Your marketing team has just produced a beautifully designed, first-class sell sheet to send to your customer base. It has the perfect images, the perfect captions, and the perfect message — all in English. The one thing you didn’t think about — your global audience. How many prospective customers will never see your message because you’ve failed to translate the content?

Global Brands Need to Speak Global Languages

Simply put, your business has sold its products and services effectively in the U.S. Now, you are expanding your geographic boundaries. However, none of your sales or marketing materials are ready for this global audience. Fully translated documents are not a nice-to-have; they are a must-have to expand globally. Ensuring a good customer experience is essential in today’s economic climate. Properly translated materials help achieve this goal. But, there is more to this work than meets the eye. First, what do we mean by “proper?”

Proper translation means:

• translating your documents accurately while addressing the nuances of each culture
• ensuring that brand integrity and voice are maintained throughout the document
• editing all embedded images with appropriate translation

Working with a company that can not only properly translate your copy and embedded images but also has experts on staff to recreate your documents (as initially designed) helps your brand reach new audiences and leads to new sources of revenue.

When you translate your business’ marketing documents, brand images, website and more, you enhance your company’s content strategy to:

1. broaden your global audience,
2. improve the customer experience, and
3. reduce the risks that stem from improperly or non-translated documents

Multilingual Translation Use Cases

Website Translation
Website translation and translation of other online content now represent a significant part of translation services for businesses. Regardless of your company size, there are many benefits of translating copy and embedded images on your website or in social media graphics into multiple languages. Engaging your global visitors with appropriate content opens new doors, keeps non-native visitors on your site longer, and improves SEO and your company’s brand awareness in these languages and countries.

You should also consider translating the following materials into languages other than your native language.

External Documentation

• PowerPoint presentation
• Marketing and advertising (social media graphics, website carousel images, emails, newsletters, videos, tradeshow signage, and displays)
• Brochures and pamphlets
• Thought leadership pieces (white papers, case studies, ebooks)
• Technical documents
• Press releases and other corporate communications
• Catalogs
• Other forms of graphics and visuals where you might use an image with embedded text
• Product descriptions and instructions
• Sales presentations

Internal Documentation

• Employee handbooks and benefits package
• Training manuals
• Internal presentations
• Operations manuals and diagrams
• Sales training materials and presentations

Preparing for Content Translation

Content translation involves taking your content and translating it sensitively and relevantly for a certain region, culture, or audience. This is known as localization. To ensure the best outcome, there are steps you should take prior to engaging a language services partner.

The following process outlines the primary steps to help you prepare your material.

1. Identify and research your target audience(s).
Understand what is expected of your business from prospects in your target regions. This is likely to differ from your domestic target audiences. Additionally, research the cultural nuances of these target audiences. Later in the process, this information ensures that translated content appears appropriately. It’s important to not make assumptions about a culture or language when translating content.

2. Prepare your content based on your research but with subsequent translation in mind.

Here are some points to consider:

• Why are your services a good fit for an audience in a different location?What’s different from your home country that you must keep in mind? How do you want to communicate these messages through visuals and text?
• How can you use your answers from question one to target localized areas, populations, or individual clients? Include these points in your marketing and document translation plans. For example, are there images you’ve selected that would be fine for some cultures but offensive to others? Are you using the appropriate currency symbols, date layouts, etc.?
• Once you start designing, remember that everything will eventually require translation. For this reason, you should leave sufficient white space in graphics for text layout adjustments in the target language (see graphics and text considerations below).
• Choose Unicode fonts that include special characters so the translator can use them when necessary.

The Translation Process

A professional language services company receives your files (in your native language). They will meet with you to ensure they understand your goals and then will get to work. A professional language services company ensures accurate and culturally relevant translations that will retain your original meaning and resonate with your target audience. Often, they will enhance your content by providing additional relevant cultural information to you during this process to improve your messages.

