges we face for 2014, there has been more than plenty to keep the blog bursting with exciting news.

Now that things are starting to settle down again, I think it’s time to sit back for a bit and just think about what all of this really means for every one of us, the employees, clients and the wide net of friends of inWhatLanguage. We are walking ever forwards in such an amazing adventure!

inWhatLanguage started out as a small company that had the quality of its translations as its flag to stay afloat in the wild ocean of the translation industry. And now we are growing so much, and so fast! We receive wonderful requests from both new clients and new linguists practically every day, the projects we take on are gradually becoming bigger and more complex. The degree of responsibility is reaching peaks that we could hardly imagine before, and so is the degree of satisfaction.

Our linguists are always so ready and reliable, it is truly a blessing to be able to count on such wonderful people. They might be physically far away, but thanks to iWL’s business formula and modern technologies, we are as close as a family.

And there is no rational explanation as to why even the newest members of the team are so quick to “get” this work dynamic, and are so easily “infected” with the willingness and the friendliness that iWL is known for. My best guess is that everybody can just “feel” that pride, that excitement that can only come from a young company that has basically gotten up from the ground on its own, with the talents of each and every one of its employees, and whose hard work is rewarded not only financially, but also with the kind feedback from our dear clients.

And, of course, the fact that we work with something as fluid and changing as languages must have something to do with it, as well. We all in inWhatLanguage share a passion for languages, and being able to learn something new about them every day, receiving new, exciting projects to put our language skills into action and being able to give our all, to push and prove ourselves, is simply awesome. The best investment of our time. And so much fun!

So, to finish with my little rambling, I’ll add a picture that our dear CEO Cody Broderick sent to the team today, and that actually inspired all of these ideas.

No need for further words :)

iWL has a shiny new location!

Check out our cool new offices!

The holiday season is over, and the iWLteam is back at work in their brand new office!

For those of you who don’t remember, our new address is:

inWhatLanguage Translation Services

2507 S. 300 W. Salt Lake City,

Utah 84115

In a previous post, we already invited you to come over and have a chat over a coffee, but now we actually have pictures of the office that are going to make you want to come for sure! Check out our cool new location!