Category Archives: Translation industry

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Google Cloud has recently announced the general availability of Document Translation, a new feature of Translation API Advanced, that lets you translate documents in formats such as Docx, PPTx, XLSx, and PDF while preserving document formatting. This includes right-to-left language support for PDFs, preservation of …

“New Google Cloud service allows you to translate documents while preserving the formatting”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The collateral damage of letting English become the exclusive lingua franca is that papers published in languages other than English often go unread. On the flip side, scientific knowledge in English may not be able to contribute to local decisions in places where the language …

“Letting English become the lingua franca in science means that studies in other languages often go unread”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The last time film subtitles made quite a buzz was in 2020, when South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s film “Parasite” won the Oscar for Best Picture. Parasite’s win in this category came as a surprise and sparked lively discussions as the film was in its …

“Subtitles rarely make headlines but those of the South Korean series “Squid Game” are breaking the internet”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village On September 30, UN International Translation Day, the Society of Authors in London launched a new campaign in which some of the biggest names in the business are asking publishers to name give full book-cover credits to translators. The leaders of the #TranslatorsOnTheCover effort are …

“On UN International Translation Day the UK Society of Authors launched a campaign calling for full book-cover credits for translators”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Sanmeet Kaur, a UCL History graduate and self-described “aspiring writer”, fled Afghanistan with her family when she was five and arrived in the UK not speaking a word of English. In an article titled “The trauma of bridging worlds as a child translator” she describes …

“Migrant children are often their parents’ translators: a source of pride or a cultural burden?”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The act of translating a text, of making it available to people who can’t read the original language, is a political statement in many different ways: what works are chosen to translate, or not to translate, who should translate, what languages to translate into. The …

“Translation can be a political act when is used to give a voice to under-represented groups and challenge gender stereotypes”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Dubbing or subtitles, which is better? § An age-old debate came back to the forefront in 2020 with the Oscar win for the South Korean film “Parasite”, where, at the awards ceremony, director Bong Joon-ho made a strong case for subtitles. “Once you overcome the …

“Deepfake lip syncing technology could help translate film and TV without losing an actor’s original performance”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village For centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned in popularity over time, depending on politics, war, economics, and institutions, says Michael D. Gordin, Professor of History of Science at Princeton University. Latin was the …

“Today, more than 90% of the indexed articles in the natural sciences are published in English. That wasn’t always the case”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Jennifer Croft is best known for being one of the English translators of Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. It is thanks to Croft’s English translation of the novel Flights that Tokarczuk made her international breakthrough, first with the  International Man Booker Prize, in 2018 (which Croft …

“Tokarczuk’s translated works have opened up life changing opportunities for her and helped boost Polish literature”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Webinar hosted by CITLoB with Steve Dept and Sandeep Nulkar, 7.1.2021 “Quality is the most used word in our industry but it is one thing to say you provide quality translation, it’s another to say you can actually measure it”. These opening words by Sandeep …

“Using linguistic quality evaluation to drive revenue”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village In Emily Wilson’s translations of the classics the Greek goddess Demeter has “cornrows in her hair”, Achilles is described as a “superhero”, and Odysseus, when disguised as an old, homeless man, carries a “tote bag”…(1) Wilson’s innovative approach to the translation of Homer’s Odyssey won …

“British scholar Emily Wilson’s fresh and contemporary translations of the Greek classics discussed at a recent Yale University event”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village “Finding the words for a world in crisis” was the theme for the 2020 International Translation Day poster design contest set up by FIT, the International Federation of Translators. The beautiful winning design, by Russian artist and translator Liza Gunenko, captures the importance of unity …

“September 30 marks International Translation Day, a time to reflect on changes in the industry in 2020”