One Hour Translation Blog

Though translation services and interpretation are commonly used words found in all dictionaries, there are several misconceptions about the skills required and the nature of the job. Often they are loosely used interchangeably to mean one and the same thing while in practice they are quite different. This article tries to clarify the two terms for the layman.

The basic difference between translation and interpretation is that the former is a written task while the latter is an oral task. Translation involves changing a written text from a source language to a target language. Interpretation … Continue Reading

As the world becomes increasingly more connected at all levels, various entities (political, business, cultural, etc.) recognize the importance of capable human translation services.  Having access to very basic information is sometimes just not enough to conduct cross-border or cross-cultural exchange.  Rudimentary or machine-driven translation cannot give the necessary nuance.

Of course, the demand for human translation has also led to a rise in the supply of translation service providers.  Not all of these cultural bridge-builders are professionally trained.  For a highly informal example, a person who has grown up with parents who run an inn for foreigners … Continue Reading

Technical documents today travel between countries and continents due to the out sourcing phenomena. Medical prescriptions or legal transcripts written in Europe or America are read and worked on in Asia or South America. With differing languages everywhere, documents tend to be written in different languages as well. Hence when a document written in Germany in German, needs to be read by a person in India or there may be a service provider who has prepared a technical write up for a client in his native language or … Continue Reading

Want to grow your small business into a huge one?? A simple solution to all your problems is breaking linguistic barriers. If you break all the linguistic barriers and launch your prospects into varied languages of the world through the tool of translation, you can definitely bring your business on to international fore front and thus make it popular. Already, not many people have taken this step yet to internationalize their business as many of them really don’t understand the importance of translation when it comes to international markets. Just suppose, if a hardcore German buyer has a look at … Continue Reading

Many people underestimate the art of translation, and they usually aren’t the ones involved in the industry in the first place; that is, they’re neither a part of freelance translation services nor professional translation agencies offering both machine and human translation features. More often than not, they have no idea how the translation process really works.

To those critics and companies who take the art and science of translation far too lightly, they need to realize that it’s an intricate practice and viable business that should be given its due respect so that … Continue Reading

Every language poses its respective quirks, idiosyncrasies, and difficulties to translators whenever they’re being translated into another language. On that note, the Chinese language can present itself to be quite a nightmare to any professional translation company or solo translation service. As such, there have been deficiencies and failures in the way human translation firms handle Chinese translation that’s rooted from lack of awareness of the significance of context.

More to the point, in order to be able to translate context, a professional translation service needs to have a firm grasp … Continue Reading

Whenever people try to express themselves across a language barrier, it usually goes terribly, awfully, and hilariously wrong. Even supposedly professional translations from honest-to-goodness translators get victimized by this phenomenon. Gaffes, blunders, and double entendres tend to happen because—let’s face it—no translation service on the planet is perfect. Work made via human translation may come out like machine translation with a simple slipup or a minute of negligence. These types of instances are so well-known that there isn’t really a need to cite an example.

At any rate, professional translation companies and individual translation services are no … Continue Reading

Even though many contend that their particular tongue is better than another when it comes to the subject of international diplomacy-with criteria ranging from clarity, flexibility, expressiveness, and eloquence-the fact of the matter is that many languages over the centuries have taken the role of diplomatic linguistics.

Diplomatic languages have come in many flavors such as English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, Latin, Medieval Greek, Literary Chinese, and Acadian. Looking for semantic or linguistic reasons why one language is most appropriate for diplomatic relations is at best an exercise in futility.

Diplomatic Translators

Actually, based on the history of … Continue Reading