Here are a few quick trivia questions: Did the Chevrolet Nova fail to sell in Mexico because no va translates to “does not go” in Spanish? Did a Japanese video game become an Internet meme in the early 21st century, spawning the phrase “All your base are belong to us”? Did President John F. Kennedy literally say, ‘I am a jelly donut’ in Berlin in 1963?
The answers are no, yes, and depends on your point of view.
The point is that translation is a tricky business. If you need a foreign language translated, the best practice is to seek a translator who is a native speaker of the target language. We only use native translators at ICanLocalize.
ICanLocalize works only with native speakers
Languages are Complex Creatures
Every language is a maze of subtleties. English has words borrowed from other languages, numerous homophones, and idioms that even the native speakers have trouble explaining, but comprehend effortlessly. Mandarin incorporates several regional dialects, and many languages incorporate subtle inflection to convey different meanings using the same words.
You may be able to walk around Paris and do fine with your excellent French (and if you can, I resent you tremendously, as I did A Level French and can now barely ask for the bill without getting a smirk from the Parisians), but that does not mean you instantly grasp that the phrase “ca plane pour moi” (literally, it is gliding for me) conveys the sentiment “This works for me”.
Another funny example is the Dutch “wat heb ik nu aan mijn fiets hangen”? Literally “what do I have hanging off my bicycle”? It means “what have I got myself into”? I could go on forever but you get the gist.
The Danger of Translations that are too Literal
Overly literal translations are worse than worthless; they can be damaging and dangerous.
Dangerous to reputations, that is. An author friend of mine decided to include a few characters who spoke different languages in one of his books. None of them were major characters; they were all in the background and he thought it added a nice sense of global complexity to the story.
Instead of hiring someone to do some quick translation or seeking out a friend who could speak the languages in question, He used an online machine translation service. After all, the main audience for his book was English speaking, and the foreign languages were just for show anyway.
Sure enough, though, a few months after publication he started to get emails complaining about the awful quality of the translations. As a result he lost some credibility as an author.
One person told him the German was, in a sense, correct, but that no human being would ever say something the way his background characters did. It was somewhat embarrassing for him, but it was a good lesson and in the future he is going to take the time to have an actual native speaker translate things for him, instead of a computer programme.
If you are looking for good native translations for your mobile app, website or software you can’t go wrong with ICanLocalize.
ICanLocalize (http://www.
