inWhatLanguage shares the sweetness of Caramelito's story

Erin Millet and Veronica Johnson with Caramelito's family.

inWhatLanguage keeps on caring, and this month our iWL Cares initiative has been focused on an amazing, tiny but incredible little girl: Adriana, lovingly known as “Caramelito”, or “little sweet” in Spanish.

Caramelito is 18 months old, but in this short time she has endured more hardships than most people do in their lifetime. She has had a cardiac arrest and a heart attack, she suffers from tachycardia and had to go through a tracheotomy.

Erin and Veronica
shopping for Caramelito

The two times she was brought to the hospital, the doctors never gave her parents any hopes for her survival. In spite of that, Adriana, with her 18 months of age, is fighting fiercely to have a place in this world. She has learned to breathe on her own, without the help of machines, and every day she moves more freely in her bed. Furthermore, she has developed her very own language with gestures and expressions to communicate with her family.

Her father lost vision in one eye during an unfortunate accident, and as a result he cannot work until he gets a proper operation. In a family of 8, two parents and 6 children, they all are extremely grateful to have the help of family and friends to get by with electricity bills and other house chores.

Adriana, or Caramelito, has learned to breathe on her own.

After hearing about this touching story, inWhatLanguage rushed on a mission to help this courageous family: the team members went to the supermarket to buy all sorts of necessities and brought them to Caramelito’s house, where they offered their assistance and got to enjoy some quality time with her family. As the only Spanish-speaker of the group, iWL Project Manager Veronica Johnson was the official spokesperson, and her impression was that of a house full of love and hope: “The parents proclaim that God sent Caramelito to them, and that she is a great blessing in their lives,” she remembers. “It was a truly touching experience.”

Veronica Johnson was the interpreter between iWL and
Caramelito's family.

“The family was very happy to have us there and thankful for all the things we brought. Their story is sad and breaks my heart, the dad even cried a couple of times, but they are making everything possible so Caramelito" can live as long as possible. They have a big heart!” she adds with a smile.

As a memento of the beautiful afternoon the inWhatLanguage team got to enjoy while shopping and visiting Caramelito’s house, here are some pictures for posterity!

Summer season: leave everything to inWhatLanguage!

Summer is the time for vacation, and now that the World Cup is over, we all want to take a break for a little while and take things easy. That doesn’t mean that your site has to remain idle, though: summer is a great time to think about going global with your business and translating your website in order to enter new markets. And the best thing is that you can take it easy and relax while doing it: just leave everything to us!

If you go on a vacation to a foreign land where they speak a language different from yours, you will clearly understand how important it is to translate your website and marketing materials if you want to expand your business to other countries. Imagine that you enter a shop looking for a very specific item that you absolutely need, but cannot find it by yourself. You request help, and an assistant comes to you.

If this assistant doesn't speak a word of English, or of any language you feel comfortable with, chances are that you won’t be able to convey what exactly you are looking for. The result will be a failed sale for the shop, as well as a disappointed customer. You will get out of the shop feeling frustrated and annoyed, and you will not be entering that store again any time soon.

If this assistant speaks your language poorly, the probable result will be a very tiresome, broken half-conversation that may or may not end in the desired purchase: you might get out of the shop with the item you wanted, but it will be a very basic acquisition since, after all the effort of trying to explain yourself and understand the other, you just do not want to spend any more time than necessary looking for better offers or extras.

If this assistant speaks your language fluently, you will feel at home in the shop. You will be able to explain exactly what you need and what you are willing to pay for it, your quality standards and any other requirement you may have. The assistant will be able to respond efficiently to your wishes, and may even throw in some extra items that could be of interest to you, making the whole experience much more satisfying and useful in the long term. You will get out of the shop feeling satisfied, with a high-quality product that you needed, and you will probably want to go back to that shop for your future needs.

This last case is the same with a properly translated website. A website is a display case of what you offer, and you want to make sure that your target audience can understand it comfortably and feel “at home” while browsing it. It increases your chances of increasing sales a hundred-fold, and even more so if you make sure that the agency you hire for it is reliable and experienced.

So all in all, this is our recommendation for a relaxed, yet productive summer: leave things in inWhatLanguage’s hands, and enjoy your vacation while we make sure that your website is fit and ready for new markets abroad. Happy summer season!

inWhatLanguage: all the languages in one great agency

Once upon a time, humans lived in a relatively confined space on Earth, and they all spoke one language: the mother tongue of all languages today. That is how this article from Quora explains the situation we have today. “Everyone could have spoken the same mother tongue, and things could have stayed that way until now,” it goes on. “But that didn't happen. In fact, the opposite happened. As humans spread across the globe and population growth exploded exponentially, so too did the number of languages. In fact, it's estimated that there were approximately 10,000 languages spoken only a couple of hundred years ago.”