With presentations and any desktop publishing images with embedded content, the language services firm strips out the existing language replaces it with the targeted language, ensuring not just accurate translation, but in the case of images with embedded text, also physical “fit” within the image’s confines. This is particularly important when translating from English, which tends to be a more compact language than others.

Expertise in marketing collateral, desktop publishing and the target language/culture is essential to appropriately arranging content within the confines of the original layout. For example, in one language, one or two words may be all that’s needed to explain a concept, while in another, you’ll need five or more words. In the German language, for example, many nouns are joined to make a very long word! Also, don’t forget that your target language may read right to left and not left to right. This is why enlisting the help of a professional language services organization is critical.

Cultural nuances and translations also affect your document’s original layout or design. Remember that an image may need to be replaced with a more culturally appropriate one.

Why Use Professional Translation Companies?

Given the complex issues related to translating text and graphics while maintaining brand identity and voice, cultural sensitivity, layout and design, using a professional translation company with layout and design expertise makes so much sense. Professional language services companies stake their reputations on the proper translation of native documents. Finding a translation company that also has expertise in layout and design makes your projects run smoothly and more efficiently. These companies work with multilingual content projects every day and do it better and more cost-effectively than you might do by hiring contractors, advertising agencies or relying on bilingual employees.

Design Follows Translation

Due to the reasons cited above, a professional language services company knows that the translation comes first and then the design. They focus on quality translation and correct terminology for your particular business, as well as specific diacritical marks – paying special attention to how numbers and currency, for example, are displayed for the dialect. The company then returns the newly translated and designed file to the client for distribution.

File Formats and Page Layouts for the Translation Process – Working with Translation Experts

Page layouts and graphic design are the starting points for your digital images. Your graphics team has the page layout skills in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Canva and Adobe InDesign software to create your content. These file formats are universally accepted and accessible. However, your team must also remember that translating the embedded text in any image or graphic element is just as important as translating the document text. It’s a best practice to provide the original InDesign file, not a PDF or other non-design format. Your translation team will work within your original design file to embed translated copy. Providing the native graphic files for visuals in addition to your InDesign file is a bonus step you can take to shorten turnaround time.

Why Should Your Business Consider Multilingual Publishing?

You’ve already read how translating content from your native language into multiple languages can increase your global reach and brand awareness. Multilingual publishing capabilities will incrementally improve your brand reach and foster ongoing awareness in countries where you wish to do business, leading to increased leads and repeat customers.

Costs of Doing the Work Yourself

Of course, you can always bring the work in-house, but here are some things to consider:

• Time: How long will it take you to complete multilingual translations of documents yourself accurately
• Resources: Do you have the in-house resources to translate content into multiple languages?
• Budget: How much will it cost to hire in-house resources?
• Brand Embarrassment: Will you miss an essential nuance or concern because your cultural knowledge is incomplete – thereby causing damage to your brand? How do you know you’ve done it correctly?

When considering the potential ramifications of even one of these costs, you can’t risk not having translation done professionally and accurately.

Top Reasons to Hire a Professional Translation Service

1. Investing in a professional translation service sounds like a low-priority expense, but it’s a critical investment in your future. The professional translation team ensures that your message is heard and understood in every content piece, whether in print or online.
2. Increasing your global reach in a customer-friendly way builds your credibility and trust in your brand. An expert language service company will maintain this credibility with meticulous translations.
3. No sales mean no business. Targeting as many ideal customers as possible – in their native languages, sensitively, and in a nuanced, culturally appropriate way, will ultimately pay for itself. This is the purview of translation experts.
4. You and your team are already fully occupied creating your brand, marketing content, and services. A professional translation service will manage the finishing work on your digital and print documents because they understand the nuances of different languages and will meet with you to ensure they understand your industry, and your business goals and objectives.
5. Professional translations improve your turnaround time and speed to market. Because of their proficiency, professional translation service companies actually reduce costs versus doing it yourself. These companies have certified linguists that ensure accurate, efficient translations, plus layout and design experts to bring the newly translated material artfully into the output file.
6. A professional translation provider has the editing skills needed when checking the translated content. As the final task they do for you, a professional service ensures that there are no missing items, formatting errors, incorrect or missing hyperlinks, etc. The result is a perfectly re-created and culturally translated content piece. This allows you to concentrate on running your business.

