Posts in category: Blog

Thanks to the stratospheric rise of the internet, the world has never been more connected – and the opportunities for globalisation have never been greater. Online presence is now a prerequisite for most businesses, and is indispensable for any brand that sets its sights beyond local borders.

But while the internet makes it possible to reach potential customers around the world, it also exposes businesses to a much bigger audience, making it critical to get your branding, messaging and user experience right for any market you are targeting.

The importance of localising your online presence

Research has backed up what most of us probably know instinctively – that potential customers are much more likely to buy from a website that’s available in their own language. And while online tools have made it possible for users to automatically translate websites into a language they speak, this isn’t enough if you want to gain customers and win conversions. Not only is the quality of automatic translation generally not high enough to convince potential customers of the quality of your brand, it’s also limited to the purely linguistic elements of a website. If you want to succeed in international markets, it’s critical to consider the broader elements of UX localisation and remove as many barriers as possible in the way of potential customers making purchases. This could include converting currencies, units of measurement, clothes sizes and times and dates for your target locale, as well as localising colours, music, images, symbols and a whole host of other culturally specific features on your website.

Branding and tone of voice

Another aspect of your online presence to consider is your branding strategy. If you’re selling your products or services internationally, it’s important to think about how you’ll create a feeling of consistency with the overall global brand while still making your product feel like it was created in and for the target culture.

Alternatively, some brands opt to retain elements of the culture in which they originated for their perceived value. An example of this is Audi’s highly successful slogan “Vorsprung durch Technik”, used in the UK and USA as well as Germany. Keeping this catchphrase in German means it’s imbued with positive connotations about German efficiency and high-quality engineering.

Another example of the use of a product’s exotic “foreignness” to sell in international markets is the recent advertising campaign for Peroni Nastro Azzurro’s new lager Stile Capri, which centres on the concept “The Taste That Takes You There”. The UK TV advert shows a couple wearing swimsuits and sunglasses and drinking Nastro Azzurro beer on sun loungers in what we first assume to be Italy’s Amalfi Coast, before it becomes clear that they are in fact sitting outside a British garden centre. Italian cultural signifiers, including the product name and the Italian soundtrack, are used to add a sense of glamour and prestige to the product, while the everyday Britishness of the setting encourages viewers to imagine the drink fitting into their daily lives. These examples are a great demonstration of how brands can get it right when it comes to international branding, both online and offline.

SEO

SEO localisation is another crucial part of any internalisation campaign. This involves using keywords to optimise the contents of a website in order to increase traffic via organic search results in a given language or region. When done correctly, SEO localisation can help businesses increase their visibility when potential customers use search engines to look for related terms, increase the amount of time that visitors spend looking at their website and reach customers in a specific region in a more targeted way.

SEO localisation best practices include carrying out careful keyword research to ensure that you capture the most commonly searched terms and best matches for your offering within the target region, ensuring that you translate your website content accordingly, including meta titles, tags and descriptions, and inserting key words in a strategic way.

Social media

When it comes to social media, it’s vitally important to know your target audience and to stay on top of current trends, hashtags and buzzwords while maintaining a consistent and authentic presence. Social media is all about authenticity, community and interactivity, and therefore requires a very different approach from website localisation, for example. In addition to creating content in the language of your target audience, a successful social media strategy will identify a detailed customer avatar for the target segment, carry out careful research into the types of content that this customer is likely to engage with, and then maintain consistent visuals and tone of voice, incorporating local issues, cultural references and trending hashtags in order to build connections with potential and existing customers.

ecls’ expertise

It’s clear that creating an internationally successful online presence is a complex undertaking with a huge number of considerations and nuances. Fortunately, help is at hand. At ecls translations, we have a team of cultural and linguistic experts with detailed knowledge of specific languages, cultures and regions as well as significant experience in localisation.

Examples of areas where we have recently helped businesses expand internationally via their online presence include localising search ads, creating target language social media posts, translating newsletters, email campaigns, blog posts and product descriptions, transcreation services, localisation of landing pages and much more.

As well as translation, localisation and transcreation, we offer a cultural consultancy service provided by native speakers of the relevant target language. As a result, we can help with both upper and lower funnel marketing and support your brand to create an authentic online presence that is consistent with your global brand image, allowing you to reach new potential customers and ultimately boost your international sales.

Let’s secure your success in global markets together.

“Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.”

–Walt Disney

Times are changing, and we’re changing with them…

Our clients’ industries are undergoing a period of rapid change – as is our language services industry, with AI offering new possibilities for customers, translators and project managers alike. Many Language Service Providers are evolving and adding new services to their roster in light of new technologies, opportunities and demands.

As a boutique agency, ecls translations is perfectly placed to anticipate our clients’ requirements and respond to the changing landscape in a dynamic and agile way, and we are continuing to launch new services.

Our work as translation professionals really is unrecognisable from just a few short years ago. See the below table for a summary of our newest services on offer and, more importantly, the range of benefits our clients enjoy.

Transferable skills – technical writing

Our translators have a wealth of training and experience in critical skills including research, writing and adapting texts for our clients’ audiences, as well as subject matter expertise in the fields of technology, automotive and manufacturing. As a team, we are also always eager to seek out opportunities for development, training and growth to anticipate and respond to our clients’ ever-evolving needs.

