Posted by Alex on February 17, 2010 under Blog News | 
The GALA conference on translation and localization is around the corner. This conference hosted by the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) will take place during the 10th-12th of May 2010 and aims at promoting communication as an indispensable component of a global business strategy.
GALA intends to bring together a community of professionals who provide content for the global marketplace. They claim to have created a program for translators and interpreters including practical information on building a global content strategy to serve local customers worldwide as well as new ideas for helping language service providers build their businesses. Read more of this article »
Posted by Mike on December 7, 2009 under Translation News |
We’ve blogged about video game translation a few times in the past, and the subject is in the news again today this week after the release of the already-highly-controversial game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Whereas most of the controversy in the West stems from the game’s politics (which involve the potential for the player to take part in organized terrorism), in the East the source of the controversy is the fans themselves, who are upset at the purportedly poor localization of the game.
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Posted by Mike on September 28, 2009 under Translation, Translation News |
Video games, more than any other form of media, are famous–infamous, really!–for their poor translations.
The extent of the problem has actually made some of the mistranslations iconic. Who could forget gems such as: “I am Error” from Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link; “You spoony bard” from Final Fantasy IV; and of course, the ubiquitous “All your base are belong to us” from Zero Wing?
Times have changed, though, and as games become more sophisticated, gamers are less willing to overlook mistranslations in modern games…
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Posted by Mike on September 10, 2009 under Translation |
The internet has made it possible to expand a business almost infinitely–certainly easier to stretch farther around the globe than ever in the past, at least. Unfortunately, a side-effect is that it’s also even easier to make embarrassing (and PR- and profit-damaging) gaffes when messages get “lost in translation.”
Localizing your business for different regions around the globe is more important than ever, and extreme caution must be undertaken when reaching out to foreign markets; after all, words and phrases can take on dangerously different connotations from culture to culture. Pam Baker of E-Commerce News, for example, recently described an amusing incident involving a poorly-executed localization of a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream product…
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