The launch of Siri, the “Intelligent Personal Assistant” for the iPhone 4S, has been greeted with all the hype you’d expect from Apple’s latest development. What is more surprising is the faux pas that Apple has managed to commit in naming this new app.
“Siri” sounds similar to the Japanese word for buttocks (”shiri”), perhaps this helps to explain some of the ‘attitude’ that comes from it…
What’s more, it has come to our attention that Siri also means “penis” in Georgian! While this may not be one of the countries Apple intends to target with this new app, it’s quite an oversight to make.
What is incredible is that a multi-national corporation like Apple, established in over 90 countries worldwide, and that spends billions of dollars in product development every year, chose to cut corners on something so important as international branding. It’s a shame no-one offers a service to check brand names for their suitability in an international market…oh, wait a minute….
Siri is currently available in 14 languages, including Japanese - let’s hope they didn’t use the same provider for the app localisation as they did for the brand name!
On a serious note, this episode just goes to show that even the most experienced corporates don’t always get it right. Learn from Apple’s embarassing lesson and research your brand names before you launch your company or product internationally - Apple have built a reputation that allows them to call their products names that may sound silly at first, but in the long run they tend to get away with it (remember the comparisons that were made between the iPad and feminine hygiene products?). Unfortunately, most companies are not so lucky.
If you need help with your international online product launch, or iPhone app, please contact us: sales[at]web-translations[dot]co[dot]uk, T: +44 (0) 113 8150460.
Translation memory is a type of software that stores a unit or “segment” of a source language together with its translated equivalent in the target language.
This is useful for several reasons. Firstly, it improves the consistency of translated documents, as once a segment of text is stored in the memory, the translator will be prompted to use it wherever it appears in a file. Secondly, where text is repeated in a document, the client does not need to pay for the sentence to be translated twice. Thirdly, it makes the process more efficient, so translations take less time.
Other useful feature common to most types of translation memory software are:
Ability to analyse many different file types to get a wordcount
Protection of code in web files such as HTML so that strings are not damaged in the translation process
Displays all text within a file, so that nothing is missed out of the translation
Machine-aided translation is one of those things people love to hate. Despite the best efforts of enthusiasts like myself, the majority of computer users still believe that machines are useless translators.
The whole area of machine translation has a terrible image problem. There are endless jokes and “true” stories about computer translation failures. Some of these are very funny (like the machine that apparently translated the English saying “out of sight, out of mind” into “invisible idiot” in Russian). However with a little crowdsourcing help, I suspect the machines may have the last laugh. (more…)
We regularly use the term “to google”, using it as a verb to replace “to search for online” and the vast majority of people understand what it means. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we will use the search engine Google, we may use another - Bing or Yahoo for example. In fact, according to a BBC article, “Bing’s US searches rose to 14 percent in May from 12 percent at the end of 2010″. However, despite the competition, as reported in an article published in 2007, a study found that on average 90 million unique visitors use Google each day. (more…)
Piracy is a worldwide concern, yet interestingly; there is no true universal meaning of “copyrighted material.” Each country has its own separate laws to protect or release media and software to the public. Many countries have strict laws against piracy that provide artists and developers with the legal ability to prosecute those who pirate their material. However not all governments have incentive to protect copyrighted materials, which can cause problems for the country itself and for those with stricter regulations. Thus, while you don’t need a criminal justice degree to understand them, exploring some of the measures being taken to prevent international piracy requires a brief explanation of the difficulties in dealing with unequal copyright laws.
Daniel Rajkumar of Web-Translations and Altug Inci of The Related Group discuss their partnership, the latest innovations in technology, and the international trade opportunities available in Turkey.
The Related Group is a digital marketing company based in Turkey aimed at businesses who need to apply technology in the most up-to-date and innovative ways.
The company is composed of several brands:
euro.message, the flagship brand, primarily offers a comprehensive email and mobile marketing system; Made by Cats, a digital agency specialising in website projects for blue-chip and corporate clients; Brandmail provides database marketing services; The Related also represents Omniture analytics and optimisation services in Turkey.
Web-Translations has partnered with The Related Group to offer an extended portfolio of services to all our clients.
For more information on multilingual email marketing campaigns and managing international digital marketing, please email sales[at]web-translations.co.uk or call +44 (0) 113 8150460.
In this video, Daniel Rajkumar presents the case study of the South African Airways website localisation project delivered by Web-Translations.
South African Airways chose to use OpenCms as the content management system for their multilingual flight booking site. This video outlines the project, challenges that were faced and the fantastic results that were achieved.
A few customers have recently asked me if they should host their multilingual sites locally for the market they are targeting, while others with locally hosted sites have asked me about the implications of moving to the cloud.
Reading between the lines, the premise of such questions tends to centre around SEO and so my post is somewhat more marketing-oriented than IT. All comments are welcome.
Highlights of Daniel Rajkumar’s presentation of the South African Airways website localisation case study delivered by Web-Translations at Internet World.
For more infomation about website localisation, or to obtain a copy of the slides from Daniel’s presentation, please email: sales[at]web-translations.co.uk.
