GoiHata Translation Services

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When the Spaniards ‘discovered’ and colonized the Americas, the language of Spain was still undergoing change. It was the tongue of Castile (land of castles) which was destined to become not only the principal language of Spain, but also of the Latin American countries.
As to be predicted, the native population of Latin America exerted a great influence on the Castilian language and differences between the two types of Spanish emerged chiefly due to the diminishing contact between Latin America and Spain, coupled with the use of their own languages.
The influence of American English and French was present as well as the words were absorbed with a Spanish pronunciation which was based on what was heard with no regard for the correct spelling, e.g., ‘guachiman’ (watchman) or ‘chofer’ (chauffeur)

Even though there are some differences between Castilian Spanish and Latin American Spanish – particularly relating to pronunciation – they do not prevent mutual intelligibility because people from throughout the Spanish-speaking world can converse with each other as easily as people throughout the English-speaking world can. The differences are mostly observed in the spoken language rather than in writing, but they aren’t so extreme as not to reach mutual comprehension.
Also, while it’s easy to think of Latin American Spanish as one unit, as textbooks and lessons often do, you should note there are differences in the Spanish of various countries in the Western Hemisphere. But again, the differences aren’t so extreme that they avert communication.
If your pronunciation is reasonably good, whether your accent is Castilian, Colombian, Mexican or Venezuelan, you will definitely be understood. Latin Americans watch movies from Spain and Spaniards watch Latin American telenovelas (soap movies), so you can be assured the differences aren’t all that great especially if you avoid slang or extreme colloquialisms.
Paulina Torres De Witt
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5月は夏休みをどう過ごすかを考える月のようです。最近のラジオのコマーシャルは旅行会社の宣伝が休みなく続いています。また観光フェアも開かれるとあって「今年の夏はどこへ行く？」というのがすでに話題の一つになっています。今年のコマーシャルの特徴は何といってもユーロ高を反映したアメリカ合衆国への旅行案内。旅行するのも買い物をするのも今までにない安さというのがその宣伝の趣旨です。
その他、大型テレビが当たる、今予約すれば７％引きなど消費者の気持ちをくすぐる魅力的なキャッチフレーズが何度も繰り返されます。こうなると最後の最後まで、なかなか旅行の準備をしない（ずるずると延ばしてしまう）、しかししっかり者のバスクの人々は、早めに考慮し始めざるを得ません。
もちろんしっかり者の若い人たちは旅行会社よりもインターネットを使って計画を立て、すでに手を打っている人も少なくないとか。こうなると思うように休みの計画が立てられないために最後の最後まで手を打てないのは、通訳・翻訳者だけなのかも…？

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I have been informed about a “new” (but this is actually an old swindler process) form of ‘Nigerian scams’. These crooks contact Translators via their personal contact form disguising themselves as Translators or potential clients and their modus operandi is as follows:

A (false) cheque is sent to you but banks need 4 or 5 weeks to identify a swindling. The cheque amount is always higher than previously agreed (they would say it is an “error” or give you any other pretext) and then the crook asks you to pay the difference to another account ASAP… by bank transfer from your bank account or using a postal order. Next thing… you are trapped!
Crooks of this type can get away with it for a long time before being caught in the act because they use a number of plausible addresses and a number of Internet Service Providers all at the same time.

So, please beware of e-mails like this:

Sender IP: 208.78.63.210 [Port: 1885] or
Sender IP: 41.204.224.24 [Port: 22413]
———————-
Sender : Juliet Brown (whoever@yahoo.com)
Recipient : xxx (xxx@gmail.com)
Attachment : — —

Subject : Translator needed (URGENT REPLY ) !!!

My name is Juliet Brown and I am a Canadian translator from Prince Edward Island currently living in West Coast Africa and I was granted a
3-month contract to translate from English to French. I would like to know your fees to translate the attached project. Please review it and inform me if you are available and can take this responsibility.

I look forward to hear from you as soon as possible.

Best regards,
Juliet

Recommendation I was given to disable dangers of the internet? To check a freeware version for Windows which is available from Trace Route (http://www.d3tr.de/) to identify the origin of any Sender IP address.

