Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Kwintessential have today launched their first App for the iPhone.

The ‘International Business Etiquette’ App features information for business travellers on topics such as language, culture, etiquette and business protocol.

To download to your iPhone please go to the App Store and search under “international business etiquette”.

Google has launched a new translation service for mono-lingual English tourists, which may save them from making embarrassing mistakes in restaurants across the world.

The search giant unveiled its latest piece of technology at Mobile World Congress this week, which lets a baffled diner snap a foreign menu on their smartphone for an instant translation into English.

Currently Google’s early prototype can only translate German to English; so where it will save the unsuspecting tourist in Bavaria from a slice of gefullter Saumagen (stuffed sow’s stomach), the green-faced vegetarian in Paris will be left prodding his plate of pied de cochon (pig’s trotters).

However, in the future Google believes its technology will be used to translate everything from road signs, posters and even foreign novels between the 52 languages it supports.

Andrew Gomez, Google’s product marketing manager, said: “Imagine being in a foreign country staring at a restaurant menu you can’t understand, a waiter impatiently tapping his foot at your table side.

Read more > Press Association

Despite ongoing concerns about high expatriate attrition rates companies do not seem to be paying a lot of attention to the repatriation phase. A similar observation can be made in HRM journals; whereas expatriation has been researched extensively during the last decades, repatriation has received scarce attention in literature. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to highlight the relevance of repatriation management in the earliest stages of expatriate management.

Recent research indicates that successful expatriation assignments rely on four elements: the selection of the candidates, pre-arrival preparation for both expatriate and family, the provided support and possibility to keep in touch with the home organization while on an expatriate assignment, and the repatriation arrangements after completion of the assignment (Baruch and Altman, 2002). That appropriate attention to repatriation arrangements is important follows out of various observations: (1) Valuable personnel frequently leave the organization relatively shortly after repatriation. Research findings from 2002 showed that about 50% of personnel left a financial services company within a few years following the return to their home country (Baruch & Altman, 2002).

Read more > Repatriation Management

For a new CEO, first impressions matter. Early in his tenure as president and chief executive of the Volkswagen Group of America, Stefan Jacoby got an angry letter from a VW dealer in California, declining his invitation to attend Jacoby’s first all-hands dealer meeting. Jacoby was about to become the most recent in a long line of Germans bearing promises.

Jacoby has had to labor to absorb a lot of lessons since arriving in his adopted country in 2007. Another early one came from Jill Bratina, his new head of corporate communications. “He kept asking me why I was so thirsty all the time,” says Bratina, who is rarely seen without a big bottle of water in hand or jammed into a cup holder in her car. “I’m not thirsty, exactly — I just like to make sure I have water available.” All the time. Who doesn’t? Well, Germans evidently. For Americans, who spend so much time sitting in traffic, their cars are extensions of their offices and family rooms. In the absence of an autobahn, comfort and convenience — and cup holders — can be more important than torque.

Volkswagen, originally a beloved, albeit quirky, counterculture brand, has never seemed to fully grasp the American market. When Jacoby took over the U.S. operation in 2007, Volkswagen (including Audi) was clinging to a 2% share of the U.S. market, down from 7% during its Beetle heyday in the 1970s. (VW is now at nearly 2.9% — a significant increase, but slightly less than Hyundai’s market-share jump from 2.9% to 4.3% during the same period.) The dealer network was in disrepair, fatigued by shipment delays, product complaints, and a confusing and occasionally short-lived parade of brands. The German reputation for design and engineering excellence sometimes came across to distributors as arrogance: You will accept the perfect cars we give you, not the rolling living rooms you ask for. Except the cars weren’t always perfect, especially for Americans. “Inconsistent reliability has haunted VW for decades and their understanding of the expectations of the American public has never quite been there,” says Lindland. “There is always a sort of cock-their-ears-and-do-the-puppy-look when we talk to them about the American market.”

Jacoby, now 51 and a veteran of challenging international assignments, insists he is listening. He tells charming tales of past culture shocks, first as the dreamy and unfocused youngest son of a World War II air-force general growing up in postwar Germany, then working for Volkswagen in Japan and China, and for the Japanese company Mitsubishi in Europe. He has learned to watch first, then act. “It was clear we were not understanding of our customers,” Jacoby says. “We needed to change our style in the U.S., as we are a very stubborn bureaucratic German company — and German management — to some extent. I am here to listen.”

Read more > VW

Immigrants hoping to settle in Britain will be quizzed on queuing etiquette under Government plans.

