Category: Translator Talk

This is the second of a two-part post (Part 1) written by Thaís Castanheira, a myGengo Senior Translator in the English to Brazilian Portuguese language pair. Learn more about Thais by checking out her translation website.   A Successfully Localized Game With the huge amount of games being released daily and the fierce competition for the next big hit increasing rapidly, the localization process is in many cases, unfortunately, becoming more about speed and output and less about quality and consistency. In many instances, translators simply don’t have enough time to study th... ›Read more

We don't know if you've heard the news, but myGengo has been growing quite rapidly. From acquiring more office space, introducing new languages and hiring new staff, we've tripled our size over the past year. We'll be introducing some of our newest team members over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned. We hope you'll join us in welcoming Natalia Manidis, who joined last week as our new Translator Community Manager. Natalia hails from Australia, where she worked with Oxfam as a coordinator for Straight Talk, before traveling throughout Central and North America for six months.... ›Read more

This is the second section of a two-part series in which we discuss the benefits of having a Japanese mascot and how to create your own. The first part was published last week and is here. Last week, we discussed how mascots can help to promote a brand’s image in Japan and how they can be used to build a better relationship with your customers and clients. However, in order to start doing that, you’ll need to bunch together some cute pixels first. If you’re at a bit of a loss about what a good mascot should look like, don’t worry — that’s what we're here to help with. Putting t... ›Read more

Have you seen a mascot today? If you’re in Japan, chances are you have — be it the SUICA penguin and PASMO robot (pictured left) or the Softbank dog, you’re surrounded by them, because they're everywhere. In front of stores, on bus seats, on your food packaging. But why does every company seem to have one?  Some, like Matt Alt, the co-author of Hello, Please! Very Super Helpful Characters from Japan, theorize that the abundance of cute characters (kawaii-kyarakutaa) in Japan has to do with the country's roots: "Mascots in Japan, particularly anthropomorphic ones (products with... ›Read more

So you’re looking to internationalize, but you don’t have the money to employ an entire translation agency to serve your every whim — and let’s not even talk about finding the time to walk these new translators through how to use your site. So what do you do? You’ve got a few options. You could cut corners elsewhere, you could fundraise, you could go without localizing (not the best idea)... or you could reach out to your very own community, the people who use your system, love it and, best of all, are familiar with it. As we mentioned in our “How to Translate Your Site for Free”... ›Read more

Here at myGengo, we've been working on rolling out new features to make the translation experience more enjoyable for our translators. We'd like to announce our newest addition, a referral program to recruit English > Portuguese-Brazilian translators. You don't have to be a Portuguese-Brazilian translator to participate, and this is just a test run, so keep an eye out for your language in the future. Introduce a New Translator Got Portuguese-Brazilian translator friends? Tell them about myGengo, and if they sign up and pass the Standard test, you’ll earn $15! It’s pretty simp... ›Read more

For translators without a technical background, dealing with HTML tags within source texts can be tricky. Knowing a few of the basics can help to eliminate mistakes almost entirely, so we thought we'd post a quick tutorial. I'll explain both the basics of translating a source text that has HTML tags as well as give a quick overview of the technical solutions we are working on to make dealing with HTML easier, and to prevent these mistakes from happening. What is HTML? For those new to HTML, HTML is a language used to describe a website to your web browser. It consists of a se... ›Read more

What’s in a name? If you’re in China — the world’s second largest economy — a lot. In a country where each character carries its own unique meaning, the characters used to transliterate a company’s name can make or break it. In order for an international company to successfully break into the competitive Chinese market, the characters they trademark must follow a few rules. Allan Max, one of our Chinese Senior Translators, ranked them: 1. The name should sound similar to the brand’s English name.  2. It should be easily remembered and easy for Chinese people to pronounce. ... ›Read more

We may like language, but we love seeing people go global with their products, be it a mobile app or a newly translated website. So when we heard that TripLingo had begun offering Dari — a Persian dialect spoken in Afghanistan — as one of the many options available for their popular language-learning app, we were pretty happy. After all, it's hard not to be impressed by a company that has taken advantage of rapidly developing mobile technology to help the greater good.  An August 10 CNN article has the scoop... According to the article, the language-learning mobile app creator... ›Read more

We’ve been highlighting some of the customers we’ve helped go global with our translation services. For part three of this mini-series, we’ll be focusing on Evernote, a incredibly portable note-taking application that works with and syncs to pretty much every platform imaginable.  Installing the program was easy: I just had to download, sign up and then I was ready to go. With its simple but well-executed concept and a plethora of apps built specifically to highlight this note-taking program's best features, it's no surprise that Evernote has been so successful.  So when the aw... ›Read more