Paulina Torres De Witt
- www.goihata.com

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I love my native language and would like to share some interesting facts related to it for those of you who want to know a little bit more about our rich Spanish.
Spanish is the official tongue in Spain, Balearic Islands, and Canary Islands, as well as all the South American countries except Brazil and Guyana. It is also a common second language of some areas in the United States (Texas, Arizona, California, and Florida), parts of Morocco and even the west coast of Africa. Today, Spanish is the most widely spoken of the Romance languages, both in terms of number of speakers and the number of countries in which it is the dominant language. It is the mother tongue of some 320 million people scattered worldwide.
Regarding its origin, it is a Romance language (the roots are in Latin) which is an influence from the Moors who occupied Spain in the 7th century the regions to the north of Spain which had not been conquered during the Moorish invasion, saw the creation of Christian kingdoms which began to expand southwards and set the emancipation in motion.
Obviously, the Spanish spoken in all these countries appears with great variety. In fact the dissimilarities between Castilian Spanish and Latin American Spanish are correspondent to those between British English and American English.
The Roman alphabet is the one in use and the Spanish vocabulary comes from Latin, though many of the words clearly differ from their equivalents in French and Italian. Also, prolonged contact with Germanic and later Arabic affected its evolution but did not threaten a decline in Romance use. Germanic and Arabic have left their mark on the Spanish language as words like ‘guerra’ – war and ‘algebra’ – math can both be traced back to their respective Germanic and Arabic origins.
Paulina Torres De Witt
- www.goihata.com

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I love reading tips that are useful in our work and even though we have seen the following several times already I still continue checking them up to keep the information always fresh so, here I go once again!

- Our final translation should never look like a translation. It should look like it was written by a professional who has a good command of his/her language (excellent grammar and stylistic
- The style of the translation should always correspond to the text. If the text is a newspaper article, then a journalistic style should be used. If the text is a business letter or some marketing material, then the appropriate style should be used.
- The translation, inevitably, should have the right meaning, but should also reflect the tone of the original. Therefore, if the translation is of an angry business letter demanding payment, then the final translation should express the same tone (with appropriate taste of course). It may occur though that certain points cannot be translated well considering the differing customs and cultures of the respective languages as we always strive to focus more on the language being translated into rather than the language being translated from. If you feel some major changes should be made to the text, you should immediately contact your customer or agency.
- Choice of terminology is most important so having good dictionaries is a must. Of course we have access to wonderful computer translation dictionaries but I still keep my “oldies” and they have a prominent place and are highly important in the final phase of revision. But when everything else fails I also try searching the term on Google as it usually clarifies ideas.
Paulina Torres De Witt
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- GoiHata.com
欧州人の名前を日本語に翻訳するという作業は実際には音訳になり、語順も外国語の順番が変わることはありません。日本語には外国の言葉を記す便利なカタカナという文字があるので、この作業は簡単です。しかしながらこれが中国語への翻訳となると、一筋縄ではいかないようです。
名前はローマ字のままで漢字に置き換えることはしないというのが基本だそうです。ところが名刺などに自分の名前を記す際に、漢字を使って欲しいという希望者が多く、翻訳者はなるべく原音に近くてイメージが良い漢字を探すのに苦労することになります。これはカタカナ表記でも同じですが、もともと共通の音を持たない二つの言語を他方の文字を使って音で表すというのには限界があります。バスク語にはスペイン語にない“ツァ、ツィ、ツ、ツェ、ツォ”の音があり、それぞれ“tza, tzi, tzu, tze, tzo”の文字で表されます。現代日本語の書きことばをローマ字で表記する体系を国際的に確立したISO3062に準拠すれば日本語の“つ”は、“tsu”で、例えば津波は“tsunami”。“tsu”はバスク人にとって日本語にすれば“チュ”に近い音なので、どうしても発音すると“チュナミ”になってしまいます。一時期ニュースで頻繁に“チュナミ”と発音されていた時には、仕方がないとはいえ“tzunami”と表記されていれば、バスク人ならちゃんと“ツナミ”発音できるのに…と音を同じ文字の物差しで表せない文字の限界を感じました。ただしマドリード発の日本語新聞がバスク警察Ertzaintzaをエルチャンチャと書くのは限界ではありませんね。
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時々スペインの地名が“ヴ”の文字で表されているのを見かけることがあります。例えばÁvila“アヴィラ”、Vitoria“ヴィトリア”などです。外国語の地名や人名を文字で表すのに、なるべく原音に近い文字で表す、あるいはオリジナルの綴り（つづり）に近い文字で表すという二つの方法があります。例に挙げた二つの地名はオリジナルの綴りに基づいた表記と言えます。なぜならスペイン語には“ヴ”の音がないからです。
国語審議会をもつ文化庁では、“ヴ”を含めた外来語の表記に使用できる文字を示していますが、日本語化の程度や慣習などを基準にはするものの、特別な音の書き表しについては取り決めをしないで自由としています。一方、日本新聞協会新聞用語懇談会は、情報の内容が読者に正確に伝わることを目的にしているので、現地の呼称に基づくカタカナ書きの原則とともに慣用が固定しているものも認めています。そしてVの表記に“ヴ”の音を認めていません。
たくさんの言語を知っている人を別にすれば多くの人はカタカナがその語の音に近いものだと思っていますが、場合によっては音ではなくて、綴りに近いこともあるのです。そしてその区別は一般に区別できません。本当に音を文字で表すのは簡単ではありませんね。
言語に詳しい物理学研究者の鳥居さんのホームページには、日本語の名前をアルファベットでどう綴るか、外国語の地名を違う外国語で綴るとどうなるかなど、おもしろい話題が載っています。
http://nucl.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/torii/language/myhome.html
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I recently read a very interesting interview to Mrs. Brett J. Epstein who works as a writer, Translator, editor, and English teacher in Sweden. She shares insights on the essential elements of the Translator’s craft and business.
She describes, and I totally agree with it, the job of Translators as the art and craft of bringing the authors’ real expressions, as well as their ideas, inferences, disposition, voice, style, and so forth, from the source language to the target language, without being either excessively literal and strict with the text or overly free and loose. In her opinion, a Translator must consider what and how would the author have written the document if he were writing in the target language. So, for her, translation is the delicate and formidable job of perfectly recreating the authors’ original document and I consider this statement is accurate and truly honors our efforts in a very nice way.

