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15 January, 2018

Why a Dutch translation pays off

The Netherlands is only a small country on the world map, having an area of about 41,500 square kilometres and among the lowest on the list of countries compared by size. But while the Netherlands makes up only 0.008 per cent of the world’s area, Dutch is spoken by almost 400 times that percentage, making it one of the forty most spoken languages of the world. With millions of people speaking Dutch all over the world, Dutch is for sure a language with potential for companies looking for business opportunities.

by Pieter Beens

24 September, 2014

Academy, App localization

New translation course online: app localization

Frequent visitors of my blog have already noticed an increase in articles on app localization. There’s a reason for that: today my Proz.com training on app localization is introduced.
I am glad to share some more information with you.

by Pieter Beens

29 August, 2014

App localization

Seven reasons why app developers should have dedicated localization teams

App localization requires experience and dedication. Indeed translators who lack knowledge in app localization can soon get lost under an avalanche of terms, internal documents and new project files. The chances of getting lost under a pile of work and unfamiliar terms is even greater when translators step into a project that is almost halfway completed or that has been going on for years already. This is not only annoying for translators but for app developers, while the user experience can also be affected negatively. To avoid this problem, app developers should first focus on stability, quality and efficiency rather than merely looking at the costs of linguistic professionals. Costs are equally important but best practice for app developers is to take that into consideration only at the start of a project. This article describes seven reasons why app developers should have dedicated localization teams.

by Pieter Beens

19 August, 2014

App localization

Trends in app localization

The introduction of the first smartphone by Apple in 2007 has changed the digital world in ways that no one could have imagined. In the past seven years the world of mobile communications has changed forever. Hundreds of new innovations have been released, thousands of new smartphones are introduced, and App Stores nowadays are populated with millions of apps. But although smartphones and apps are increasingly popular, until now there have only been a few apps that dominated the market for longer than a few years. The huge growth of apps has created opportunities for translation and localization experts as well but there are dangers lurking.

by Pieter Beens

15 August, 2014

App localization

Infograpphic for app localizers

It’s been quiet at this blog for some weeks. Fortunately I have a good reason for that – I believe. In the past weeks I have been busy developing a course on app localization. This course is to be released soon, so stay tuned.
To help participants of the course improving their app localizations I created a simple mnemonic that can be printed to be put on the wall.

by Pieter Beens

26 June, 2014

Translation practice

The importance of correctness in translations

In my opinion a translator needs good devices to deliver good translations. That’s why I bought a powerful (gaming) computer and a new network printer last year. The gaming computer is powerful enough to compute things quickly and to deliver TM results in a snap. The network printer is pretty important to me because I can scan, copy and print from every location in my office. I chose for HP because I value the quality of the brand. Besides that I know the brand out of my profession as a translator. The company apparently moved to another translation agency and that resulted in two remarkable mistakes.*

* Please read my explanation below.

by Pieter Beens

24 February, 2014

Translator Tech Tips

MemoQ XLZ: translating XLZ files in MemoQ

In my blog post two weeks ago, I explained how you can run Idiom Worldserver Desktop Workbench on Windows 8. I got some nice reactions on that post: people finally got Idiom Worldserver Desktop Workbench running on Windows 8.1.
Until now I did not receive comments from people for whom this solution did not work out. Nevertheless there can be situations in which it can be preferable to open Idiom Desktop XLZ files in another CAT tool. This blog post is dedicated to opening XLZ files in MemoQ. Later this week I will add an article dedicated to Export Idiom TM.

by Pieter Beens

21 February, 2014

Translation practice

Even the best translation can fail…

Translation requires knowledge, dedication and accuracy. Translation agencies and end clients require us to do our job good and to deliver in high quality. Typos and spelling errors are odious. And that’s justified: many translations are for a big audience. Those who read them need to understand the translation like winking and there should be no misunderstandings about the meaning of a particular text. However, there’s no omelet without breaking eggs.
And fails can even occur when the translation is perfect. I noticed it last week…

by Pieter Beens

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