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“A visionary company doesn’t simply balance between idealism and profitability: it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable. A visionary company doesn’t simply balance between preserving a tightly held core ideology and stimulating vigorous change and movement; it does both to an extreme.

—Jim Collins

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Mauricio A. López Langenbach, Translator

Mauricio with son Clemente. June 2006 at "Red Rocks", on the south coast of Wellington.

It’s about 1:30 pm Central time on a Monday, and I got up only 15 minutes ago. But I haven’t slept in today. I’m running along the coast, watching the colors of dawn appearing in the sky over the hills. Yes, it’s before dawn here. And it’s a Tuesday. I catch a glimpse of the mountains in the South Island, across the Cook Strait, before I head back home. I’m in Wellington, the capital of Aotearoa-New Zealand.

This is the country I’ve called home for the last three years. I moved here with my wife and son from Austin, Texas. I’m originally from Chile, my wife is from Wisconsin, and our son was born in Texas, but he’s now clearly a Kiwi boy. He speaks English with a Kiwi accent, Spanish like a Chilean, and he's also learning some Maori and Samoan words at the daycare center he goes to. He just turned four, and I’ve been blessed to be able to spend a lot of time with him, thanks to the flexibility my job gives me.

I have been working as a freelance Spanish translator since 1994. I have a college degree in translation from English and German to Spanish from the Universidad Catlica de Chile. I’ve been doing translations and localizations for McElroy since 2000, and I’m really thankful for their constant support. When I was living in Austin, I had the opportunity to visit the company office on several occasions, and I always got the feeling that everybody was very pleased to work there. It was a very positive work environment. Also, we lived only a couple of blocks away from Patricia Bown, Director of Project Management at McElroy, and her husband, Bill, and they became friends of our family. In fact, Patricia was the first baby-sitter our son ever had!

Now we live in New Zealand, a great country to raise a family. It’s one of the safest in the world. Wellington is a nice and compact harbor city surrounded by green hills sprinkled with houses, located in the southern tip of the North Island of New Zealand. The weather tends to be on the cool side for most of the year, with rarely abating winds. The locals are friendly, but rather reserved. It has been a bit of a challenge, but we’re slowly finding our place in this community. After living here for three years, we find ourselves doing our own personal linguistic and cultural translations and localizations, and suddenly we catch ourselves using terms like chilly bins, nappies, and creche, feeling a bit emotional when we hear the New Zealand national anthem, growing fond of fish and chips, flying foxes, morning tea, te reo Maori, the haka, and, of course, the legendary All Blacks, who will surely win the Rugby World Cup in France in October.

Yes, this is home. For now.

Kia ora!

Mauricio’s footnote regarding the Rugby World Cup: "In a painful defeat to France in the quarterfinals, the All Blacks were eliminated from the world cup. The country is still recovering from the shock."

Tagalog: the Language of the Phillipines

McElroy is continuing this series of interviews that highlight some of the characteristics of languages used in doing business globally. This month, we look at Tagalog, in an interview conducted with McElroy translator Ilse Wong. Tagalog, or Filipino as it is officially named is native to the Philippines and is spoken in the many Philippino communities worldwide.

Map courtesy of Wikipedia

What are some pitfalls specific to Tagalog to avoid that a client should be aware of when translating into this language?

The greatest pitfall with English-Tagalog translations involves the mistaken notion entertained by many clients that there is a Tagalog term for every English word or concept. Some clients may even insist that a Tagalog translation contain only "pure Tagalog" words. What’s worse, when some clients see a proper Tagalog translation that incorporates English terms, they may even think that the translator has not done his/her job.

There are also language purists who believe that mixing Tagalog and English (in the blend often called "Taglish") is lazy and "unpatriotic." That point is debatable, but in any case, in the real world, Tagalog speakers in the Philippines or in other countries do indeed incorporate English words into their everyday speech and written materials. After all, English is one of the official languages of the Philippines, is taught in schools, and pervades even popular journalism, mass media, and advertising. A proper, professional translation should reflect this reality rather than the wished-for ideal of some academics or the misled expectations of non-Tagalog-speaking clients.

The bottom line: To a Tagalog speaker, many words or concepts are more readily understood in English, even if there may be awkward, "coined," or obscure "pure Tagalog" terms for these. Such words or concepts may be specialized or technical terms from various fields or disciplines, or they may simply be terms that people have gotten used to hearing or reading as English words.

For example, some clients insist on using Tagalog words for names of positions that are easily understandable in fact, more understandable in English. Tagalog speakers would have no problem with the term "Special Accounts Manager," for example whereas they might actually have to think twice before they can understand the "pure" Tagalog version (e.g., "Tagapamahala para sa mga Espesyal na Akawnt"). Likewise, telling a Tagalog speaker that he or she needs an "appendectomy" is much clearer than trying to describe the operation in Tagalog words.

