Languages
Asian Languages
Chinese Translation
CHINESE is by far the most-spoken language on the earth. It is also the fastest growing language in both number of speakers and economic value. More than 955 million people—or 14.4% of all humans—use it as their first language. That’s more than twice the second most widespread native language—Spanish—with its 405 million speakers and 6.15%. Ironically, though, it’s not easy to find Chinese language specialists who know the ins and outs of this important and unique language. This is partly because the language and culture is very different from the rest of the world and partly because the language itself is so complicated.
In truth, “Chinese” is not a completely correct term since it encompasses many—often mutually incomprehensible—dialects spoken by Chinese people. The common usage of “Chinese” usually refers to Mandarin, but other well-known dialects in North America include Cantonese, Minnan (Taiwanese), and Hakka.
The most familiar classification distinguishes the language between Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Most people in the translation industry will tell you that Simplified Chinese applies to mainland China (and Singapore) and Traditional Chinese is used in the rest of the world. This may be acceptable in common business, but linguistic professionals know that it’s a generalization. Even the Traditional Chinese used for the Hong Kong, Taiwan, and North American markets employs different terms and styles within each region. And more and more simplified words and characters are finding their way into North American usage as the number of people from mainland China begins to outnumber the other Chinese speakers.
At Government Language Solutions, we help our clients identify their target market or audience and then fine tune the language, writing system, style and tone of the Chinese they need. We have added a Quality Assurance step in our process, which is applied to a 10% of our projects at random basis.
Japanese Translation
When it comes to translation, Japanese language holds a very special position and poses a unique challenge. It’s not only the most expensive of the major languages to translate, but it also receives the most complaints from the end clients or audience. This is not because Japanese translators are not good. Instead, the answer lies in the language itself and the perfectionism embedded in the background of the Japanese consumer’s mentality.
Each language has specific translation issues that need to be determined before any text can be translated. In Japanese translations, one of the first things clients need to understand is the target audience’s high stylistic considerations coupled with a rigorous protocol for addressing the audience.
It’s a well-known fact that personal meetings in a Japanese context follow a highly ritualized and status-conscious pattern. The same is true for written communication, which must be perfectly gauged to the target audience or risk not communicating the intended message (at best) or insulting the audience (at worst). Since this expectation of social appropriateness is coupled with a very high appreciation of flawless quality, the demands on the translator, editor, and proofreader are enormous.
The complicated writing system of Japanese requires various and hard-to-understand layout and typing protocols. That’s why it is essential to have native DTP specialists with enough knowledge to review the final layout before it is delivered to the clients.
Our Japanese translators have the necessary expertise to produce and process this complex text and put it into the appropriate cultural context. Along with that our implemented Quality Assurance step is there to take care of the ever improving quality of our translations services.
Korean Translation
With the rapid development of Korea’s economy, Korean language is becoming more and more important language in the IT, patent, legal and medical fields.
The Korean writing system is one of the first and most scientifically ‘invented’ phonetic systems. Created in the fifteenth century by a team of royal linguists, the system can make almost any sound with just 24 alphabetic characters. Thus, in contrast to other Asian languages such as Japanese or Chinese, many English words used in Korean almost retain their original pronunciations.
Each language has specific translation issues that need to be determined before any text can be translated. In Korean translations, one of the first issues clients need to understand is the Korean language’s very sophisticated honorific system.
This system expresses itself in a number of levels of forms of address as well as pronouns and even verb forms. Gauging the intent of the text and the position of the recipient is crucial to the success of the translation, though this is often hidden or unknown in the European source languages.
In our process your translation is translated and reviewed by a native Korean translator with a specific subject-matter specialty before it is proofread by a second translator. This guarantees that every detail of the document is checked, double-checked, and quality ensured.
Vietnamese Translation
In the 1960s, the average Vietnamese mother had 6.4 children. Add this fact to Vietnam’s fast-growing economy of 7 to 8% per year and you’ll understand why Vietnamese is becoming more and more important in the language market.
Vietnamese was originally written with characters based on Chinese characters, but in the beginning of the 20th century a Latin-based alphabet was declared the official writing system. Since Vietnamese is a tonal language, it makes extensive use of diacritics to differentiate the different tones. Although many bugs have been fixed, some CAT tools and DTP tools still allow the diacritical marks to be lost or broken. This means that our Vietnamese translators, editors, and proofreaders must be equipped with special utilities and equipment to be able to work with the language.