"There are two reasons for this. The first is that languages change. The second is that language is identity,” concluded the article’s author, Marc Ettlinger, PhD in Linguistics from UC Berkeley.

As I have posted in Facebook shortly after reading this, a clear consequence of this is a world full of possibilities for linguists, translators and people who love languages, and a clear market for them to put their skills into play. The needs that arise from the existence of 10,000 languages in the world are endless, and it is evidently impossible for a single agency to meet them all. However, offering translation services in more than 100 languages is already a pretty amazing feat, and that is exactly what inWhatLanguage does.

103 languages, to be exact, are neatly listed in alphabetical order on our website, from Afrikaans to Zulu: we have professional translators, linguists and proofreaders at your disposal in all those languages. Among them you will naturally find the World’s Top 10 Languages, as estimated in the infographic from Funders and Founders that you can find at the beginning of this post: our Mandarin translation services are top-notch, as are our services in Hindi, Spanish, English, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese and Punjabi. But you will also discover other languages for which you might have difficulty finding a reliable, high-quality translation service around: Bushman, Sindhi, Masai, Tsonga or Xhosa, to name just a few.

And not only that: we offer localized and specialized services for each of those languages. As a reputable translation agency with years of experience and an excellent grip on our clients’ needs, we understand that translations must often be focused on certain areas of expertise and/or particular regions were a special dialect or variant of a language is spoken.

If you are in need of translation services, no matter to or from what language, inWhatLanguage is the way to go. We are always open to dialog, we carefully assess your requests and offer the best solutions in the widest range of languages you can ever find.

There might be thousands of languages in the world, but when it comes to translation, you only need one agency to trust. inWhatLanguage: all the languages in one great agency.

inWhatLanguage Cares visits Veterans Home!

It may be summer time, but there are no holidays for good deeds! This month, the inWhatLanguage team went to visit the William E. Christoffersen Salt Lake Veterans Home to enjoy a little quality time with its residents as part of our inWhatLanguage Cares program.

Erin Millet and Veronica Johnson enjoying a meal
in good company!

“Caring for and honoring our nation’s heroes”: this is the motto of the William E. Christoffersen Salt Lake Veterans Home. “It is said that a nation’s gratitude is measured by the way its people honor their defenders,”, it is written in its official website. “To defend the Constitution, serve in harm’s way, and bear the cost of freedom for all is a sacrifice worthy of active gratitude. In everything we do here at the WilliamE. Christoffersen Veterans Nursing Home, we strive to honor and serve our nation’s aging veterans, as they have honored us through their service and sacrifice”.

It is, undoubtedly, a beautiful endeavor, and inWhatLanguage Cares wanted to be part of it. “I am grateful to know that those veterans who have sacrificed so much to service their country do have a place and community where their needs are taken care of,” says Vice President of Operations and Project Management Maurice von Zupthen. “Their sacrifice made it possible for me to come to the U.S. to study, reside and ultimately establish myself here.”

“It was a great experience to share time with them,” says iWL Project Manager Veronica Johnson. “I think they sometimes feel lonely and they like to have people there with them. Some of them even asked me to stay for good,” she remembers with a laugh.

The inWhatLanguage team joined the Veterans during a Cheese and Wine Social event and brought along sherbet and fresh fruit, which they all greatly enjoyed, according to iWL Office Manager Erin Millet. Not only that, they actually managed to make a new, unexpected friend: “The home keeps a 53 year old tortoise in their courtyard that we were able to pet!”, says Erin Millet. “The Veterans are a joy to be around and it was an honor to visit with them.”

Soccer fans Veronica Johnson and Maurice von Zupthen were able to enjoy the last part of the USA vs Belgium match – a game they couldn’t miss!

All in all, an enjoyable experience for everyone, and a day that both the iWL team members as well as Veterans will remember fondly in the years to come. Go, inWhatLanguage Cares!!

Maurice von Zupthen and iWL Sr. Account Executive Brian Palmer sharing quality time.	Erin Millet, Brian Palmer and Ty Palmer preparing the goodies!
Brian Palmer mingling with the only 4-legged resident of the Veteran's home.	Maurice waving at the camera!
Maurice von Zupthen helping out.	Veronica Johnson and Maurice von Zupthen enjoying the USA vs Belgium match!