Translators and Project Managers (PMs) are just like fish and chips: one won’t go without the other. Here’s a short guide on how to enjoy this recipe without giving yourself indigestion!

Rather than writing about what freelancers love or hate (or a similar rant from the Project Manager’s perspective), it’s possibly more useful for everybody to know what elements link translators and agencies together so tightly, and how they can work better together. (more…)

Vogue Italia has been widely criticised for the feature it ran on its blog this Monday, a piece entitled “Slave Earrings” that has since been removed.

The post read: “Jewellery has always flirted with circular shapes, especially for use in making earrings. The most classic models are the slave and creole styles in gold hoops.”

It continued: “If the name brings to the mind the decorative traditions of the women of colour who were brought to the southern United States during the slave trade, the latest interpretation is pure freedom. Colored stones, symbolic pendants and multiple spheres. And the evolution goes on.” (more…)

According to research carried out last year by Visit Britain, “foreign tourists spend £2.3 billion a year watching and playing sport”.  Unsurprisingly, football is the main sporting attraction in Britain, with matches throughout the country attracting 1.2 million foreign visitors in 2008 (the most recent year with complete figures).  A percentage of these were from English-speaking countries: 267,000 were Irish, 95,000 were American and 55,000 Australian.  However, a large number of these spectators were from non-English speaking countries: 88,000 Germans, 86,000 Norwegians, 75,000 Spanish, 65,000 Italians, 52,000 Dutch, 46,000 French and 39,000 Swedes. (more…)

Register free online (a saving of £30) for Internet World (10-12 May, Earl’s Court - London) and come and hear about the success we’ve brought to South African Airways by localising their website.

Our Managing Director Daniel will be presenting our case study of the South African Airways website localisation project at 15:00 on Wednesday 11th May in the Content Management Theatre.

We’ll also be on stand E3055, showcasing recent client success stories and demonstrating how localising your website can dramtically improve your bottom line.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Google has confirmed that it will machine translate patents into more than 29 languages, using the Google Translate interface.

On 30th November, an agreement was reached between Google and the European Patent Office (EPO), in order to facilitate the understanding of patents throughout the world.

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“Only a couple of weeks after the relaunch of our website, we achieved our highest revenue ever from online sales! I’d expected it to take longer to achieve results, so am really impressed with the outcome.”

Benjamin Schubert, E-Commerce Project Manager – South African Airways

“Price & speed of service are key factors in our choice of translation provider. Web-Translations was recommended to us, and the team has been brilliant at handling our requests, which are often urgent and needed at short-notice. I’d definitely recommend Web-Translations to other companies who need this level of service.”

Katherine Raderecht, Future Publishing Group

“The results of localizing the key pages into 11 languages have been excellent; the traffic to the French, German and Dutch has been especially good and equates to a cost of 2p per visitor
- that’s fantastic value compared to pay-per-click advertising in a competitive industry like ours!
Web-Translations definitely go the extra mile - we’ll be working with them again to expand the multilingual sites.”

Glenn Garrett, Partner - Quiet PC

“We’ve used Web-Translations for several years, and are really pleased with the outstanding level of customer service we receive.

The Pay-as-you-go arrangement works really well for us, as it makes the process quick and efficient while saving us money as well. The end result is that our promotional literature is now accessible to many more people.”

Niall Hawkins, Marketing Executive - Emerald Insight Publishing

“We were unsure of the best way to present translations of key information on our website - we’d always used PDFs before.
The Wéb-Tränslatiôns team was very knowledgeable - I was impressed by the way they talked me through what was best for us and how their International Blast service could achieve this.”
Paul Hutton, Web Editor – ZSL (London Zoo)