If you are thinking about expanding your business abroad, it can be an exciting prospect, with many challenges, one of the most important is being able to market your business in the languages commonly spoken in the countries you are expanding into. You will need to use a professional translation services provider if you are serious about communicating your business presence overseas. Here are some tips to help you prepare the way forward.
Tip#1 Avoid machine translations
In this computer and Internet savvy era, it is not unexpected to encounter businesses that are just setting about expanding overseas using a machine translation system to do their translation for them. This is not a good idea and could backfire on you. Machine translation at the present stage of its evolution is not intended to provide accurate translations and is more of a draft or amateur translation type. Clients and customer that are subjected to machine translated material would think that they are not important.
Tip#2 Check on how the translation agency charges for work
Many translation service providers charge by the word, but some charge by the hour. This makes it a little more difficult to budget for as it is hard to know in advance how long it is going to take for your material to be translated. Make sure you get a quote and ask whether there are any additional charges. Many translators charge extra for jobs done on weekends or public holidays or urgent work.
Tip#3 Check to make sure the translation agency is experienced in your type of work
While it is obvious you will be looking for a translator or agency that is able to translate into the languages you want, you may not be aware of the fact that many translators specialise in certain types of material. Some may be best at legal or medical translations, marketing translations or website translations, technical documents, literary translations and so on. What are you going to translate? Check out a number of different translators to make sure they are familiar with your job specifications.
Tip#4 Larger agencies are often more versatile
While many translators work by themselves, you may find it easier to work with a larger agency. They are more likely to have a translator that matches your specifications and can complete the work when you want it done by, too.
Tip#5 Don’t just look for the cheapest translator
How much a translation project costs is not the best guide to how effective your material is going to be. Translation takes time and good translation is done by good translators. Good translators are more likely to have a better grounding in the target language. If you are looking to translate marketing material, you will need to make sure that this is translated taking into account cultural and legal requirements of your target market.
The Talmud, an important Jewish work, has now been translated into Italian. The massive document translation project is the very first of its kind in 500 years of history of the Talmud.
The Talmud was originally published in Aramaic, a language that predates Hebrew and Arabic and is still spoken by small communities scattered across the Middle East. Aramaic was widely spoken in the parts of the world where Judaism began many centuries ago, but the oral laws of the Jewish religion were not published for a long time because of the persecution of the Jewish people and the subsequent diaspora.
The new translation has been the project of 20 individual researchers, together with 70 translators, in a state funded project in Italy. At the time of writing of this article, the completed volume of the Rosh Hashanah is due to be presented to Italy’s President Mattarella.
The translation services project cost the Italian Government 5 million euros with an Italian software package called Traduco being used to help complete the translation from the original Amharic into Italian and Hebrew.
The project’s chairman was a Rabbi called Riccardo Di Segni, who is the chief rabbi in Rome. Rabbi Di Segni led the team of historians, linguists, researchers and translators after the project, dubbed “Project Talmud,” was initiated five years ago in 2011.
The Traduco software has been specially designed to help translate ancient texts like the Talmud. It allows researchers and document translation experts wherever they are in the world to communicate and exchange valuable information as they tackle complex translation tasks. Rabbi Di Segni said that it was a very new way of working on the Talmud and envisioned that it could be very useful elsewhere on other translation projects.
The completed volume is to be published by an Italian publishing company called La Giuntina, which is a specialist publisher of Jewish literature.
The Talmud is the source of oral Jewish law, which is divided into two main sections: the Mishnah and the Gemara. The Mishnah is the law as it was originally written down from the oral version and the Gemara comprises the additions and commentary on the law by various rabbis down the centuries.
This may be the first time that the Talmud has been translated into Italian, but it can already be accessed online in Hebrew. Some Orthodox Jews will make it one of their daily tasks to read a page at least of the Talmud, a pursuit which is called Daf Yomi in Hebrew, translated into English as “a page a day.” The word “Talmud” actually means “to learn” or “to teach.”