When an opportunity recently arose to launch a new technical writing service, we jumped at the chance. There are countless affinities between technical translation and technical writing: both involve careful research, terminology management, and transforming sometimes complex information into clear and easily understandable text for target readers. For our client, we were able to use these well-honed skills to help create a knowledge base for customer service advisors at a company offering a corporate reward scheme. This involved absorbing and summarising a huge amount of information in an accessible way to ensure that call centre advisors can find the answers they need in an instant. This helped improve customer satisfaction and also contributed to a huge cost saving, as the knowledge base created has been designed for end customers too to reference and self-train on navigating the system and its multitude of features.

A further service we’re now offering in line with demand is the technical writing of software documentation. We’ve found this isn’t usually a well-loved task among software engineers, which is where our linguistic experts come in. We’re able to take complex concepts and ‘translate’ them into easy-to-understand language for target readers, contributing to greater ease of use and higher user acceptance (before any multilingual translation then comes into play).

Beyond marketing translation

As a team, we have decades of experience as marketing translators, and we are increasingly applying this industry-specific knowledge to other, related areas. This is in line with developments across the language services industry, where specialist marketing translators and agencies are using their industry insights and expertise to offer wider marketing-related services, including the following:

• Multilingual copywriting
• Multilingual SEO research and translation
• Digital marketing and campaign performance management
• Content testing and analysis
• International brand management
• Social media management
• Cultural consulting
• Website localisation and
• Creative strategy.

At ecls translations, we have begun working in several of these areas, including a recent creative strategy and international brand management project that involved using our cultural expertise to evaluate several slogans that our client was considering as part of their expansion to new country-specific markets. Such services are increasingly crucial in a world where getting it wrong can go viral – and not in a good way – costing companies a great deal in terms of both money and reputation. Getting it right, however, with a nuanced understanding of the culture and values of the target market, means setting yourself up for success when breaking into new territories, boosting international sales and winning new clients around the world.

New technologies breed new expertise

One of the biggest factors transforming the face of both the language services and marketing industries and beyond is the stratospheric rise of AI. This has created demand for new skills and services upstream and downstream of the AI output. For example, our team has worked on preparing training data sets for machine learning. This step is crucial to ensuring that AI models are fed with high-quality, accurate input data and thereby optimising their output from the start.

At the other end of the process, human post-editing of generative AI copy is also essential, and counters the risk of AI “hallucinations” – false, inaccurate or illogical results. For the past three years, we have been involved in the post-editing of keywords and Adwords for the world’s largest multi-national technology company, helping their end clients boost global sales. A more recent service we offer involves working as “raters”, which involves assessing AI-generated sentences against one another, highlighting errors and assigning a quality score to help train the system and ultimately improve output.

The outlook

Times are changing, and we’re changing with them. We’ve already been able to help countless clients rise to the challenge of internationalisation with our multifaceted localisation services, while new technologies allow us to streamline our processes and offer an even smoother, faster service for our customers as well as to cater for all types of deadline and budget.

We’re also excited to have joined the Magic Beans Tech Club in August 2024, which brings together representatives from Language Service Providers around the world with the aim of knowledge exchange, sharing best practice and working to stay at the cutting edge of technology to better serve our customers now and in the years to come.

Have you ever launched a marketing campaign in another part of the world only to find it fall flat or not have the desired impact? Chances are your product or service wasn’t localised for the target audience.

Localisation involves adapting content for the cultural and linguistic expectations of a specific target market and, when done right, it balances international brand consistency with local nuance and authenticity to build trust and help target audiences see themselves reflected in your offering. It goes without saying that the impact of this can be huge for your reputation, building relationships and the ultimate global success of your brand.

Read on for more about what localisation is, why it’s important and how we might be able to help thanks to our years of experience – from localising film and TV series titles and software strings, to cultural consultation and global e-commerce projects.

So what exactly is localisation?

Localisation can be broadly defined as “the process of making a product or service more suitable for a particular country, area, etc.” (Cambridge English Dictionary). In other words, localisation is a global marketing strategy that involves adapting content – anything from software to pharmaceutical labelling – for the cultural and linguistic expectations, standards and preferences of a specific target market. In the context of the language industry, localisation therefore often includes translation or adaptation to a different language variant (for example US English rather than UK English) but also goes beyond this to include anything that will help a text, product or service resonate with a target audience and fulfil local requirements.

What does localisation involve?

As well as linguistic aspects such as tone of voice, formality, idioms, slang, jargon, brand names, cultural references, slogans and tag lines, localisation also covers other modes of communication, such as:

• Symbols
• Colours and imagery
• Music or other sounds
• Typesetting and formatting issues
• Social norms and etiquette
• Currency
• Measurements
• Date and time formats
• Number formats
• Legal requirements, and more.

The aim of localisation is to create content that appears as if it was originally a product of the target culture, removing any potential friction that might arise from mismatches between the target audience’s needs, expectations and preferences and the features of the text, product or service.

Why is localisation important?

When expanding into a new market, localisation can help your brand establish a positive reputation and build relationships with potential customers. Equally, if your brand already operates internationally, tailoring your strategy for each locale ensures you get it right with all your market segments, where an overly broad-brush approach would risk alienating some markets, harming your reputation, or even incurring financial or legal penalties if local laws and regulations are not adhered to.