The revered practice of forming a line will be part of the citizenship test migrants must pass to secure a British passport.

While the idea may sound like a joke, ministers insist it is a serious part of coaching foreigners on the British way of life.

Immigration minister Phil Woolas confirmed the plan, saying: “The simple act of taking one’s turn is one of the things that holds our country together.

“It is very important that newcomers take their place in queues whether it is for a bus or a cup of tea.”

Read more > UK

It is interesting to note that, according to Google, there are monthly 12,100 searches for the phrase “Website Translation” and only 1,000 for “International SEO”. Of course, there are other phrases of importance such as “multilingual SEO” but that’s even small and actually there are a great many more varieties of website translation phrase than international SEO.

By my reckoning, that roughly means that only 8% of people who translate their website bother at any point to either consider SEO or to buy a service for it. Is that possible? Although it’s a pretty crude calculation, I’d say that figure is no exaggeration. Far more people translate than employ any kind of SEO – which is much more the cream on the cake.

Oh No It Isn’t…

Translation and the localisation industry is a much older industry than SEO with professional standards, university courses and strict regulation. Personally, I’ve lost more sleepless night over language exams than I’ve ever done over SEO or search marketing tests. The Google Adwords Professional scheme being the only thing that has really tested (more frustrating than testing actually…).

But that doesn’t mean that localisation professionals shouldn’t start to get more interested in SEO. In the case of large corporations, they are often spending the bulk of the company’s investment in content and international SEO processes should be thought about as part of the whole localisation project. Going further, decision making surrounding which content to localise in the first place – assuming that it is not ALL web-based content – should be conditioned by keyword research to determine which content it is in the company’s interests to translate.

Read more > SEO

Live language translation on mobile phones could be just two years away, according to search giant Google. The company already offers text translation services and voice recognition, and Franz Och, head of translation services, says that work has already begun on combining the two.

The technology would work by translating phrases rather than individual words, and the company hopes that by looking at the huge amount of translated text already online, it can produce systems that are much more accurate than current versions. “If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently,” he said.

With over 6,000 languages spoken around the world, however, and only 52 currently on offer through Google’s existing translations services, the service is some way from meaning that language teaching in schools becomes redundant. “Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on,” said Mr Och.

Read more > Google

In an unfortunate result of translation, Pakistani diplomat Akbar Zeb will not become the next Pakistani ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Zeb’s credentials seem in order: He is the former ambassador to the United States, India and South Africa. He held the post of High Commissioner Designate of Pakistan to Canada and is the former director general of Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry.

But despite Mr. Zeb’s impressive career, the 55-year-old diplomat’s name proved to be the immovable hurdle. When translated into Arabic, Akbar Zeb means “Biggest Dick.” In a region that stresses modesty, particularly in public, this could not stand.

Akbar is a customary Muslim name for Arabic and non-Arabic speakers alike. The same cannot be said for Zeb. The name is common in Urdu, however in Arabic it is merely a slang reference to the male reproductive organ.

In hopes of minimizing the use of the word in public, Saudi Arabia has refused to accredit Mr. Zeb for the position.

Read more > Akbar Zeb

The article below is a parapgraph from Michael Bonfils’ ” Top International Search Marketing Failures to Avoid in 2010″….

Although it’s nearly impossible to list all the failures I’ve seen over the last 15 years since our beloved industry emerged, I’ve seen five big ones. We’ll look at two today, and three more in our next installment.

Failure 1: Misguided Research

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that, like many, I’ve often dreamed of selling something for a dollar profit to every Chinese and Indian citizen, but I would never base population as a target market strategy. Although it isn’t entirely impossible, there are many things to consider when researching your markets.

It all starts with your primary objective. Branding a product, versus selling a product, versus obtaining a lead for your product would almost all have different strategies.

Log files can be used as a factor in target market research, but they aren’t necessarily accurate. Some clients have discovered that even though China delivered the most non-U.S. traffic to their site, it was the French, number seven on their list, which converted 10 times more than their Chinese counterparts.

Read more > SEM

The Ministry of Justice admitted it has spent more than £20 million pounds on interpreters and translators in the last two years, fuelling concerns over the impact immigration is having on the public purse.

The figure included £11.8 million spent in 2007/08 which was higher than MPs had previously been told in a series of parliamentary written answers.

One, to Dominic Grieve, the shadow justice secretary, last year was more than £1 million short of the true figure, while Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, was told spending had been £11.4 million.

Another, in 2008, only had figures for translation services and not interpreters while the fourth suggested more than £28 million had been spent in that year.

Read more > Telegraph