Translators must master the strong regional differences in Vietnamese between the language used in the south and north of the country. With the history of war between the regions, these subtle differences in tone can escalate to cause a serious political or emotional backfire. Vietnamese is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, especially in the United States, where it is the third-most-spoken Asian language with over 1.2 million speakers, according to the 2007 American Community Survey (ACS).
At Government Language Solutions, our Vietnamese translators have the necessary expertise to process the language correctly and find the right tone for your translation. We’ve got a native Vietnamese translator with a specific subject-matter specialty work on your project before it is proofread by a second translator. This guarantees that every detail of the document is verified a few times before we deliver it to you.
Tagalog language
Filipino or Tagalog joins English as the national language of the Philippines. Although some clients want to translate into Cebuano or Illocano, our market research leads us to recommend remaining in Tagalog if the target market is the Philippines.
Tagalog is not only an important language in the Philippines but in other countries, too. According to the 2007 American Community Survey (ACS), Tagalog is also the second most popular Asian language in the United States with over 1.4 million speakers.
Tagalog was originally written in the beautiful ancient script of Baybayin, but in the 16th century, this was replaced with Latin letters. In the Philippines, Baybayin writing can still be seen in ceremonial uses and on the back of the latest series of bank notes.
Many Tagalog speakers incorporate English into their everyday oral and written conversation. This blend of Tagalog and English is known as “Taglish” or “Englog.” Our Tagalog translators’, editors’, and proofreaders’ extensive experience enables them to know when to use English terms and when to use indigenous Tagalog words.
Thai Translation
Thai translation is a very challenging service for translators on many levels, beginning with the fact that words are not separated from each other by spaces. Commas are used for minor pauses in sentences. Since translation technology traditionally revolves around words, however, 1-StopAsia’s engineers and linguists have to work creatively to reap the same benefit from technologies for terminology control and translation memory.
Thai is also extremely socially-sensitive. There are at least five different levels of style and address, depending on whether you are communicating to friends, to a general audience, to monks, to the royal family, or publically. Everything—including common verb forms—is influenced by the choice of style and address.
Thai—also called Siamese—is closely related to Lao. Both use similar alphabets derived from the Khmer abugida (an abugida is like an alphabet except that consonant-vowel sequences are written as a unit) and the languages are mutually intelligible.
Indonesian Translation
Indonesian is native to Indonesia and East Timor. It has approximately 23 million native speakers who reside primarily in urban areas as well as 140 million second-language speakers who tend to live in more rural areas.
Indonesian is very similar to Malaysian—also known as Bahasa Melayu—though it differs in spelling pronunciation and vocabulary.
When translating into Indonesian, it’s very important to keep in mind that the population of Indonesia consists of distinct ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. Although Indonesian is taught in schools, each of these communities has its own views and opinions that need to be taken into consideration as part of the translation process. While a certain term might be acceptable to one group, it might be considered offensive to another group. For example, the word “Cina” is a direct translation for the word China, it is used when referring to China as a country as well as when referring to the people of China. Due to a long history of general and political misuse, however, this word is now considered derogatory; particularly within the Chinese Indonesian community. As a result, the word “Tionghoa” is now more commonly used to represent Indonesians of Chinese origins and “Tiongkok” to represent the country of China itself.
At Government Language Solutions we have regular access to native resources for the Indonesian language. Along with that our experienced teams of Project Managers are carefully trained to monitor your projects to minimize mistakes and misunderstandings.
Hindi Translation
With approximately 180 million speakers, HINDI is the largest of the more than 400 Indian languages. Linguistically Hindi is the same language as Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, but Hindi is written in the Devanagari script (recognizable by the horizontal line that runs along the top of letters) whereas Urdu is written in the Persian script. The vocabulary also differs: Hindi uses more Sanskrit words and Urdu employs more Persian and Arabic words, though in their colloquial forms the two varieties are nearly indistinguishable.
It may come as a surprise to learn that Hindi is also an official language in Fiji.
Translators must navigate a fine line between using a pure form of a more exalted Hindi, called shuddh Hindi, and “Hinglish,” which, as the name implies, contains a lot of English words. Government Language Solutions’ native Hindi translators understand how to navigate that line and apply the appropriate tone in your translation. As with other languages, we have incorporated an additional Quality Assurance team, which monitors the whole process and improves our process all the time. This well-structured process aims at enhancing our performance and delivering a satisfactory final result.
Lao Translation
LAO or Laotian is the official language of Laos, though only 3 million of the more than 20 million worldwide speakers live in Laos. Interestingly, a much larger percentage live in Thailand.