Successful localisation balances international brand consistency with local nuance and authenticity to build trust and help target audiences see themselves reflected in your offering, ultimately leading to a higher conversion rate. As the Harvard Business Review reports, in a survey of 2430 web consumers, 72.4% said they would be more likely to buy a product with information in their own language, while 56.2% said that the ability to obtain information in their own language is more important to them than price. In addition, the “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy – B2C” report on a survey of 8000 consumers across 29 countries reveals that 40% would not purchase a product or service that is not available in their language. As these statistics show, translation and localisation are key to removing linguistic and cultural barriers that stop potential customers from engaging with your brand.

How ecls can help

Our team has many years of experience in supporting businesses with their international marketing efforts. Some examples of the services we offer include:

Localising film titles and TV series titles – our regular clients include a major streaming platform who we support by localising the titles of films and TV series for English-speaking audiences (see the full case study here: https://eclstranslations.co.uk/transcreation-case-study-helping-attract-viewers-in-their-millions/).

Software strings for various English-speaking markets – another ongoing client in the HR sector relies on us to localise their software strings to ensure that they are suitable for the UK and Australian markets.

Cultural consultation – we recently completed a cultural consultation project to help our client, a UK-based creative marketing agency, determine whether their ideas for new slogans as part of a global marketing campaign would be well received in specific target markets, including Mexico, Dubai, Singapore and Germany. Our localisation specialists are available to carry out in-depth analysis and research to determine any possible connotations of slogans in target markets, identify how easily they are likely to be understood, and explain the anticipated impact, assessing whether they would be better received in the target locales if they were translated into the target language.

Global e-commerce – another recent project saw us localising around 150,000 words of German catalogue entries for a global e-commerce platform for US English just in time for Christmas. As well as translating the text, we localised prices, units of measurement and any other culture-specific information to ensure that the shopping experience would be as smooth as possible for the target market.

If you are wondering whether a localisation strategy might be a good fit for your business, our experienced team is here to help. We offer a range of localisation services backed up by linguistic and cultural expertise and can advise on the best approach depending on your requirements, objectives and budget. Get in touch with us – our team would be delighted to help.

Our team is made up of translators, proofreaders and project managers who specialise in technical and marketing translation. If you’ve recently watched any foreign language series or films on the world’s largest on-demand streaming service, there’s a high chance our team has had something to do with localising the content for you. With translators who specialise in everything from robotics user manuals and automotive product descriptions to creative websites, AdWords and press releases, we have a huge range of expertise between us and ensure we are constantly updating our knowledge to stay on the cutting edge of the fields we work in.

Hear from our team in a recent interview about their role in the industry, how this has evolved over the years, the impact our clients enjoy as a result of working with us and top tips for those looking for a reliable translation service provider.

Can you talk us through your role as a linguist PM at ecls? What does your typical day look like?

Becca: My role as a linguist at ecls is incredibly varied because I translate, proofread and manage projects. I’ll usually have a few translation and proofreading projects on the go, and the rest of the day is spent responding to enquiries, preparing quotes, scheduling new projects and finding the best team for the job, communicating with our customers and suppliers, and ensuring that projects are delivered on time. I also do some content writing and other sales and marketing tasks. No two days are alike, which is part of what I love about working at ecls!

Have you found your role has changed over the years as the industry evolves and if so, in what way(s)?

Laura: Yes and no. In some ways it has changed, especially regarding new technologies (machine translation and AI). A lot of clients are interested in these new services and for me it is important to always stay up to date so that I can recommend the best service for my clients’ specific project. In other ways, my role has not changed, as the majority of clients still value personal communication and prefer to work with the same trusted translators for their projects.

What’s been the impact for clients who have chosen to work with our team?

Emma: Our clients come to us for lots of different reasons: they’re launching a global brand campaign and need help understanding how their suggested slogans might be received around the world so that the most effective strategy can be chosen; they need support communicating change to their internal teams along with providing training manuals in their teams’ native language to get buy-in and quickly implement new technology; they’re looking to expand their operations and open up new markets abroad and understand how important it is to communicate with clients in their own language. We were even recently asked to help contact a local company in Singapore for a conference and, as we had a local team member on the ground, we were able to respond to the urgent request in time for our client.

One of our clients recently described working with us as follows:

“The impact of working with ECLS has been transformative for our organization. Their simple and straightforward workflow has significantly enhanced our operations, resulting in improved efficiency and productivity. Their attention to detail and commitment to delivering high-quality results have undoubtedly elevated our performance and allowed us to meet our KPIs consistently.”

We take the time to understand our clients’ needs, working collaboratively and adaptably. We also keep things smooth and efficient, which, along with our team’s expertise, saves our clients both time and cost in the long run. Clients who have chosen to work with us have benefitted from our local connections and the trust that this builds, have seen increased customer retention, an enhanced reputation overseas and boosted global sales.

How did you get into translation?

Becca: I was lucky enough to grow up with parents who were very interested in languages and travelling, so I got to visit lots of places in Europe as a child, an experience that inspired my love of language learning. After first picking up German and Latin at school, I went on to study Modern and Medieval Languages at university, where I also learned Italian from scratch and spent time working and studying in Germany and Italy. Translation classes were one of my favourite aspects of my time at university, and after I graduated I spent a couple of years working as a project manager and proofreader in the non-profit medical publishing sector before deciding to return to university for an MA in Translation and Interpreting Studies. I then worked as an in-house translator before joining ecls translations as a project coordinator, translator and proofreader in 2021.

What have been the highlights of your work here? What do you find most interesting/challenging?