Due to her activities she considers that translating creative work like literature is more challenging and more interesting and thinks that writers are the ideal people to be Translators as they have experience with writing, the writing process, analyzing literature, and editing. She suggests that one of the best ways to learn about translation is to carefully read and study a document in both its original language and its translation trying to understand what words and phrases really meant and why the Translator had made certain choices comparing it to what you would have done, had you been the Translator in charge.
During the interview she also mentioned some reading material that I would like to read myself like William Weaver’s essay “The Process of Translation”, Vladimir Nabokov’s essay “The Art of Translation”, and “Performing Without a Stage: The Art of Literary Translation” by Robert Wechsler.
Paulina Torres De Witt
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The Spanish language has been called the second world language, due to its large world wide distribution. It’s origin goes far back into history. Tribes, such as the Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Greeks contributed to the early development of the Spanish language.
Around 200 BC, due to the reign of the Roman Empire and then later on during the 5th to the 13th century, due to the long period of the Muslim invasion of about 750 years, the Spanish language has been influenced and undergone further development.
Over this period of continuing tensions between Christians and Muslims, more than 3700 battles were fought, but Spain also acquired a rich cultural, scientific and linguistic heritage from the Arab neighbors. The Spanish vocabulary and language is full of Arab influence, like many words starting with “al” alcalde (town’s mayor), alcantarilla (sewerage), almohada (pillow), etc.
Some years later in 1469, through the marriage union of Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II, Spain became a big and influential Kingdom in Europe. The year 1492 also presents a milestone in the start of the wide distribution and influence of the Spanish language When Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castilian sent the all known Italian explorer Christopher Columbus to sea, which led to the discovery of the American Continent.
(Red color represents countries where the Spanish language is the official language)

The worldwide distribution of the Spanish language and the number of speakers: With the colonial power of Spain the Spanish language has become widespread, second only in geographic terms to the English language. The Spanish language is a Latin family language, same as Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan and Galician. The Spanish language nowadays is a colorful and rich language spoken by more than 250 million people in the world and is also the mother tongue of many USA citizens.

