Tag: "translation"

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

Kenji Yamamoto, the former VP of Apple Japan and our current CRO, wrote an article remembering his experiences with Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, who passed away on October 5. Originally published on Yamamoto's personal website, this is our translation of his post, which originally appeared here. This is the second of two parts — this first part is here. At the time, I was trying to decide whether to accept a job offer to become a COO of a large public company. Unquestionably, this offer was for a prestigious position. It was an excellent B2B company, but on the inside, I simply did n... ›Read more

In between our furious typing and translating, we love to geek out. So what’s on our minds right now? The new Transformers movie, which is coming out tomorrow in Japan. Oh, and language. And how they’re related. Confused? So was I... until I learned that us Tokyoites will be watching Transformers: Darkside Moon while everyone else will be watching Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Okay, so there isn’t too much of a difference, but this tiny problem led us to an even bigger discussion: how to walk the fine line between translating and reinterpreting without losing meaning. Take the... ›Read more

Your mother probably said, “There is no such thing as a stupid question." Whether she was just saying that to make you feel better for always asking stupid questions, or she actually meant it, we still haven’t quite figured that one out. Regardless, if there’s one thing we have learned at myGengo, it’s that you'd better listen to your mother! Translation and language is an area where our translators and customers always have loads of interesting questions. And there are always vibrant opinions about translation topics. This is why we are pleased to offer Questions, the latest f... ›Read more

Who this is for: You might be a mobile app developer, the sole proprietor of a niche webstore, or the CEO of a small internet startup with a shoestring budget. You believe the international market has a lot of potential, but know that people are only likely to buy your product/service if it is in their native language. You might not have near the budget for a translation agency, and with the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of words you would like to translate, you might be unable to pay even myGengo’s Standard rate of $.05/word for all of your translations. But there are still ways that you can get translation of your texts — by levera... ›Read more

myGengo’s translation is really affordable. Or “low-cost”, as we like to call it. Low prices generally call for a dose of healthy skepticism, and we get questions every day about what deficiencies might lie behind such an apparent bargain. So in this post, I’m going to address such concerns once and for all, and explain how we are able provide a competitive service at around a 70% discount compared with ‘old-school’ translation firms. Like all good stories, this one has three parts.   1. Low Overheads At an extreme, the old-school translation firm has a building to house all translators, rooms to meet clients, and supporting staff t... ›Read more

Hey everybody, the myGengo team is excited to announce a new series of blog posts written by our talented team of Senior Translators. Each week, we will be bringing you articles written by experienced translators from around the world working in a variety of language pairs. Articles will be filled with translation tips, insight into the daily life of a freelance translator, and an insider's take on the latest industry developments. It is our hope that this will be a valuable resource for users of translation services (both customers and translators), and we encourage you to join the conversation by commenting on blog posts you find interest... ›Read more

I have met with quite a few of the managers for executive recruitment firms here in Tokyo to explore if there’s room to improve on their current translation process and discuss other ways translation can bring business value. These firms work with a diverse set of clients and candidates whose level of fluency in both Japanese and English vary heavily. Therefore, most of them work hard to extend their web content and marketing material in at least these two languages. Besides localizing the website and keeping the foreign version current, this means managing the translation of the continuous stream of new job postings. Tokyo is obviously a v... ›Read more

Since October 2009, myGengo has been translating celebrity tweets and as of March 2010, we have thousands of followers reading and tweeting about our Twitter Translations. For your convenience, I thought I would take this opportunity to put together a list of our twitter translation accounts so that you can access them readily: @HatoyamaYukio English: @hatoyama_y_en @BarackObama Japanese: @BarackObama_ja @aplusk Japanese: @aplusk_ja @cnnbrk Japanese: @cnnbrk_ja @kazuyo_k English: @kazuyo_k_en @ParisHilton Japanese: @ParisHilton_ja If you happen to follow any of our twitter translation accounts, why not RT... ›Read more

The dream of a universal translator machine is stronger than ever, and the portability and popularity of iPhone/iPod Touch apps are getting people excited about the potential. The upshot is, to put it simply, communication problems or language barriers you may face during an important meeting in China, or trying to understand the diagnosis a doctor wrote down for you in a foreign language won't happen in the future. But, I've got to say, dreams of a machine translator that will accomplish such a task is just that - a dream. Research and development for such a device have been going on for decades and to be realistic (sorry you optimists out... ›Read more