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What’s the Best Way to Raise Awareness?

aiaTranslations

Apr 14, 2014

What’s the Best Way to Raise Awareness?

April is, among other things, IBS Awareness Month. I have to admit, as a longtime sufferer of this disease, it was with a bit of curiosity, and even some pride, that I looked online for my community’s announcement of this important event. With up to 23% of the world’s population afflicted by it, I figured we had a large talent pool to draw from. Surely someone had come up with a clever, memorable, and/or incredibly touching YouTube video or something. But actually, IBS Aware

REAL talk: Why is cultural translation such a challenge?

aiaTranslations

Mar 24, 2014

REAL talk: Why is cultural translation such a challenge?

Here are two facts you may not know about the French: 1. Most French people like McDonald’s. 2. Most French people hate bad grammar. Which is why an exact translation of the slogan “I’m lovin’ it” isn’t used in ad campaigns for McDonald’s in France. Instead, it’s the much more mainstream C’est tout ce que j’aime. (“It’s everything I like.”) Translation isn’t just about knowing how to transcribe words from one language to another: in order to truly get an effective message

The Medical Language Barrier

aiaTranslations

Nov 11, 2013

The Medical Language Barrier

Has the internet influenced the way you take care of yourself? It seems likely. Research from the Pew Internet Project shows that 72% of US internet users surveyed had gone online to get some kind of medical information at least once in the past year. The respondents’ searches motivated many of them to get healthier (56%), ask their doctor new questions or get a second opinion (53%), or consider treatment options (60%). Unfortunately, online health research does have its n

aiaTranslations

Oct 28, 2013

Translating Your Brand

Building a brand is no easy feat. It doesn’t happen overnight and building a successful one takes thought, strategic planning, and time. Your brand is your outward face to the world. It represents who you are. Your audience understands your brand through words and images and it’s easy to assume translation is an even exchange. If you translate words one for one, the image you communicate in English will be the same image you get back in Russian, da? Nope. Though the conte

Businesses Take Heed

aiaTranslations

Sep 23, 2013

Businesses Take Heed

Here’s a little list for those translation buyers out there. 1. It takes more than a translator. Great quality translations are the output of a team and really never from just one person. There are proofreaders and reviewers – a team that is used to working together using established quality controls and procedures. 2. Google Translate is dangerous. Google Translate is fine if you want to get an idea of what a word means, of if you need help figuring out a letter or an ema

Switch Up

aiaTranslations

Apr 15, 2013

Switch Up

Its more than a line from a Black-Eyed Peas song. It’s something most of us do daily whether we are conscious of it or not. Most of us switch up the way we speak to different groups like parents, co-workers and friends. The complexity of words we use at work differs from those we use at a ball game with friends. Is it a phony put-on to change your patterns of speech and vocabulary according to where you are and who you’re with? When I go down south to visit my parents, I i

Calculating for Culture in Global Branding

aiaTranslations

Apr 1, 2013

Calculating for Culture in Global Branding

Creating a Global Brand involves uniquely communicating a powerful message to a variety of audiences across languages, geography, religion and traditions. With no single language linking us all since the Tower of Babel, the trick, and the duty, is to get the message right. Global Branding is a conscious and ever changing process to reach target audiences. Language is a key part of any global communication but not all communication is verbal. As humans, we receive more se

Land of Bounty: Defining Translator Territory

aiaTranslations

Mar 25, 2013

Land of Bounty: Defining Translator Territory

A few months ago, I was introduced to the term “Translation Environment” at a webinar of the American Translators Association on CAT (Computer Assisted Translation) tools. The presenter coined the new notion as a more accurate – and thus preferable – description of the latter, explaining that what these software programs provide is a unique setting geared specifically toward translation, just like Quicken is for bookkeeping and Final Cut is for video editing. His argument was

The Araña Effect

aiaTranslations

Mar 18, 2013

The Araña Effect

As of the last census, there are 50.5 million Hispanics living in the United States and growing. Take that rate of growth and apply it to the Hispanic community’s fair market share of prescription and over the counter medications and you get billions of dollars in sales growth opportunity. To tap into this growing market effectively, you need to reach the best avenue for communicating to this Community. In this case, young Latinas between the ages of 25 and 34 mark the healt

The Wild Life of Words

aiaTranslations

Oct 14, 2012

The Wild Life of Words

Not to personify here, but did you know words are born, die and have mid-life crises? According to a team of statistical physicists, words emerge into a language and are either sustained or driven to extinction. In a March 2012 paper entitled “Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death,” the authors, using Google’s Ngram viewer estimate there are one million words in the English language. Google’s Ngram Viewer is a searchable corpus of

Translating Idioms: Not Quite a Dime a Dozen

aiaTranslations

Oct 7, 2012

Translating Idioms: Not Quite a Dime a Dozen

While they can be dismissed as unimportant parts of speech, idioms add spice and life to a language. They are born from their culture of origin and they differ radically from one language to another. There are different strategies for translating idioms and the care with which your translator uses these strategies can make or break your translation. Inexperienced translators who only consider plugging one expression in for another may fail to transfer the true meaning of th

Going with the Flow

aiaTranslations

Sep 30, 2012

Going with the Flow

Understanding the Workflow of Translation Projects When I was in 7th grade, my small town in Germany celebrated its 750th anniversary, and for this special occasion, our school performed a massive play illustrating the different eras that had come and gone since the town was first founded. To represent the industrial revolution, about 40 of us lined up on stage executing a series of strictly coordinated, repetitive movements in flashing strobe lights (yes, it was the 80s). To

Along for the Ride

aiaTranslations

Jun 15, 2012

Along for the Ride

How to Map Out Successful Routes that Steer Your Translation Projects the Right Way Which question would you respond to positively: “Care to join me?” “Would you like to come with me?” “Can you please come?” Or are they all the same? Translations can be the object of much scrutiny, and sorting out what the proverbial bone of contention may be in individual cases is difficult. Let’s take a look at the process and see if there are any road signs that will help avoid complicated

Beating Stigmas with the Click of Your Mouse

aiaTranslations

Apr 17, 2010

Beating Stigmas with the Click of Your Mouse

According to the American Heritage dictionary (third edition), a stigma is defined as: a mark or token of infamy, disgrace, or reproach; a mark or characteristic indicative of a history of a disease or abnormality. A stigma is something that can affect a person’s physical and mental well-being. It can also prevent someone from acknowledging a health problem or seeking out health care. The word for stigma changes with the language, but the meaning is universal. The idea of

Achieving Compliance in Tough Times

aiaTranslations

Mar 19, 2010

Achieving Compliance in Tough Times

In our current blog post, we discuss how the current economic downturn has increased generic drug purchases both domestically and overseas. In addition to doctors and hospitals receiving increased requests for generic meds, many are seeing another side effect of the economic downturn: decreased patient compliance in populations that can no longer afford care. When forced to choose between food, rent, or heat versus filing prescriptions and paying for doctor appointments, t

Health 2.0 – The Tale of Two Industries

aiaTranslations

Apr 19, 2009

Health 2.0 – The Tale of Two Industries

The internet has become integral to our lives. Introduced to the masses in the mid-90’s, the internet allowed for fast and efficient flow of information over space and time. To stay afloat after the tech bubble burst in 2002, the computing industry had to find new and imaginative ways to combine technology, products and services that would interest consumers. This new way of using the internet is referred to as Web 2.0. Sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter popped up an