Naomi: Working as a translator can sometimes be a lonely experience but working with ecls means being part of a team of friendly, experienced language professionals. We have regular online team meetings and occasional in-person meetups and communicate on a daily basis via various channels, including Slack and Outlook. I enjoy being part of a team in which my work, ideas and suggestions are valued and constantly benefit from my colleagues’ experience and expertise.

The most interesting aspect of my work is the opportunity to become familiar with new clients and topics and to consolidate existing skills – from proofreading and transcreation to adaptation and subtitle editing.

The challenges of this work include meeting tight deadlines while maintaining high levels of quality, using new software and translation tools, and getting to grips with new clients’ requirements and expectations.

How about advice for people looking for a translation service provider?

Laura: When you are looking for a translation service provider, I would recommend looking for a small to medium-sized agency where personal contact with the project managers is possible. This way you can establish a valuable and long-term relationship and know your translation projects are in experienced hands. My second piece of advice is asking about the company’s process and ensuring that the chosen agency only works with the so-called “native speaker principle”, meaning translators only translate into their mother tongue, among other professional requirements.

Why do you think clients keep coming back to ecls?

Naomi: ecls delivers a high-quality service that offers clients excellent value for money and meets their needs effectively. Clients come back to us because we take the time to understand their needs and expectations right from the start, ensuring we deliver excellent translations on time, every time. Our friendly, approachable project managers communicate clearly and effectively to resolve any issues quickly and satisfactorily, while our team of experienced linguists ensures consistency and creates added value. Reliability leads to trust. And trust leads to repeat business.

If you have any language requirements or need some general translation/localisation advice, our team would love to hear from you! Contact us on: info@ecls-translations.com.

We are delighted to have started the New Year as a member of the DBT’s Investment Support Directory. The Directory comprises a collection of companies with the skills and experience to support overseas businesses to set up or expand in the UK.

Hosted on the great.gov.uk website, the online platform connects international investors with UK-based service businesses, providing a tool for potential investors to search for support and find experts according to the specific industry, region, experience and language expertise.

The platform, often used by British embassies and consulates as a starting point to connect international investors with professionals in the UK, is making information more accessible and has been designed to help drive foreign direct investment into all corners of the UK.

With its business-friendly environment, robust infrastructure, one of the largest (world-class) labour forces in Europe and its open, liberal economy, the UK is an outstanding place to invest as well as being a straightforward market in which to start and expand a business.

Since 2016, we have been supporting businesses in countries including Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland and the USA from the technology, manufacturing and marketing sectors to expand, diversify and gain access to new resources and technologies around the world.

We’re thrilled to be included in the DBT’s Directory and for the opportunity to increase our visibility to foreign investors and to support them in achieving their international expansion goals with our first-class translation service.

ecls' profile within the DBT's Investment Support Directory can be found here:

great.gov.uk/international/investment-support-directory/09936382/ecls-translations-limited.

For more information on the support available, please contact our team at info@ecls-translations.com – we'd be delighted to explore how we can help.

What is inclusive language?

Inclusive language means using words carefully to acknowledge diversity and ensure that no one is alienated from your communications. It’s a respectful way of engaging with every member of your audience, particularly marginalised individuals and groups. It means avoiding bias and not making assumptions about gender, race, ethnicity, ability or sexuality.

Inclusive language isn’t just a “nice to have”; it’s critical to connecting with your target market. Failing to be inclusive with your communications means that you are likely to lose many potential customers from the get-go – not only under-recognised* groups, but also younger people and anyone else attuned to issues of equality and inclusion.

More broadly, inclusive language is a way to effect real change in the world. Language is power, and it shapes our cognition. The more we hear stereotypes reinforced through language, the more we’re likely to believe them. Conversely, inclusive language chips away at implicit bias and contributes to making our world more accepting, equitable and tolerant. If that sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, read on!

Inclusive language, translation and added value

Attitudes and approaches to issues of inclusion vary between cultures and languages. What’s acceptable in one country might come across as outdated, insensitive or downright offensive in another, so it’s crucial to get it right when you’re targeting an international audience.

At ecls translations, we don’t just convert words from one language to another. Instead, we spend time carefully analysing the source text and crafting a message in the target language that will truly resonate with the intended audience. This means that if we come across something in a source text that won’t sit well with a target market in terms of its inclusivity, we’ll flag this up to you and suggest some possible adaptations rather than simply translating word for word.

It’s important to remember that language is constantly evolving, and what might be the inclusive term today could cause offence in the future. That’s why we ensure that we are always up to date with cultural and linguistic changes to remain as inclusive as possible.

Inclusive language around the world

Just as attitudes to inclusivity vary around the world, so do linguistic strategies of inclusion. This is a vast and complex area, but let’s take a brief look at some of the hot topics in the three main languages in which ecls translations specialises: English, French and German.

In the UK, identity politics is currently a hotly debated issue. Regardless, gender inclusivity is becoming more and more important, with many individuals and institutions recognising that gender is not binary, for example by implementing a policy of stating preferred personal pronouns (such as she/her, he/him, they/them, ze, sie and xim). The UK’s National Health Service has also begun to adopt gender-neutral language, so that, for example, you might see information for an expectant parent referring to “birthing person” instead of “mother” and “chestfeeding” instead of “breastfeeding”.

In terms of race and ethnicity, there’s a movement towards using the term “global majority” rather than “ethnic minority” to describe people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, in recognition of the fact that these groups represent some 80% of the world's population. If you’d like to explore these issues in greater depth, inclusive language guides are a great starting point – for example, a guide to writing about ethnicity published by the UK Government can be found here, while a guide to writing about disability is available here.

