Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Vantar þýðendur úr íslensku á ensku—næg vinna!

If you know what that means, then Iceland has a job for you.

Iceland’s banking system has collapsed, its economy is in turmoil and its volcano has blotted the sky with ash.

As a result, things have never looked better for the small cadre of Icelandic translators who render the North Germanic tongue of 320,000 island-dwellers into something the rest of the world can understand.

The remnants of Iceland’s three major banks conduct creditors’ meetings in Icelandic. Many of the creditors are foreign. Interpreters are needed.

Among the assignments: bankruptcy cases, criminal probes, fraud suits and, earlier this month, a 2,000-plus-page report on the banking mess—solid gold for a translator—produced by a “truth committee” of the Alþingi (that’s parliament).

“A big uptick for me,” says Daniel Teague, an American translator who has lived in Reykjavík for decades.

“I don’t think I ever did bankruptcy before,” says Keneva Kunz, a Canadian-born translator working in Iceland for more than 20 years. “In the last year and a half, I don’t think I’ve done anything else.”

Business erupted last fall when Iceland rushed its application to the European Union. The Icelandic currency had sunk with the banks, and the island’s leaders were suddenly anxious to ditch their króna for the euro.

Read more > WSJ

When in litigation, knowing the exact contents of e-mails, faxes, letters, and other documents is crucial, but tough when they’re in a language other than your own.

Take David Kessler. The Drinker Biddle & Reath partner remembers working on one matter involving a multinational company. Although most of the discovery was in English, the legal team found that a few of the company’s employees e-mailed each other in an Eastern European language. Thinking that it was odd, they decided to use machine translation to get a sense of what the messages said. They turned out to be linchpins in the case — and Kessler learned something important about translation technology.

“Machine translations are not very good at idioms, not very good in context, but they can be useful in terms of getting a sense of the document to let you decide if you want to spend more money,” Kessler says.

In an increasingly global economy, a single matter can involve a variety of languages. Unfortunately, it can be costly translating the documents. Many corporations have found that translation technology and e-discovery tools supporting multiple languages are important tools in constraining budgets — and winning cases. But there are also drawbacks. Used incorrectly, the software can fail to save time, increase some translation costs, and even overlook documents in an e-discovery keyword search.

Read more > Legal

The BMW Group is presenting its Award for Intercultural Commitment for the first time in 2010. Applicants from all over the world are invited to submit their ideas on the peaceful coexistence of different cultures by 31 May 2010. The initiators behind the three best project proposals will be honored with the award and prize money at a ceremony hosted in Munich on 18 November 2010. Over the course of one year, the company will provide each award winner with a customized package of services concerning organizational, strategic, practical and technological matters. The award competition is one of the BMW Group’s contribution to bridging the gap between different cultures and environments.

Dealing with multinational cultural contexts has become a staple of modern society: Increasing migration as well as new dimensions of mobility and virtual communication have made intercultural dialog a regular way of life for many people. And while this diversity of languages, religions, cultures and milieus brings about great opportunities for both individuals and national societies, it is also one of the greatest challenges of our time.

It goes without saying that the BMW Group, a global player with an international workforce of over 100,000 employees, expertly deals with a great number of different cultures.

“To make intercultural understanding work,” emphasizes Harald Kruger, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG and Chairman of the award competition “it is necessary to establish a multifaceted culture that is open to people from different cultural backgrounds and environments. The BMW Group Award for Intercultural Commitment is intended to make a contribution by motivating people to enter into an open dialog and join hands.”

For further information on the award competition and application requirements please see http://www.bmwgroup.com/award.

What’s a company to do when it over-expanded in the U.S. and had to curtail growth? Step up expansion into huge markets like China, of course. That’s one of Starbucks’ big plans at the moment.

Starbucks’ ultimate vision is to plant thousands of its cafes in China. Right now it only has 376 stores there, compared to 878 stores in its largest non-U.S. market, Japan. Clearly, the company is confident about its strategy, given its recent initiation of a dividend.

However, before donning the party hat, note that in a Wall Street Journal article on the topic, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz admitted that China’s also a tricky market to navigate. “The thing I am most interested in when I go to China is whether or not local Chinese are buying Starbucks coffee and sitting in our stores,” said Schultz. Its own retreat from the Forbidden City several years ago is emblematic of the uncertainty of making a great success in China.

Read more > Starbucks

Relations between the U.S. and China could be entering the realm of “interesting times,” but McDonald’s seems undaunted. The fast-food giant recently announced plans to nearly double the number of Golden Arches locations in that highly coveted market.

It comes as no surprise that American companies yearn for heated expansion in this populous nation. China has more than 1.3 billion people; one in five people on the planet live in China. That’s a lot of people who might want fries with that.

Meanwhile, informal dining out in China is currently a $300 billion opportunity, and it’s expected to increase by 10% this year as the middle class in that country grows.

An aggressive growth target for Chinese restaurants certainly looks like a good idea, given McDonald’s 2010 plans to grow global revenue by 3% to 5%, and profit by 7% to 9%. In fact, China is the company’s fastest-growing market in sales and income.

