Blog

Are you expanding your business to international markets? Or do you need to publish your content to your multilingual clientele? With a high-quality translation, you ensure that your message reaches its target group. 

Is ordering translations new for you? In this blog post, we have prepared a checklist for ordering a successful translation.

You might be tempted to get translations done in-house within your own company to control costs, especially if you have people with good language skills. Still, it is worth remembering that an internally made translation bears a cost – namely the amount of working time spent on it. Also, translation assignments may keep employees from fulfilling their core tasks. In this blog post, we have listed good reasons to use a translation agency's services.

The use of speech technology is becoming increasingly common both in the workplace and in everyday life. At home, voice commands can be used to make phone calls or turn lights on and off, and as more and more household appliances are being connected to the internet, the possibilities for using speech technology are increasing – indeed, smart homes are already being discussed. Speech recognition functions, such as command recognition, also improve accessibility for programs, and even everyday chores with voice-controlled devices. 

We all have the right to receive information and learn, regardless of whether we have difficulties with reading or writing, impaired hearing or vision, or other challenges in using online media. The WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) was established to safeguard these rights. WCAG is an international, continuously updated database of guidelines for making media content such as videos and audio tracks more accessible.

What makes a good translation? This could be answered with the translators’ go-to phrase: it depends on the context. A creative translation should be fluent and expressive, whereas translations of agreements must follow the source text meticulously. There’s plenty of room for many kinds of texts between the two, and each genre has its own characteristics and requirements. There are also customer-specific requirements that have to do with industry terminology and brand-related concerns. Quality is also affected by non-language-related issues, such as layout and schedules.

Lingsoft has been producing subtitling in Finnish and Swedish since 2011. I have been part of the subtitling team since the beginning. Subtitling means monolingual closed captioning – for example, providing Finnish subtitles for programmes in Finnish and Swedish subtitles for programmes in Swedish. Subtitling is meant for all those who, for some reason, cannot hear the speech in the programme or wish to watch it without sound.