TSM Translation Blog

Last week a friend of mine sent me a screenshot of a newspaper article. The  author wrote about a translation where the texts in the source language (French) and target language (Dutch) were quite different.  The French version described a lot of details whereas the Dutch translator decided to get straight to the point by only translating maybe one third of the original text. The last sentence of the article stated: “It seems the point of view of what is important, differs for both parties.” This really got me thinking. Does it mean that when someone translates, they adapt the text to their way of seeing things? Does their lifestyle have an influence on a translation?   If you were to ask me this question, I’d probably answer yes to both questions. To me translation is an art. When translating, you start by reading the source text. Getting familiar with the ideas, the feelings among other things the author wants to get across. You nee...

    It is one of the biggest challenges for a translator to overcome. You’re reading a text for the first time and all of a sudden, a character starts talking with a strong Scottish accent and you don’t know what to do. Or sometimes, the entire text you’ve been sent is written in a specific dialect and you can’t see any equivalent in your own language. Most translators choose to solve these issues by using the standardized version of their language. But isn’t something lost in the process somehow? Language surely conveys meaning, but does that mean it's optional to translate the meaning conveyed by linguistic variations? Dialects   “ If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language that goes to his heart. ” (Nelson Mandela) Many companies believe that focusing on the language they use can make a big difference in the way they are perceived by their customers. Some are even start...

Machine translation (MT) engines like Google Translate used to be considered incapable of producing even a decent translation, let alone a good one. People thought that machines would never be able to replace humans for that task, because every translation is unique and a brain is needed to make the decisions, to choose which word to use. Still, a lot of progress have been made in that field (and I am not even talking about AI), with the use of corpus statistical and neural techniques. MT engines are not yet able to produce a decent translation of a long, complex text, but using it can give you an idea of the content of a text. A concept closely linked to MT in the field of translation is post-editing (associated sometimes with pre-editing). It involves both machine and human translators, and is allegedly less time-consuming than classic, human translation. In post-editing, a human translator (the post-editor) corrects the translation produced instantly by the machine. The time...

The aim of this post is to provide a glimpse into video game localisation, a very recent specialised field of translation that has led to the laying down of whole new kinds of translation practices and terminology. The video game industry has grown exponentially since developers started commercialising games in the early 1970’s. The surging popularity of those products worldwide has resulted in their distribution at a large-scale as mass-consumption products and media through game publishing companies. The US market alone now generates more than $30.4 billion in revenue [1] . More attention has been paid to game localisation which is now fully encompassed in digital entertainment companies’ strategies. Most games are developed in English and Japanese as the US, Europe and Japan are home to nearly all of the biggest video game design companies. https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings Broad definition Game localisation is an umbrella term covering a wide range of tasks that g...