One Hour Translation Blog

The story of evolution of English as a dominant international language is an interesting one. The internationalization of the English language has not happened overnight but is a product of development of the language over many centuries. English language is West Germanic in origin having been brought to Britain by Germanic invaders in pre Christian era.

Old English is said have been a collection of diverse dialects spoken by the Anglo Saxon kingdoms of England. The English language has undergone several linguistic shifts due to many invasions of England notably by the Scandinavians and the Normans. The influence on the language … Continue Reading

The primary language used in trade and commerce worldwide has varied over time as well as geography. Latin and Greek in Europe, Chinese in parts of Asia, Sanskrit in the Indian subcontinent, Persian in Islamic countries of Asia and Africa and so on have been the dominant language for some time or the other over the years. More recently in the 19th century, French was the language of diplomacy and was used in royal courts of Germany, Russia, and Italy besides France and French colonies in Africa.

Over the last century or so, English has become the dominant language of business … Continue Reading

The languages of European Union are the languages used by the populace within the member territories of European Union. These include the twenty-three representative languages of European Union in conjunction with an assortment of others. The European Union asserts that it is in good turn of linguistic diversity & at present has a European Official for Multilingualism.

In European Union, the language policy is responsibility of member territories and European Union does not have common language policy; its institutions play a sustaining role in this discipline, based on the “dogma of subsidiarity”. Their function is to promote collaboration between the member … Continue Reading

The arrival of globalization conveyed with it superior communication technologies, which have revolutionized our every day lives, cultures, & the way trade is carried out. As the world turns out to be smaller & as more trade is done on a worldwide scale, English Translation are more & more becoming a crucial asset for companies who wish to enlarge their operations to a variety of overseas provinces. The most vital part of any contemporary business plan is to believe on a worldwide scale, without misplacing touch with the restricted market. On the other hand, by going … Continue Reading

The need for translation has existed since time immemorial and translating important literary works from one language into others has contributed significantly to the development of world culture. Ideas and forms of one culture have constantly moved and got assimilated into other cultures through the works of translators. The history of translation is related to the history of the often invisible cross cultural interactions of the world.

Ideas and concepts from the East notably India, China and Iraq have influenced the Western culture since as early as sixth century B.C. when trade ties were first established between … Continue Reading

The importance of proper translation by professionals assumes great importance when dealing with languages like English and Chinese which are poles apart in their structure, grammar, phonetics, syntax etc.

As far as pronunciation is concerned, the Chinese is a tonal language as compared to English which is a stress based language. The English as spoken by the Chinese is often unintelligible to foreigners because of stress on the wrong syllable, wrong intonation etc.

Many Chinese people knowing both English and Chinese languages still think in Chinese but speak or write in English. This has resulted in the evolving … Continue Reading

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not language or culture that’s keeping businesses from going international with the help of the worldwide web. Instead, it’s the task of choosing which professional translation firm is best suited for a given job that’s serving as the main hindrance to their plans of branching out. Finding out the qualifications of a human translation expert should be a company’s top priority, in fact. Knowing that the capabilities and qualifications of the people handling your translation work are up to par is quite important, because anything less could prove … Continue Reading

If you’re a newly graduated translator-to-be, then you have a lot to look forward to—namely, working in a professional translation agency complete with fully experienced human translation experts and machine translation assistants or setting up your own freelance translation service at the comfort of your own home via the magic of the worldwide web.

Of course, nothing is that simple in life, and you’ll have to exert a lot of effort in order to break into this line of work. Once you do though, it’s well worth the wait, struggles, and difficulties. As such, here are several … Continue Reading

Globalization has a simple meaning, but many interpretations. In order to not get lost in the muck of politics and intrigue, this article will focus more on just one or two aspects of the term. For instance, one key feature of globalization is that it should never be considered all-encompassing.

Globalization is best taken in limited doses, such that it should refer to some countries instead of all world nations, or some languages instead of all global dialects. It’s simply more practical that way, what with the sheer number of countries to consider and languages to translate (about 6,000 languages strong). … Continue Reading

Many marketers contact us asking for Chinese translations for their collaterals, brochures etc. When we ask them questions like:

1. Which Chinese dialect?
2. What type of characters?
3. Where exactly your recipients live in China?

they are a bit surprised, and don’t know the answers.

A few (interesting) tips that can help:

1. The Chinese translator must be a native speaker of the specific Chinese dialect you’re interested in. For instance, Mandarin and Cantonese as different as French and German. Although many Mandarin translators are also familiar with Cantonese, they cannot be good translators in … Continue Reading