The letters of the Lao alphabet are very similar to the Thai alphabet, which has the same roots. To the outside observer, they can be differentiated by the more circular style of writing in Lao. Within Thailand, Lao is also written with the Thai alphabet.
In Lao, words are not separated from each other by spaces. Commas are used for minor pauses in sentences, and major pauses are indicated by a period.
At Government Languages Solutions we have managed to keep a close connection to reliable Lao translators, who will help you any time you have a request for Lao translation. Due to the specifics of the language, talk to our Project Managers in advance, before taking such a project.
Hmong Translation
HMONG is spoken by close to 3 million people spread over various provinces in China (Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi), northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. Approximately 260,000 Hmong live in the United States.
The Hmong (or Miao) in China speak a dialect that is virtually unintelligible to speakers of the White Hmong and Green Hmong dialects used in Laos and the United States.
The writing system used for the different dialects of Hmong is based on the Latin alphabet and only dates back to the 1950s. Tradition has it that the Hmong used to have a written language that was written down in a treasured book and eaten by cows and rats. After that “no text was equal to the task of representing a culture as rich as that of the Hmong,” so the Hmong language was exclusively oral from that point onward. (See the wonderful The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman.)
Hmong in the United States do not use the standardized Latin alphabet for spelling proper nouns because they want their names to be easily pronounced. For example, Hmong is spelled “Hmoob” in the standardized spelling.
Somalian
European Languages
German
German was one of the most spoken languages in the US back in the days, due to the high emigration during the 1680s, all through the 1700s and to the early 20th century. MIllions of immigrants spoke the language that came from Germany and Switzerland, as well as from the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires, and their descendants.
German nearly became the official language in the United States аccroding to a popular legend. This story is referred to as the “Muhlenberg legend”, and describes that in the Pennsylvania state there was a vote in their parliament during the 1790s on the suggestion for the German to become the official language. The true story however is that the suggestion involved only a requirement that government documents should be translated into German language.
In the US most German speakers are located in California, followed by New York, Florida, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan. (as per US Census Bureau)
The language developed into different dialects some of which are: Alsatian (Elsässisch), Amana, Bernese, Hutterite, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Plautdietsch, Texas, and Wisconsin German.
Nowadays, German is the 7th most-spoken language in the US with around 1.06 million speakers. It is the second most spoken language in North Dakota (1.39% of its population). In another 16 states, it’s the most spoken language other than English and Spanish.
Its translation is quite different from the other languages and especially English due to the fact that it has a completely different grammar, sentence structure and pronunciation. We at Government Language Solutions have carefully chosen the resources we have to be relevant to the German speaking societies in the US.
French
Up-to-date French is the fourth most-spoken language in the US and it is right after English, Spanish, and Chinese. There are about 2.07 million French speakers in the United States, which is a large number of people who might need access to translation services.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau of 2000, 5.3% of the Americans are of French or French Canadian ancestry. In 2013 the number of people living in the US who were born in France was estimated at 129,520. Franco-Americans made up close to, or more than, 10 percent of the population of seven states, six in New England and one in Louisiana. California is the state where the most Franco population is located currently. Next is the Louisiana state, and Maine is the state where the French speakers are with the highest number by percentage (25%).
The French varieties that developed in the modern United States are Louisiana French, Missouri French, and New England French. Louisiana French is further divided into three dialects, Colonial French, Louisiana Creole French, and Cajun French.
Each of these dialects has specifics that are known only to people who are fluent in the language and living in these places.
Our team will carefully listen to your requirements and recommend the best suitable options for you and your needs.
Spanish
Spanish is a beautiful language with a wide influence in the USA
All forms of Spanish are written to the same standard, but there are differences in the spoken language between Peninsular or European Spanish and Americas Spanish. Each of these has a number of different regional and geographical dialects including Mexican Spanish and Catalan.
Spanish is primarily spoken in Spain and Latin America, however, it is the official language in over twenty two countries including; the Dominican Republic and Cuba. It is also spoken as a minority language in America, the Philippines, Gibraltar, Andorra, and Belize.
As of 2015, the U.S. had 41 million native Spanish speakers, plus 11.6 million bilingual Spanish speakers. Currently, the only country with a larger Spanish-speaking population is Mexico, at 121 million.
A report from the U.S. Census office predicted that by 2050 the U.S. would have 138 million Spanish speakers, the largest population anywhere on the planet.