Here is a list of the top ten countries with Spanish speakers:
Country and number of speakers

Mexico 106.255,000, Spain 46.000,000, Colombia 45.500,000, Argentina 41.248,000
United States of America 32.200,000, Venezuela 26.021,000,
Peru 23.191,000, Chile 15.795,000, Cuba 11.285,000, Ecuador 10.946,000
Saroj Das
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When we receive a document to translate it is very important to check the writing quality in the original. There is a tacit axiom in translation which every one of us knows: the translation will never be much better than the original (or in tech-talk: GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out!) If the original is an incoherent, illogical piece of nonsense, so the translation will be. If the source text is a brilliant piece of erudition with great literary merit, then the translation should surely be the same.

The point is Translators cannot go much above the quality of the original, and translation buyers should not necessarily blame a bad translation on the Translator. Of course, we must always do our best to render the information in the optimum manner even though it is best not to rewrite the original or improve its style or content, insert our own clever ideas or original phrases… just translate and offer quality work free of errors and omissions before deadline time. Be a competent, responsible, and capable professional who will honor agreements and produce quality work.
Make sure that there are no errors, omissions, spelling or punctuation mistakes, and that you deliver your translation on time in the form requested and expected by your client. If not sure about the client-s expectations, always ask while in time. If you do it this way, you will get more work. if not, you will only cause grief.
If a text is truly beyond understanding, the only responsible course of action would be to contact the client and leave the decision regarding whether to translate it or not into your customer’s hand. You may lose a job this way, but you will likely win the confidence of the client. The latter is ultimately worth far more than the former, no doubt!
Paulina Torres De Witt
- www.goihata.com

- www.goihata.com

Every company or individual requiring a translation service needs quality and most of the time a fast delivery wrapped in technical expertise. This is especially important with companies within the life sciences sector such as pharmaceutical and medical laboratories where any inaccurate translation of the information regarding prescribed dosage directions or product description could be extremely harmful and potentially lethal because they are usually manufacturers of medical and surgical equipment exporting on worldwide scale and must provide the most accurate information, complying with all the legal requirements for labelling or instructions in every language spoken within their target markets, for their intended audience. Inaccurate translation for such companies can be costly, both in the cost of correcting poor translations, but more critically in the potential cost to the health of the patient or end user of their products and so, expert localization is vital in these cases.

Translators working on these areas are mostly native speakers who have professional experience with a proven track record in the industry. Ideally, they should be practicing surgeons or doctors thus ensuring that the expertise applied to the translation and the terminology used are industry standard to guarantee they are upheld throughout and this is especially important with the Asian languages where perfectionism is key as linguistics is so complicated, and so challenging that it is vital for the Translator’s work to remain accurate usually by staying close to the native tongue, by staying in the country where the language is spoken.
A Translator must have a mix of sharp language skills, formal training, real-life translating experience and most especially the ability to think in two or more languages at once to ensure excellence becomes an intrinsic part and the basis of all our tasks and projects. We should (must!) really exude Quality!
Paulina Torres De Witt
- www.goihata.com

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Interesting news from one of the largest web search engines out there: they are developing applications for instant language translation to serve their millions of users around the world. They are looking for new ways to improve their site and are working on technology that would enable rapid electronic language translation using a tool that would help translate languages in real time.
Fortunately they admit that most machine-generated translation available today requires human editing to correct linguistic flaws as context ambiguities are often littered throughout conversation and written text but they consider they will soon be able to minimize linguistic editing requirements and generate rapid translation as needed by their users.