In France, language is a famously political issue. The Académie Française was established in 1634 to protect the “purity” of the French language, and even today it plays an important role in deciding what’s “correct” in terms of grammar, spelling and vocabulary. However, it’s often seen as old-fashioned and out of step with the times: recently, it has criticised the use of trendy anglicisms such as “big data” and “drive-through” in public life. More controversially, the Académie has also opposed attempts to make French more gender-neutral. One topic to come under fire is the inclusive neologism “iel”– a gender-neutral pronoun that combines the masculine “il” and the feminine “elle”. However, the debate also extends to the structure of the language itself. As French is a grammatically gendered language, speakers generally need to specify either the masculine or feminine version of occupations and pronouns – for example, “le traducteur”/”la traductrice”. Many people see this as problematic because when gender is unknown or unclear, or when a group of people are referred to, the default is the masculine, which arguably reinforces patriarchal ideology and erases women and people of other genders.

Various strategies have been developed to get round this and make the language more gender-neutral and inclusive. One of these is the use of an interpoint (∙) or other symbol to combine the masculine form of a noun phrase with feminine suffixes, known as a truncated doublet – for example, “Les traducteur∙rices sont actif∙ves”. The Académie Française has decried such constructions as a sign that French is in mortal danger, while the French Sénat has voted for an extensive ban on gender-inclusive writing. Admittedly, such constructions are perhaps a little difficult to read, and don’t work well when spoken out loud, but there are also alternative solutions such as full doublets (“les traducteurs et les traductrices”) and the use of epicene terms, which are gender-neutral – for example, “la direction” rather than “le directeur/la directrice”.

The picture with the German language is similar – as another grammatically gendered language, German also has the same challenge that gender usually has to be specified when you’re talking about someone’s occupation or other characteristics. Faced with the gender-non-specific term “the teacher”, for example, a translator from English to German would have to decide whether to translate this as “der Lehrer” (male teacher) or “die Lehrerin” (female teacher). Just as with French, the generic masculine has historically been the automatic choice in German in cases where gender is unknown or mixed. This means that when talking about a group of people – even a group of 99 women and one man – the masculine plural would conventionally be used (“die Ärzte” (male doctors) rather than “die Ärztinnen” (female doctors).

To get round this, a range of strategies have been deployed since the 1980s, from the “gender gap” – “die Student_innen” – to the use of a capital “I” – “die StudentInnen”. However, these attempts to make the language inclusive were largely limited to academics and subcultural groups until the last decade, when the “Gendersternchen” (gender star or asterisk) – “die Student*innen” – began to go mainstream, becoming the standard style for many schools, universities and institutions, including some governmental bodies. Nevertheless, there has been pushback from conversative groups in Germany: the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland has campaigned against gender-inclusive language, while the Christian Democrat government in Saxony has banned the use of gender-inclusive language such as gender stars in schools. Other, less polarising options include doubling up (“die Lehrer und die Lehrerinnen”) and non-gendered synonyms (such as “die Lehrkraft” (teaching staff) instead of “die Lehrer/Lehrerinnen).

In 2021, eight German news agencies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland announced a range of measures to avoid linguistic gender bias, including putting women first in constructions such as “Leserinnen und Leser” (female readers and male readers), but stopped short of recommending the use of the gender asterisk or other novel orthographic strategies.

Inclusive language: the way forward

Whatever language you’re communicating in, it’s vital to pay attention to inclusivity to avoid alienating people and to reflect the diversity of your audience. The wide range of strategies might seem bewildering, which is why working with a professional translation agency like ecls translations can be invaluable in helping you find the right approach. As experts in the language and culture of your target audience, we can help you navigate the benefits and drawbacks of different approaches to find the perfect solution based on your target audience, the purpose of your communications and the tone of voice you want to achieve.

*We have deliberately used the term “under-recognised” rather than “under-represented”. For the rationale behind this, see https://hbr.org/2023/04/why-we-should-stop-saying-underrepresented.

Since the first experiments with machine translation in the 1950s, attempts to create a “fully automatic high-quality machine translation system” have been met with hopes as well as fears. Debates around the possibility of replacing human translators with computers go to the very heart of what language is – and what it is to be human. While for decades there’s been an undercurrent of anxiety in the translation industry that human translators might one day become obsolete, this hasn’t happened yet…Why is this, and why do professional human translators continue to outperform computers at almost every level? In this article, we’ll take a look at what machine translation is and how it works, the benefits and drawbacks of machine translation, and how to weigh up whether you need professional human translation, machine translation or a combination of the two for your localisation strategy.

What is machine translation and how does it work?

As the name suggests, machine translation is translation of a text from one language to another, performed automatically (and practically instantaneously) by a computer. There are several types of machine translation, but the main types used today rely on a large number of pre-existing translations arranged as parallel texts, known as a “corpus”. The computer analyses this corpus to find the probability that a certain string of words in the source language (called an “n-gram”) will be translated with a given string of words in the target language, choosing the most likely combination as its final translation. More recently, neural machine translation tools have been developed that have the ability to “learn” and improve their performance as time goes by. Note that “computer-assisted translation” isn’t the same as machine translation: this refers to a range of software tools used by human translators to ensure consistency and efficiency.

What are the benefits and drawbacks of machine vs human translation?