A Great Investment for Your Business – With Added Benefits

Expertise
Multilingual digital document translation is a technical process requiring software training and design expertise. These professionals offer the best of both technical and layout skills as well as translation skills and language proficiency to provide a well-rounded service offering. They offer efficiency and timeliness in finalizing your documents, allowing you to focus on other business priorities. In business terms, this combined expertise optimizes your investment.

No compromise
A certified professional translator understands the ins and outs of both the technical processes/software and the human side of translation processes. Using a professional service ensures that you’re not compromising any sense of visual or written consistency, or formatting once the translation is complete.

Quality
A professional translation services company will double-check translation accuracy and formatting to ensure that their work has left no information untranslated or misinterpreted. The benefit of working with a professional translation service is quality. You cannot receive the same level of quality using search engines, Google Translate, native speakers, or friends who speak the language!

Translated Materials and Documentation Help Your Business Advance

You’ve spent years honing your brand and go-to-market strategy – now it’s time to expand your reach to engage potential customers geographically. A professional translation service ensures the customer experience in other languages and dialects is accurate – anything less may have negative implications for your business.
In a world where diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are the day’s hot topics, your brand and content must be accessible to those who speak other languages. Engaging a professional translation services company is an investment that repays you in increased brand awareness, customer satisfaction, and long-term ROI.

INGCO International is your home for all your business document translation needs.
Translation work is complex if you want to get it right. Whether you need translation in one or multiple languages, you can trust INGCO’s dedicated team of expert human linguists (Wordologists^SM) to efficiently, and accurately translate and convey your message with the desired emotion that’s both culturally appropriate and on-brand.

We also work in every desktop publishing platform available – Adobe Creative Suite, WordPress, Canva, handwritten notes; you name it!

Global marketing is one of our specialties. We know that marketing and communications starts with a deep understanding of people – their culture, language, norms, and preferences. With that in mind, we’ve engaged some of the best and brightest translators and interpreters in the industry. Our linguistic specialists collectively speak 200+ languages and live in 60 countries across the globe, giving them first-hand experience, insights, and perspectives into the local markets you’re trying to reach.

Our linguists are the heart of the work we do, and they’re supported by innovative translation technology that helps them work efficiently and improves consistency across the work, ensuring timely and accurate translations every time. INGCO International is ISO-certified, so you’ll always receive the highest quality translations.

Ready to get started on seamless translations of your marketing content and documents? Contact us today. We’re looking forward to working with you on your global communication needs.

English may be the world’s lingua franca, but just 26% of all web searches are conducted in the language. That means website localization matters more than ever when you want to launch in a foreign market. Yet in order to get the biggest return on your investment, you’ll need to optimize your pay-per-click (PPC) ads using a method known as transcreation.

 What Is Transcreation?

Simply put, transcreation is the combination of translation and creation. It’s often used in marketing to adapt the message to the target market when a more direct translation wouldn’t work.

For example, take Swiffer’s famous slogan, “When Swiffer’s the one, consider it done.” In order to keep the rhythming couplets in Italian, it was changed to “La polvere non dura, perché Swiffer la cattura.” Directly translated, the Italian version reads, “The dust doesn’t last because Swiffer captured it.”

Now, given the limitations of PPC ads, you can probably already see why transcreation would boost your ROI. But the process typically goes well beyond coming up with a catchy slogan. Below are three other factors that go into a successful PPC translation.

 Multibyte Characters

Character limits make it difficult to write effective PPC ads in English, let alone translate them.  

And while every language presents unique challenges, Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean make writing PPC ads exceptionally difficult. Why? Because they use multi-byte characters.  