Then, too, there are English terms for concepts that are not native to Filipino culture for example, the four seasons. The Philippines has only two seasons summer ("tag-init") and the rainy season ("tag-ulan"). The Philippines does not have winter, fall, or spring and therefore has no commonly used words for these seasons. When Filipinos (for example, those living in North America) refer to these seasons, they simply use the English terms. Yet some clients still want these season names translated! Sure, one can coin a term like "taglagas" (literally, "falling off") to approximate "fall" but it’s very likely that 99 out of 100 Tagalog speakers would understand "Fall 2007 edition" much better than "Edisyon ng Taglagas 2007"!

What are characteristics of Tagalog that are unique or different from English and/or other languages?

As mentioned previously, everyday Tagalog is characterized by the inclusion of many English terms. The trick is to determine when to use actual Tagalog words and when to simply stick with the English terms.

Another characteristic of Tagalog that may make it different from other languages (especially widely spoken languages such as English, French, German, Spanish, etc.) is that there is a great deal of flexibility in terms of factors such as word choice, word formation, and spelling. There is a good deal of subjectivity when it comes to Tagalog.

Take the term for "work," for example, which is "trabaho" in Tagalog. To express the idea of "working," one translator may form the word as follows: "nagtatrabaho." Another translator, though, may spell this differently: "nagtratrabaho." There is no hard and fast rule to determine which version is "correct." Both are acceptable.

Because the rules of Tagalog usage are not always clear, and because Tagalog itself is a comparatively obscure language to those who are not from the Philippines, many clients do not have a firm basis for determining who is qualified to do a Tagalog translation.

The profession of translating, as it is practiced with other languages, requires that the translator have some actual training or education for this particular job. When it comes to Tagalog, however, it sometimes seems that anybody who speaks both English and Tagalog will do. This is hardly the approach people would take with other languages! I cannot imagine, for example, that a client who needs a German document translated into English would settle for a "translator" who just happens to speak both languages!

How do these characteristics make it important to use properly qualified, professional translators?

The Tagalog translator really needs to be more than a "mere" translator of words; he or she needs to be a bilingual communicator. In other words, the professional Tagalog translator must ensure that the translation communicates the intent of the source English to the intended audience, and must tailor the translation to suit this readership.

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Localization World, Seattle, 2007

The Localization World Conference was attended this year by Shelly Priebe, President and Patricia Bown, Director of Project Management for McElroy Translation. Their reports follow:

From Shelly Priebe

Localization World an annual meeting I choose to regularly attend for several reasons. In one place in just a few days I can attend relevant pre-conference information sessions, the annual GALA (Globalization and Localization Association) meeting, and nurture and continued to develop helpful relationships single language vendors with whom we work. Plus, all of the technology vendors are there to answer questions and show their latest wares.

Keynote by Jeff Howe, contributing editor at Wired Magazine, "Crowdsourcing in the Translation Industry."

In June 2006 Jeff published "The Rise of CrowdSourcing" in Wired and he is currently authoring a book on the topic for Crown Books. Jeff points to the speed at which the recent Harry Potter book was translated worldwide, to the vast amount of translated web pages that are completed by a Google audience, and to many companies that effectively crowdsource in other areas. Even some of our clients crowdsource scientific questions when their own researchers are stumped. Crowdsourcing is typically successful when fueled by personal passion, and for this reason it may be a challenging proposition as a business model. The major barrier for language services companies in using crowdsourcing would be how to control quality.

It is worth mentioning, however, that two years ago I was impressed by the energy, intelligence and dynamism of the Localization World keynote speaker from Google on SMT (Statistical Machine Translation). It was such an interesting presentation that I did not mind that I did not find the topic immediately relevant to our business model. Now, two years later, we are implementing Statistical MT into workflow for certain types of projects. So much for my crystal ball!

Language Weaver Info Session "Why Machine Translation is Making a Comeback."

Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) is an approach to machine translation which replaces language rules based development with a statistical approach. Language Weaver is the commercial company in this space that entered the market to assist the U.S. Government with its enormous translation needs post 9/11. The other major players in SMT are Google and Microsoft. It is fascinating to note that users of Microsoft Help web pages available via MT report higher satisfaction than users of the original English help pages. I make this point as it relates to "good enough" translation. When materials that COULD NOT be translated previously become available because of technology, the audience reported satisfaction based on sheer availability. Similarly at McElroy we are not talking about replacing human translators, but adding to the human translation work pipeline with translation necessary to train each client customized MT module….all for projects that would not otherwise be translated!

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McElroy Gives Back

The folks at McElroy are donating an iPhone and some accessories to our local United Way chapter this month to help them kick off their Inaugural “Online Fall Fundraising Drive.”

We are pleased to help the United Way Capital Area with this fundraising effort. All donations during their Fall Fundraising Drive will be directly invested into the local community, helping support programs and services that focus on health, education, and financial stability. We are including the link here in case you'd like to contribute. The iPhone giveaway will be held November 30^th, so make sure you enter by then!