Computers can translate large volumes of text within seconds, so when speed is your main priority, machine translation is hard to beat. The pace at which a human translator is able to translate varies depending on factors such as the complexity of the text, but on average a professional will translate around 2000–2500 words a day. This also means that machine translation generally costs less, because even when you factor in a “machine translation post-editing” stage (known as MTPE, a check carried out by a human translator), the overall time taken to reach the final translation is considerably reduced.

On the other hand, because machine translation relies on a corpus, the quality of the translations it produces depend on the quality of the corpus. This also means that it will replicate any biases in the corpus, potentially leading to issues such as sexism in the translation output. For example, if you take a gender-non-specific term such as “the doctor” in English and use a popular machine translation engine to translate it into Italian, you get “il dottore”, the male doctor. Do the same thing with “the nurse” and you get “l’infermiera”, the female nurse. Problematic, right?

Another problem with the corpus-based approach of machine translation is the fact that it relies on frequency of terms and phrases, which means that the computer will struggle with anything novel or niche. Creative language, neologisms, or unusual technical terminology are all significant stumbling blocks for machine translation. Once again, we can use a well-known free machine translation tool to illustrate this: take the catchphrase from the TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race, “condragulations” – a play on the words “congratulations” and “drag”. Google translates this into Russian as “pozdravleniya”, which is simply the usual word for “congratulations” and has none of the humour, creativity or wordplay of the source text. The human translators who create the Russian subtitles for the show, in contrast, have come up with the perfect solution: “pozdragliayu”. In more technical fields, a human translator specialising in the relevant field will have the background knowledge to know exactly which word to use to translate a niche term, unlike a machine translation engine trained on general texts, which is likely to use entirely the wrong term or not be able to provide a solution at all.

Machine translation also lacks what we call “common sense”, which means it sometimes comes up with some nonsensical – and often amusing – translations. To give a real-life example, we recently edited a machine translation where the German word “Kater” had been translated as both “male cat” and “hangover” in the same text. Both valid translations in some situations, but not in content related to veterinary medicine! This wouldn’t cause any issues for a human translator, who would instantly know which word to use based on the context, but the statistics-based machine translation tool is prone to mixing terms up given that it has no real-world knowledge or understanding of the bigger picture.

What does the future hold?

Despite the issues we’ve described, machine translation is here to stay – and is likely to become a key part of the toolkit of many international companies in future, thanks to its speed and low cost. Used wisely, it can be a brilliant way to lift barriers to international communication at scale. While human involvement is still needed in most cases, the level of intervention depends on a number of factors, including the characteristics of the source text, the quality of the machine translation tool and the purpose of the final translation.

In a similar way, generative AI is already widely used outside the realm of translation and localisation, for example for content writing, website and app design and support chatbots. As with machine translation, human input is still needed in the majority of cases, particularly where anything non-routine, critical or complex is involved. As a result, new services are emerging such as post-editing of AI-generated copywriting.

Only time can tell how the interaction between machines and humans will develop, but the possibilities of this emerging field are certainly exciting. At ecls translations, we have years of experience in leveraging the potential of machine translation while deploying the strengths of a team of specialist human translators, so we’re perfectly placed to advise you on the best approach for your unique business needs in a rapidly changing environment.

Human translation or machine translation?

There are certainly times when machine translation is a useful and appropriate solution: when you need to get the gist of a text in a foreign language, for example, or when you need a fast translation of a straightforward, non-specialist text. While we would always recommend getting a professional translator to check machine translations for accuracy, they can be a great, fast and affordable option in the right circumstances, offering a way to translate large volumes of text at speed. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, we offer a machine translation post-editing service that is a quick and cost-effective solution while still offering the peace of mind that a professional human translator brings in terms of accuracy.

However, if you need to translate a technically complex, creative or humorous text, we would usually recommend working with a human translator. This is also the case for documents with legal validity or anything intended for high-visibility publication. Our team of professional human translators are selected for their specialist experience and knowledge and can be trusted to create high-quality, accurate and fluent translations that will resonate with your target audience.

Whether you’ve decided which service you need and want a quote, or you’re still not sure whether you need a human translator, we’d be delighted to talk you through the options: just get in touch with the ecls team at info@ecls-translations.com.

Whether you’re interested in technology or not, it’s been hard to avoid hearing about ChatGPT in recent months. The AI chatbot has been all over the news and social media, leaving some people feeling anxious about the impact it will have on our jobs and education. Even key players in the AI sector called for training of AI systems to be temporarily suspended back in March of this year, arguing that they pose a threat to our society. Others, however, are embracing the technological advances that ChatGPT has to offer. Whichever side of the debate you fall on, it’s certainly an interesting topic and one that isn’t going away any time soon.

With the ability to produce text that could’ve been written by a human, it’s understandable that ChatGPT has also got the translation industry talking. We’re going to take a look at what ChatGPT is and how it’s likely to affect the translation industry in the future.

What is ChatGPT?

You’ve probably heard lots about it, but you might not be entirely sure what ChatGPT actually is. Well, ChatGPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. And if that doesn’t help, it’s essentially a very advanced chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to produce human-like text. It does this by identifying patterns in huge quantities of data from sources like books, journals, websites and news articles. ChatGPT is also known as a large language model (LLM), which is basically a computerised deep-learning model that’s trained to generate text that reads as if it’s been written by a human.