Most languages use an alphabet with a limited set of text symbols, punctuation marks, and special characters. When that’s the case, one byte (or unit of information) is enough to represent each symbol. However, some Asian languages use more complex ideographic characters as well as single-byte characters. Translating those texts involves a combination of single-byte and double-byte (or more) characters, which increases your limitations.           

Search Engine Rules

In addition to character limits, search engines prohibit certain words in PPC ads. Using one of these forbidden words will result in an automatic rejection. To make matters worse, the list of words varies by country and language. What works in the U.S. may get your ad rejected in France, for example.

Keywords

Last, but certainly not least, are keywords. By using the right keywords, you boost the odds that the search engine will serve up your ad. But you also need to consider how competitive they are in the target language. If you choose keywords with the highest search volume, your ad may rank lower or you may drive up bid costs. 

And remember to block negative keywords in the target language, too. If you don’t, you may target too broad of an audience, which may lead to overspending.  

The Benefits of Professionally Translated PPC Ads

As you can see, PPC translation requires an in-depth knowledge of the language, target market, and SEO best practices. Fortunately, a professional translator who is well-versed in the PPC space will help you: 

• Rank higher in the search results
• Increase web traffic
• Improve brand credibility
• Increase your campaign’s ROI

Consider it a relatively low-cost way to put the finishing touches on your website localization project.  

How INGCO International Can Help

At INGCO, our international SEO team is well-versed in website localization, SEO translation, multilingual keyword research, and more. We’ll take your vision from concept to completion in over 200 languages—including those tough-to-translate PPC campaigns.

Ready to launch in a new market? Contact us today to get started! 

Did you know that 1.8 billion people purchased goods online in 2018 alone? That same year, global e-retail sales reached $2.8 trillion. If there was ever a time to launch in a new market, it’s now. Yet it takes more than translation to adapt your website for new audiences—it requires localization.

Localization is the processing of adapting a website to the local language, culture, and customs of the target market. Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Research, Research, Research

As with any project, you need to start by doing research. Before you decide to launch in a market, here are a few questions to ask:

• How much demand is there?
• Will it be profitable?
• Which language(s) will you need?
• Are there any legal restrictions?   

By understanding the market and its challenges, you’ll be better prepared to start the localization process.

Step 2: Localize Your Website

After you’ve done your research, it’s time to begin localizing. Depending on the market, that may include changing the website’s:

• Url structure
• Format for dates, numbers, and currencies
• Payment platform
• Data collection and privacy policy
• Design elements such as images, graphics, and colors

While this may sound like a daunting task, a localization company can help you out. In addition to adapting the technical aspects of your website, they’ll translate the content, optimize it for SEO, and launch any digital marketing campaigns.

Step 3: Translate the Content and Optimize for SEO

Next, your localization company will assemble a team to translate your website. The linguists working on your project will:

•  Adapt your messaging to ensure it’s culturally appropriate.
• Conduct keyword research to optimize the content for International SEO.
• Translate content pages, meta data (title tags, meta descriptions, and keywords), pop up notifications, customer portals, and other aspects of the website.

Once the initial translation is complete, another linguist will perform a quality assurance check before the content is uploaded to the website.

Step 4: Perform LQA and Localization Testing

Finally, your localization company will perform language quality assurance (LQA) and localization testing. Linguists will review the content for errors and determine whether the translation is appropriate for the context of the website. Team members will also check for technical issues, test functionality and links, and evaluate the content layout.

Step 5: Launch the Website and Digital Marketing Campaigns

Your new website is ready to launch. It’s time to celebrate, right? Not quite. While localized content and SEO will drive traffic, you still need to develop localized marketing campaigns to get the most from your website. That may include:

• Translating Pay-per-Click (PPC) ads
• Developing a unique content marketing strategy
• Link building

Case Study: Justin’s Nut Butter Website

Now that you know a little more about the localization process, let’s take a look at a real project.