Read more > China

Multinational firms have rushed to the defence of immigration changes introduced last week, claiming the new rules will “make no difference” to UK employers’ ability to attract overseas talent.

The new rules, which came into effect on 6 April, mean skilled migrant workers transferring from an overseas country to work at their company’s British offices will no longer be able to clock up time spent in the UK to contribute towards the five years required to apply for permanent residence.

Employment lawyers and migrant campaign groups had warned the changes to the intra-company transfer (ICT) system could cause a skills exodus and put migrants off working in the UK.

Read more > Immigration

Press Release

7th April 2010, Dubai, UAE: The recent coverage given to the convicted “kissers of Dubai” has again brought the tensions between a traditional Arab culture and European norms to the surface. Despite the media backlash, the translation agency Kwintessential Arabia has applauded the courts’ decision, stating it is the responsibility of visitors to educate themselves of the local customs and not vice-versa.

In November 2009 local police in Dubai arrested a 24 year old expatriate and a 25 year old tourist after receiving a complaint from a local woman that the couple were kissing in a restaurant. The courts recently found them guilty of committing an offense and were subsequently sentenced to one month in jail, a $300 fine for consuming alcohol and eventual deportation.

“This is one in a long line of examples coming out of Dubai,” explains Kwintessential Arabia’s Director, Asif Afzal. “The media pick up on them and present them as a case of injustice. In truth, people should just be a bit more culturally aware when they come to an Arab or Muslim country. By appreciating some simple dos and don’ts you avoid these types of incidences.” Afzal maintains that the courts’ decision to apply a penalty is wholly justified. His belief is that a host country cannot be held responsible for its visitors’ ignorance to local cultural norms and laws.

Launched in 2010, Kwintessential Arabia are a Dubai based communications agency. Specialising in translation, interpreting, graphic design and multilingual conferences the agency also provides cultural awareness training. This involves teaching people about other cultures, whether on a social or business level. The aim of such training is to help expose participants to what other cultures believe, think and do in order to create a better platform of understanding. “We mainly deal with businesses and their personnel. We offer training on numerous topics. For example, it could be someone who wants to understand how to negotiate with the Chinese, man-manage a team of Indians or how to build relationships with Arab clients,” explains Afzal.

One area receiving increased demand is from local companies wanting to offer their inbound employees an appreciation of what life is like in the emirate and especially what the local customs demand. Dubai based company Elevation Technology Solutions recently commissioned Kwintessential Arabia will providing training for their new Sales and Marketing Manager who moved from the UK. “We decided we needed to invest in this sort of training,” explains the company’s Vice-President Kamran Hussain. “The training gave our manager a great insight into his new life and what to be aware of. As a result we are confident he will fit in well, adapt to life in Dubai and avoid the mistakes we keep reading about in the newspapers”.

Kwintessential Arabia believe that the business community is now taking the use of such training seriously. However, the tourism industry lags behind due to the lack of clarity over whose responsibility such information dissemination would fall under.

About Kwintessential Arabia

Established in the UK in 2003, Kwintessential has grown to now boast offices in the USA, Argentina, South Africa, Germany and now the UAE. The company provides support to businesses needing to communicate across cultural and linguistic barriers through translation services, interpreters, multilingual web design and graphic design.

Website: www.kwintessential.ae

Tel: +971 4 3326914

So, you think you’ve got a bargain. Where legal translation services are concerned, you may well be eating your words when later, you find yourself in a mess. Legal translation services vary depending upon what they offer. Legal matters are a minefield of small print and jargon. Even in your source language it is often difficult to comprehend the finer detail or the terminology. It is a complex field and legal systems vary quite significantly throughout the world. It is therefore essential that when shopping around for legal translation services you do not operate on the principle that you must search for the cheapest. The bargain basement in unlikely to include good effective legal translation in its services that meets your specific requirements.
From government departments to business trade in the global market, legal translation is going to be paramount to any communication, so choose your legal translation services wisely so as not to have any regrets later. All business dealings will require huge amounts of paper work, legal documentation, certificates and contracts so that a full understanding and knowledge of the target language must of necessity require expertise where the legal translation is concerned. Good and effective legal translation services should have the necessary expertise and be able to translate your needs into the target area for the legal translation. Every country has its own rules and regulatory issues regarding legal matters and the right legal translation services will understand this and relate it to you for your own understanding.
Where contracts are being set up between companies worldwide there will be a morass of paperwork with detailed small print to get through. Unless you have the appropriate legal translation services to help you through this, you will have created a huge headache, not to mention a possible loss of revenue and loss of faith. Everyone knows that the small print is often the most important part of the deal. Legal translation services are paid to scrutinize these areas, so don’t stint of the expense of getting the right services in the first place. When you are dealing with other countries nothing is more important getting the legal translation right. Huge mistakes can be made if even a small mistake goes unnoticed.

If a legal translation service is doing a good effective job they will have within their resources, people competent in specialized areas such as the translation of  medical matters involving certification, consent forms etc, mortgage deeds, property transactions, tax matters, all of them requiring expert legal knowledge.

In addition to the above issues, good legal translation services will have the expert technical knowledge so essential in worldwide web communication.

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