You can ask ChatGPT anything you want. You can ask it to plan your next holiday for you, write a poem for your loved one or prepare your to-do list. But it’s not just trivial matters that ChatGPT deals with; it can also write computer code and essays. It doesn’t always provide the right answers though and there are certain things it can’t do. For example, it is currently limited to analysing data up to the year 2021. Users have also pointed out that it often reproduces racist bias that it finds in its source data and the technology can even ‘hallucinate’ sometimes. This term is used to describe AI giving answers that sound as if they could be correct but that are actually wrong. So, it certainly has its limitations.

Can ChatGPT produce translations?

The simple answer is yes. Currently ChatGPT is able to understand and produce text in around 95 languages, so you can certainly ask it to produce translations for you. One advantage that ChatGPT has over other online translation services, like Google Translate, is that you can provide the chatbot with more information or context to give it a helping hand to produce an accurate translation. For example, you could ask what a sentence means in a certain context or explain that what you’re trying to translate is an idiom. This should help ChatGPT to produce a more accurate translation. You can also provide more information on the style and tone you want your translation to have.

However, as mentioned previously, you can’t fully rely on ChatGPT’s output being correct. Even ChatGPT itself will tell you that the translations it generates might not be accurate and might need proofreading. Issues with its translations may be linguistic, whether it’s the grammar or vocabulary, or they may be cultural. Like other machine translation tools, ChatGPT can’t fully understand idiomatic expressions and cultural nuances yet.

How will ChatGPT affect the translation industry?

It’s still too early to say exactly how the translation industry will be affected by ChatGPT. As we’ve already explained, the quality of its output is not yet reliable enough for us to trust it to produce accurate translations. If you were to use ChatGPT to translate content that would be seen by your clients or that would appear on your website or in other publications, you would most certainly need a qualified human translator to proofread the output. ChatGPT’s linguistic knowledge is limited to the data it’s been trained on and although it certainly has access to a huge database of written texts, humans are still able to access a lot more information. For particularly niche topics, for example, ChatGPT might struggle! Similarly, translations for industries with strict regulations, such as the legal and medical sectors, would need to be adapted by professional human translators to ensure they are in line with industry standards. Another concern when relying on ChatGPT for translations relates to data security. While it does have some security measures in place, anything you enter into ChatGPT is ultimately saved by OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, in order to improve its output. ChatGPT could also be susceptible to cyberattacks if hackers were able to access and edit its code.

So, with all these limitations, is there any way that ChatGPT could have a positive influence on the translation industry?

Despite the fact that large language models like ChatGPT can’t yet produce accurate translations in a range of subject areas, the translation industry is still open to embracing the technological advances it has to offer. In fact, the German Association of Professional Interpreters and Translators, the BDÜ, recently published a press release explaining that new technologies like ChatGPT are simply changing the way the translation industry operates, disputing claims that they are putting professional human translators out of work. They argue that the role of human translators is changing thanks to the huge technological developments we’ve seen in recent years and are calling for professional linguists to be compensated fairly and not burdened with unrealistic expectations, especially as the role of a translator has in some ways become more complex due to changes in technology.

The benefits of ChatGPT are likely to be similar to those of MT (machine translation) methods that are currently used in the industry. Machine translation post-editing (MTPE) is already widely used by professional translation providers. This involves a machine or piece of software producing the initial translation output and qualified human translators then adapting the output to make sure it’s suitable for use. MTPE tends to be most effective for more straightforward texts without any cultural nuances, such as technical documents. It’s also important that the source text itself is clear and free from any errors. This approach to translation combines the speed and reduced cost of machine translation with the skill and accuracy of a human translator, making it very popular within the industry. The MT output is also constantly evolving and being improved. In this sense, ChatGPT could produce lengthy translations within a short space of time, meaning that clients don’t have to wait as long to receive their final translations. Of course, time would still need to be factored in for proofreading by a professional linguist. ChatGPT might also change the current requirements of MTPE to include additional tasks such as fact checking.

Summary

While ChatGPT is not yet close to producing accurate translations that match those of professional human translators, it could still offer some benefits for the industry in terms of speed and reduced costs, especially as the software develops and becomes more advanced. It’s likely to take on a similar role to other machine translation software tools and its output will still require proofreading, editing and potentially fact-checking by a qualified human translator.

In May 2023, we were delighted to have been shortlisted for the Northern Powerhouse Export Awards in association with the Department for Business and Trade, with sponsors including the Greater Manchester Chamber, UK and the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, with campaign partner Alibaba Group.

As part of the process, we were assessed on:

🤝 How we support companies in the technology, manufacturing and marketing sectors to diversify, to gain access to new resources and technologies, and to attract new customers around the world for increased sales and profits.

✈ The export journey we’ve enjoyed so far and the countries we currently export to, which include Germany, Switzerland, the USA, Belgium and France.

💡 Our innovative approaches to export, including technological innovations and new offerings to provide our clients with a more efficient, cost-effective service.

🏆 The impact our clients have enjoyed over the past 12 months as a result of our high-quality, efficient translation service. This has included a better understanding of their clients’ needs to optimise their offering to customers abroad, increased customer retention, boosted global sales and enhanced reputation overseas.

🌎 How our export practices help to achieve the global NetZero Agenda, protecting the environment, tackling climate change, championing equality opportunities with a commitment to upholding rules-based trade.

We’re grateful to all of our clients who have chosen us to help them achieve their export ambitions in what is a very competitive environment, and we’re really excited to continue supporting businesses in the UK and overseas with their export goals.

