European Commission staff have to write many different types of documents. Whatever the type – legislation, a technical report, minutes, a press release or speech – a clear document will be more effective, and more easily and quickly understood. This … Read More
Full name: Federative Republic of Brazil (Republica Federativa do Brasil) Official language: Portuguese (many Amerindian languages and a few European languages are also spoken, but the only official language is Portuguese) Government type: Federal presidential republic Parliament: Brazil has a … Read More
French: the most obvious feature of French texts is the large number of apostrophes, marking the elision of vowels. The most common are l’, d’ and s’ at the start of a word. Accents and diacritics used are: é, è, … Read More
‘To translate, all you need is a good dictionary.‘ = FALSE Translation is a profession. If a good dictionary were enough, bad translations would not be so common. (Think of all those incomprehensible instruction manuals or amusing hotel notices!) ‘Good … Read More
“What we need is one multilingual discussion forum where users can define their profile and only see entries in the languages they can read.” The Commission’s websites focus on satisfying need for information, but they offer some possibilities for active … Read More
The size and complexity of EUROPA would be problematic even if it were monolingual. According to DG COMM figures, EUROPA includes some 6 million documents. Directorates-General are responsible for their own publishing activities, and no percentage is available on the … Read More
There is no doubt about it: people prefer reading in their own language. The Commission’s Communication DG has repeated many times that the multiplicity of languages presents a real challenge for the creation of what they term a “European public … Read More
The reference group translators occasionally modify the contents of the texts they translate, but this is not done as routinely as adjusting the order of elements or the style and level of details. Among the clearest examples of localisation was … Read More
“You can only convince Swedes through facts, not words. The web texts should explain what has been achieved, not tell how great we are.” The Swedish and Slovenian translators, in particular, mentioned that they avoided using writing styles that might … Read More
(Venice, Italy) “The readership of websites is more varied than the readership of legal texts, which makes adopting the most appropriate style a matter of thought.” To the extent that the Internet has its own mode of expression – more … Read More
LISA, the Localisation Industry Standards Association defines localisation as “the process of modifying products or services to account for differences in distinct markets”. Commercially, localisation is typically carried out by retailers of imported products or by software companies to adapting … Read More
One of the greatest changes the interviewees have experienced on moving from one of DGT’s language departments to web translation is that they feel that the reader is closer to them, and this is a tremendous boost for their motivation … Read More