Justin’s, an American brand of nut butters, wanted to expand into foreign markets. Yet products such as peanut butter aren’t as well known outside of the U.S. To tackle this challenge, we needed to not only translate the website content but also determine how to increase demand for Justin’s product.

For the French Canadian website, we:

• Translated certain sections of the website via an API connector.
• Ensured the variety of butters (peanut, almond, etc.) were accurately translated.
• Worked with Justin’s marketing team to create new examples of how to consume the product, e.g., developing recipes to make peanut-based sauces.

The result? A culturally-relevant website that boosted Justin’s popularity in Canada!

Localization with INGCO International

At INGCO International, we can take your localization project from concept to completion. We specialize in corporate translation, international SEO, and digital marketing to help you bring your vision to life.

Ready to launch in a new market? Contact us today!

To successfully engage audiences, you should do it in their preferred language and a great place to start is by offering a multilingual website. We are going to highlight a few of the plugin tools that we offer for website translation projects for two of the more popular website CMS systems. These CMS plugins for multilingual websites aid the website translation process.

WordPress

WordPress, often thought of as the leading content management systems (CMS), is behind 25% of all websites across the internet. The WordPress plugin we utilize is installed directly into your WordPress account so we can easily access all of your pages and posts for translation. The plugin allows us to automatically pull new pages and content for translation, and push them back into the WordPress site for review and publishing.

Drupal

To optimize business results with global audiences and gain market advantage, the choice of target languages is crucial and not always an easy or obvious decision. Once you have a language strategy in place, how you translate your content should be a major focus. At INGCO International we work with a variety of technology solutions to help guide our clients through this decision. CMS plugin‘s can be a great solution for website translation projects. Let us know when you are ready to talk about your next project!

It’s just a translation of your website, easy, right?

Not so quick. Localizing your company’s website is much more than website translation. You could go with Google Translate and offer up your website in 40+ languages, but if you want to really reach your customer, quality language translation and localization is essential.

60% of online shoppers rarely or never buy from English-only websites. Research proves that localized websites are key to gaining global market exposure. Here are some quick tips to make your website translation project successful and pain free.

Whether you’re just starting to think about website translation or already have multilingual website localization experience, here are a few tips to help you go global to go local.

Pick your languages

Did you know there are over 7000 spoken languages across the globe? Likely your customers don’t speak all of those languages, but do you know what languages they do speak? Customers can’t buy what they can’t read so it’s up to you to decide what customers you are going to sell to.

Often times budgets only allow for a language or two to get started – you don’t need to start your website translation project with a bunch of languages at once. Carefully select the languages that best fit your customer and strategically target them.

Create a style guide

Style guides, sometimes called brand guides, must be created to guide the website translation process. The style guide is considered your overall strategy and will help the translation team better understand how you present your products and services to your customers. Translators need to understand how you present yourself to clients so they can appropriately translate messaging and the style guide you create is essential.

Know your brand

Your brand is your brand, regardless of where in the world you are. When you localize your website, it is important to communicate your brand to the translation team so they know how you want to present yourself to the world. Your translation team will lean on your brand knowledge and your style guide to understand the in’s and out’s of who you are.

Key terminology

When in doubt, simplify. Customers will be able to connect with you easier when jokes, slogans and cultural puns are left out. Industry specific terminology is essential to get right, however. Your translation team will appreciate working from a glossary that you create highlighting any terminology specific to your products and services. This glossary should be embedded in your style guide and will help the translation team understand your brand.

Don’t forget images

Images are necessary on every website. The average reader will give your content a 6 second or less attention span and will move on if there aren’t images to help grab their attention. However, images embedded with content need to be translated also during the website translation process. The translation team will need to original source files in order to change the working on the images. Likely you’ll need to work with your design team to get those files.

Also, don’t forget audio and video files

Websites often contain a lot of audio and video files. These multimedia files must also be considered during the website translation process and require either voice over or subtitling. Your translation team will be able to help you decide which method is most appropriate for your target market.