The awards ceremony takes place on Wednesday 28^th June 2023 at Middlesbrough Town Hall and we’re excited to be attending and to meet other exporters from the region.

If you’ve ever studied a foreign language before, it’s likely you’ll have come across a fair few ‘false friends’!

What is a false friend?

A false friend is a word or phrase that sounds or is spelt the same as in your native language but has a totally different meaning in the other language.

There are plenty of examples and while they are certainly amusing, they could potentially lead to some rather awkward or embarrassing situations or even cause offence.

You might think the German language is particularly straightforward with its English-sounding words like ‘Kaffee’ (coffee) and its very logical compound nouns like ‘Handschuh’ (hand + shoe = glove), but be warned! There are some words that are designed to trip you up.

We’ve put together a list of our top ten French and German false friends that everyone (not just translators!) should be aware of.

1. Gift (German)

Before telling one of your German friends that you’re giving them a ‘gift’, make sure to check its meaning first – the German noun ‘Gift’ actually translates into English as ‘poison’! This is a classic false friend and one that you’ll need to be aware of if you don’t want to scare away any of your German colleagues, friends or family. If you do want to give someone a gift, the correct German translation is ‘Geschenk’.

2. Rat (German)

Following a similar train of thought, you might feel shocked or even disgusted if you hear that your German friend wants to thank you for your ‘Gift’ by giving you some ‘Rat’… but don’t panic, they’re only trying to help! The English translation of the German word ‘Rat’ is ‘advice’. If you ever need to know the correct German translation for the pesky rodent, it’s ‘Ratte’.

3. Handy (German)

If you want to talk to your German friends about how useful you found the guidebook they lent you for your summer holiday, don’t assume that the correct German word is ‘Handy’. This word actually translates into English as ‘mobile phone’ (and is pronounced more like ‘hendy’). This should be an easy one to remember, as mobile phones do come in handy a lot of the time! There is some debate around the origins of the German word. Some believe it’s a short version of the early German word ‘Handfunktelefon’ while others say it came from ‘handie-talkie’ – a handheld walkie talkie that was used in World War 2. Either way, it’s shorter and easier to say than the German alternative: ‘Mobiltelefon’. If you do want to describe something as useful, you can use the German word ‘nützlich’.

4. Mist (German)

Be careful if you want to comment on the weather in German. You might think the German word ‘Mist’ can easily be used to describe the fog in the sky on one of those grey winter days. However, you’re actually more likely to hear Germans using this word when they’re annoyed. ‘Mist’ can be translated into English as ‘rubbish’, or less politely as ‘crap’! It’s also the German translation of ‘manure’. If you want to talk about the fog or mist in the sky, use the German word ‘Nebel’.

5. Chef (German)

If you want to pay your compliments to the chef in a German-speaking country, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you could use the German word ‘Chef’. Unfortunately, this is another false friend that catches people out! The English translation of the word ‘Chef’ is actually ‘boss’ or ‘manager’. If you want to thank the chef for a delicious meal, you’d need the word ‘Koch’ or the feminine form ‘Köchin’.

6. Journée (French)

If you’re speaking to a French person about your recent travels and want to tell them about the journey, make sure not to use the French word ‘journée’. Although this certainly looks like a French version of the word ‘journey’, it actually translates into English as ‘day’. If somebody wishes you a ‘bonne journée’, they’re not wishing you well on your travels, they’re simply wishing you a nice day. The correct French translation for the word ‘journey’ is ‘voyage’, hence ‘bon voyage’ – a term that we often use in English as well.

7. Blessé (French)

Make sure you brush up on your French vocabulary before declaring to someone how lucky and ‘blessed’ you are. While the French word ‘blessé’ (past participle of the verb ‘blesser’) might seem like the obvious choice, you’d actually be saying something that’s rather unfortunate instead – that you’re injured. This false friend trips people up quite often. The correct French translation for the verb ‘to bless’ is ‘bénir’.

8. Passer (French)

Another French verb that catches a lot of English speakers out is ‘passer’ in the phrase ‘passer un examen’. An English speaker might be thrilled to hear this news, thinking that they’ve passed an exam. However, somewhat confusingly, ‘passer un examen’ simply means ‘to take an exam’. The French verb ‘réussir’ is the one you’ll need to listen out for to find out if you’ve passed or not. A very cruel false friend!

9. Déception (French)

As you’ve seen so far, false friends can be very deceiving. You might want to talk about this in French using the word ‘déception’. However, this is a deceiving word in itself. ‘Déception’ actually means ‘disappointment’. Both terms have negative connotations but they’re not exactly interchangeable. If you want to use the correct French word for ‘deception’, it’s ‘tromperie’.

10. Bras (French)

We’ll leave you with one last French false friend that could lead to some rather awkward encounters! If you see or hear the word ‘bras’ from a French speaker, don’t assume that they’re interested in your (or somebody else’s) underwear… ‘Bras’ is the French word for ‘arm’. The French language actually has some interesting idioms using this word, such as ‘les bras m’en tombent’, which translates literally as ‘my arms fall off’. This phrase translates along the lines of ‘I just cannot believe it’ and can be used if you’re really shocked by something and left speechless. If you do need to know the correct French translation for the undergarment, it’s ‘soutien-gorge’ – slightly longer than the English word!

We hope that you’ve enjoyed our list of German and French false friends and that you can use it to avoid any potentially awkward language encounters. We’d love to hear your favourites, including in other languages too.