Intercultural Communication and Translation News

At least £25 million was spent by forces across England and Wales last year to deal with foreign criminals or help victims and witnesses who cannot speak English.

It is enough to put 500 extra officers on the street for a year.

The figure is a rise of almost three quarters on spending since 2004 and is further evidence of the impact immigration has had on public services.

The increase has also come over the period since the EU expanded in to Eastern Europe which resulting in hundreds of thousands of migrant workers and their families heading to the UK.

Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister who obtained the figures, said: “This reveals one more hidden cost of the failure to control immigration numbers under this Government.

“Many public services have been put under pressure by the scale of immigration, and the police are no exception.

Read more > Telegraph

Scottish Parliament chiefs sparked disbelief last night after a firm in India was hired to translate their annual report into GAELIC.

A company based 5,000 miles away in Bangalore landed the Holyrood job when it managed to undercut rivals for the contract by 40 per cent.

But the Asian operation is STILL having to recruit Gaelic speakers back in Scotland to do the work for them.

Last night baffled Highlands MSP Peter Peacock said: “I am flabbergasted that the Scottish Parliament has turned to a company in India to translate the official report into Gaelic.”

Holyrood already employs two Gaelic language staff. But they were deemed “too busy” to deal with translating the 40-page document.

Read more > The Sun

A firm that does language translation for the police and NHS has slashed pay for workers by up to 50%.

Language Line Services provides instant help when, for example, someone calls who doesn’t speak English.

They are put through to a network of freelance inter-preterwho often work from home.

They used to earn up to 35p a minute during the day and 50p at night.

But a memo seen by Your Money reveals the rate has been cut to 24p at all times.

“We appreciate this will not be welcome news,” it reads. One worker fumed: “We have no benefits or security whatsoever and the profit they make from our services is obscene.”

Language Line claimed it affected about 200 workers, and added: “Prices are being driven down by customers and we have had to act.”

Read more > Language Line

Nazis slogans banned in Germany may be legal if they are translated from German into English, one of the country’s highest courts has ruled.

The Federal Court of Justice said it had rescinded a conviction against a man fined 4,200 euros ($5,993) for possessing 100 T-shirts due for sale emblazoned with the words “Blood & Honor” — a translation of the Hitler Youth slogan “Blut und Ehre.”

Read more > Germany

Countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands are being targeted by spammers using translation software to send out unsolicited mail in multiple non-English languages.

Released this week, the MessageLabs Intelligence Report, said that some countries are experiencing levels of spam higher than the global average thanks to increasing use of translation software.

“Once again the spammers turn to their online toolbox, the Internet, for their latest tactics. Translation services and templates enable the spammers to push out multiple-language spam attacks and some dubious translations through the use of poor online services highlight the use of these antics,” said Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence senior analyst, Symantec. “Non-English spam now accounts for one in every 20 spam messages, a figure we’ll be closely monitoring to see if spammers continue with their global expansion.”

Read more > Spammers

Pedestrians have been left confused by a road sign telling them to look different ways in different languages.

A temporary road sign in Cardiff city centre urged English speakers to look one way before crossing the road, and Welsh speakers to look the other way.

The sign “pedestrians look left” was translated to say “cerddwyr edrychwch i’r dde” - or “pedestrians look right”.

Cardiff council said the sign was the work of a contractor, and it had been removed after the mistake was noticed.

Read more > Sign

For those sites that uses Google Friend Connect and its comment widget, Google has just rolled out a novel new feature called: comment translation. With the gadget, users can now unify the language of any comment thread, translating any and all comments easily into their native language.

Once the comment widget plugged into Google Translate, enables readers to translate comments left in foreign languages. This means that if you have one post in Mandarin, another in Spanish, and yet another in Russian, you can click an option to read them all in the same language.

Within the gadget, there is a translate button in the lower left-hand corner. The way it functions is the comment widget has a “Translate” link which then pops up a menu of languages to choose from. Once you have selected your language, all comments that are not in this language will be translated and highlighted in yellow.

However, there is a safe side as well if ever anything goes wrong, you always have the option to revert back to the original text if you wish to do so. Simply select “No Translation” from the same menu.

Read more > Google

Many customers wonder what the letters mean in the translated documents we send back to them. Essentially when sending a file back to a client we always add a language code. So if your document was called “Document-to-translate.doc” and we translated it into Greek - we would send it back as “Document-to-translate-EL.doc”.

We use the ISO Language codes. ISO 639 is the set of international standards that lists short codes for language names. It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 and withdrawn in 2002. We use “Alpha-2″ codes (codes composed of 2 letters of the basic Latin alphabet) which are used in ISO 639-1.

Click here for a useful guide to > ISO Language Codes.

The current economic downturn has forced many companies to find cost-effective ways to translate their documents with fewer staff and smaller budgets. Firms that once paid for professional translation now rely on employees who speak foreign languages to translate documents, something that industry leaders say can end up costing firms if these in-house translations are not accurate. As a result, a leading translation company is responding with a new service designed to help firms guarantee the accuracy of these in-house translations.

“A mistake in translation can change the meaning of key documents and lead to misunderstandings, legal problems, or unexpected costs,” said Marcel Vilanez, the founder and CEO of Technovate Translations, a leading translation agency. “That’s why we want to create an affordable way for companies to make sure their in-house translations are accurate.”

Read more > Vilanez

Even in a recession, companies have to talk to their customers. And global companies have to do it in dozens of languages.

As e-commerce and corporate websites become more complicated, with greater use of video and graphics, translation services are becoming increasingly complicated and costly. At the same time, more and more companies are pushing into emerging markets.

It is hardly surprising, then, that Mark Lancaster, chief executive of SDL, the Berkshire-based translation technology group that will enter the FTSE 250 next week, is predicting growth amid the economic gloom.

In his Maidenhead office, Mr Lancaster says: “Everybody is being cautious [about the economic climate]. But businesses will not stop communicating on the web. And companies will have to innovate to succeed in this market and if they innovate then those product launches will need translation.”

Already the world’s largest supplier of translation services and technologies following an aggressive expansion and acquisition strategy, SDL has grown from a 1992 start-up with £45,000 ($63,000) seed capital to employing more than 1,800 people in 50 offices across 32 countries. The company has announced record revenue of £158.7m and profits before tax and amortisation up 50 per cent to £25.5m for 2008, ahead of market expectations.

Read more > SDL