Contact information

Something very simple that is often missed with localized websites is your company’s contact information – phone numbers and physical and email addresses. Be sure to double-check that your telephone numbers and addresses are correct for each of your localized websites and that the right contact person or department is associated with the localized website.

Legalese … read the small print!

Just like languages, each country has its own set of quirks and legalese should not be overlooked. Legalities need to be paid attention to when translating your website – this is no time to forget to read the small print! Some country’s privacy laws don’t allow you to collect visitor data while others don’t allow you to advertise negatively or competitively on your own website. Now is the time to look into the legality avoid potential legal issues.

Coding and other tech stuff

It’s important to check with your website development team to make sure that your website is set up for the global marketplace. Translation will allow your customers to interact with you, but they won’t be able to do so if your website doesn’t work in their corner of the world. Unicode is the universally adopted encoding system and will help remove the need to track encoding when storing, ensure readability, and ease your future translation processes. It’s also a best practice to separate your coding from your translatable text to avoid confusion when translating your website.

Last but not least – get found!

You need to set up your website with the correct search engine optimization settings so that your clients – wherever they are – can easily find you.

Ready to get started? Contact INGCO International’s expert website translation team now!

The global tourism sector amounted in $1.4 trillion in export earnings in 2013, and continues to grow. If you work in the travel, tourism or hospitality industry, you know first hand that this growth is being driven by countries outside of the United States. Customers are more diverse than ever, and expect information presented to them in their language. Translate travel content to reach global tourists like websites, promotional material and digital advertising. Go global by going local, and reach your international target market through professional translation and interpreting services.

Did you know? Travel and tourism is the main source of income for many countries, such as Egypt, Greece, Spain, Malaysia and Thailand, and many island nations, such as The Bahamas, Fiji, Maldives, Philippines, where tourism and travel activities are a vital driving force in creating economic growth and employment.

 

Translating travel content like websites and supporting material is essential when marketing to this powerful tourism group. If you are new to translation, it can seem daunting. There are many details to consider when undertaking a translation project. All successful international communication strategies must start with planning and strategizing for translation and localization. The translator is a mediator between languages and cultures and plays an important role in the achievement of effective communication and understanding for tourists. The translation of tourist texts, such as guides, brochures, menus and posters means that tourists can communicate in, learn about, and get closer to the country they visit. The translation quality directly affects your image and your brand, which is important in tourism marketing and advertising campaigns. The translation must be attractive, direct, appropriate and accurate. Any translation errors lead to lost potential tourists. All tourist-related texts should be professionally translated to attract future tourists. Go global by going local with professional translation and localization services.

Did you know? In 2012, number of Chinese tourists was greater than German and US travelers combined!

 

Go global by going local. The demand for translated and localized content is growing and the urgency to reach your target market is expanding as well. If you’re interested in talking about a solution for your travel and tourism translation and localization needs, please get in touch.

A website conversion is the single most important success factor of your online marketing strategy and goals. Website conversions mean that your visitors – your potential customers – do what you want them to do, be it buy your product, call to register for your course, download a whitepaper, or fill out a form.

Developing a multilingual website requires the same website conversions. High quality translation and localization are essential, but getting your customers to buy your products or services is why you are in business.

Did you know? Search Engine Watch describes multilingual keywords as “the vital link between what people are searching for and what is on your website” and advises those looking to boost their global site’s visibility to employ a translation agency or local professional with cultural insight and language skills to help identify keywords that will resonate with local audiences.

 

1. Invest in target-market Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Successful multilingual website conversions rely on quality keyword research specific to your target market. Keyword searchability is essential so that your ideal customer finds what they are looking for in their native language when searching for your product or service. Have you ever searched for something and the web results show something completely different? Your computer will show you results based on the keywords entered by the person that placed the content onto the internet. The keywords I use to look for a new car are most likely very different than what a car buyer will use in Germany, for example. Target-market SEO researches the keyword your preferred buyer uses to search for your products and services. Keyword-specific searches for your target market are essential for understanding the mindset of your customer and essential for multilingual website conversion success.