They think that their only needs are large amounts of compute power and huge amounts of data to develop real-time automated machine translation and they expect to have this application available and ready in the near future.
They are prepared to face problems convincing users that the upcoming hosted service is better than the language translation software used now as there are a lot of translation tools already and they feel challenged to build a better tool.
This is great news on the technology side! We have to develop new and powerful tools to continue learning and growing at our pace: fast, goal-oriented, efficient. We, Translators, will never be replaced by machines. We have to see these new developments as fantastic tools that will help us ease the endeavors in our challenging careers. We will be able to be more productive when we have access to tools like these as we will handle our tasks more rapidly and we continue learning a lot more too. Human input will always be necessary and we will be there to keep an eye on it and amend non human (not perfect!) automated translations!
Paulina Torres De Witt
- www.goihata.com

- www.goihata.com
I read about a study where a magnetic resonance imaging machine was used to map the language centers in the brain on multilingual individuals. Some of the people learned a second language as children while others learned it in high school or college.
Among those who learned it as children, the study shows the brain dealt with the languages in the same area: a yellow area, for example, representing the Croatian language, and a red area representing the English language. There was also in the study a large orange area showing common characteristics in the way the brain merged the verbal communication capability.
In the case where people learned additional languages but later in life, the study indicated that the brain used a separate area to deal with the new language and this is possibly related to the brain finding it easier to use a different area of the brain for the second language. The study also showed that the brain processes the information in a total different way depending on the age of the learner.
Although there is still a lot to learn about the way our brain deals with languages, the study is already being utilized by brain surgeons as now they can easily locate the language centers or the area where speech production is managed in the patient’s brain so they are able to avoid language centers during surgery.
Experience puts in the picture that children seem better suited to picking up new languages, but there is not a clear explanation why. So, the questions arise: When is it easier to learn a second language? In early childhood or adulthood? Are learning, storage, and usage of the languages more efficient as an adult? While researchers investigate I will continue as an English Trainer for both adults and kids!
Paulina Torres De Witt
- www.goihata.com

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昨日16日は、復活祭の1週間前の日曜日、枝の主日（受難の主日）でした。2008年の聖週間が始まりました。イエス・キリストがロバに乗って、エルサレムに入城したときを記念する日です。その時群衆がナツメヤシの枝を手に持って迎えたことから、この祝日では、ナツメヤシやシュロなどヤシ科の植物の枝が祝別（カトリック教会で、神への奉仕にあてるために人または物を区別して聖とすること）されます。復活祭の行事が盛大に行われ有名なのはセビリアなどスペイン南部ですが、ビルバオでも昨日プロセシオン（行列）が行われました。宗教的な行事は大事にされ、続けられてはいますが、春の連休として旅行に出かける人たちも多く、テレビやラジオなどマスコミは観光ルートを紹介や観光地の宿泊状況を伝えています。今年は週末との組み合わせから長い人で10日から短くても4日連休になるためにその傾向が一層強いようです。

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My Mother tongue is not English but I am very proud of my ability to understand and interpret this wonderful language and feel thankful for all the benefits it has given me enriching my personality and hence my life. I consider learning English is a universal need as it offers a wide range of advantages in different levels such as academic, cultural and intellectual. As an In-Company English Trainer I am always trying to emphasize the importance of learning this language and I do my best to inspire the participants to learn it with passion and to feel it as part of their lives. Learning different languages helps people to open up their minds and soak in the rich diversity of valuable information which is vital to stimulate our rational curiosity and the intense pleasure in discovering new concepts and ideas which complement us as citizens of the world.

Speaking English offers innumerable rewards, especially when we connect to the world through Internet, there is so much to learn there! It also allows us to be understood almost everywhere in the planet both by academics as well as the general public. English is everywhere: international press, media, TV programs, music, sports, software, politics, science, etc.
For Hispanics, English is relatively easy but we should not stop there: let us try more challenging languages with different alphabets such as Hebrew, Japanese or Arab, among others, as learning is a challenge for the human mind and the best stimulus for the intelligence.
As an English - Spanish Translator I have enjoyed intensely as English has given me the valuable opportunity of acquiring knowledge in different areas. Translation has become the art that decorates my life with its subtleties, nuances and richness and I would not change it for the world!

Paulina Torres De Witt
– www.goihata.com