2. Follow in-country best practices

Your website is your brand; releasing your brand to the internet opens your company or organization up to the world. You owe it to yourself – and your future clients – to make sure your website, your brand, shines. This is equally as crucial for multilingual websites. You must ensure that your multilingual website follows the same standards and best practices so that your brand shines for your potential customer. Multilingual best practices include:

• Check links
• Check images
• Check downloads
• Check contact forms
• Check browser compatibility

These checks must be done before going live with your multilingual website and also should be completed on an on-going basis. Upholding best-practices ensures that your future clients and customers have a high-quality experience on your website which will lead to increased website conversions.

3. Invest in high-quality translation

First and foremost, you must invest in high-quality translation completed by professional translators. The quality of the content that your future customer reads on your website determines whether or not they will continue reading about you, or move on to the next company. Have you ever opened a webpage that is ridden with spelling errors? I have, and I exit out as quickly as I can. Poor translation is even worse. Not only are there spelling errors, it just doesn’t make sense. The global marketplace is huge and your company faces more competitors than you likely realize; make it easy for your customer to buy but making it easy for they to understand what it is your are selling. Have you ever tried putting shelves together with directions that were clearly not written by a native-English speaker? If you are like me, it’s much easier to toss the directions and figure it out on your own. That’s precisely how a poorly translated website appears to your future clients. It’s easier for them to just leave and find someone else than muddle through the mess. And no, Google Translate will not work. Read more about that here. Investing in high-quality translation is key to multilingual website conversion.

Did you know? Google actually penalizes machine-based translations when it comes to SEO.

 

INGCO International is the leading translation, interpretation and global marketing service provider for 200+ languages worldwide. They are based in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Minnesota and employ leading industry experts for all of their global communication services and work with organizations such as 3M, Cargill, and Buffalo Wild Wings. Reach out for more information.

Today marks our very first “Fact or Fiction Friday”.  Each Friday we will post a trivia question pertaining to language, interpreting, or translation. Today’s trivia question is: In Japan, four (shi) and nine (ku) are considered unlucky numbers. Fact or Fiction? 

In Japan, four (shi) and nine (ku) are considered unlucky numbers.

Fact or Fiction? 

In Japan, four (shi) and nine (ku) are considered unlucky numbers because the words sound the same as those for ‘death’ and ‘pain or worry’. Because of this, some hospitals don’t have room numbers 4, 9, 14, 19 or 42. Forty-two (‘shi-ni’) means ‘to die’, 420 (‘shi-ni-rei’) means ‘a dead spirit’ and 24 (‘ni-shi’) is double death.

Website translation services include:

• Localization of all user interface details and content
• Image recommendations
• Translation of multimedia and downloadable components
• Quality control process

Often we are asked about website translation pricing. While every project is different, here are some of the variables we look at:

• Number of words and pages
• Source (original) and target (language translated into) languages
• Subject matter
• Quantity and make up of images, videos, etc.
• Design, development and publishing platform
• Database
• Content management system (CMS)
• Quality control and testing

The majority of newly developed websites are developed with a content management system (CMS). This allows the website to be designed and updated from a central system and allows different authors to work on the website simultaneously. INGCO International provides website translation services in a variety of CMS systems.

The upload process of the translated content may include any combination of the following:

• INGCO International directly uploads the translated content to the CMS
• The client receives content from INGCO International in an Excel table (XML) format or other format and uploads the translated content
• Use of a 3^rd party or proprietary “connector” between the CMS and a global content management system

Web Site Translation services are required in order for the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 2000 BCE) into Southwest Asian languages of the second millennium BCE.

It all started more than 15 years ago, when Ingrid Christensen had a dream to facilitate communication between people and countries with an entrepreneurial twist – a dream to speak to the world. A creative and business-minded person, and a language lover herself, she established a translation agency based in Saint Paul, Minnesota offering interpreting, translating and global marketing services.

Contact us today.