At what point does your agency take a project AWAY from a linguist due to lack of skills?

It is extremely difficult for an agency like ours, who considers their translators to be an essential part of the team, to blame the linguist when something goes wrong.  Although we do not have “in-house” translators, we have some translators that have been working with us for almost a decade. Those of you who follow my blog may have read about some of the issues we have had with a recent...

Blowing the whistle- translation and federal contracting

Dear All- I wrote a blog post months ago about an issue in government contracting, that of companies who say that all of their offices and linguists are based out of the United States when they are not.  To be a federal government contractor, as Global2Local is, you MUST use not only US citizens to do the actual work, but also use US BASED translators and linguists.  No exceptions. There is...

Why Do Translators Dislike Working Together?

This posting is more of an observation:  Why don’t translators like to work together?  I ask this question out of genuine curiosity, because, as much as we try to accommodate a translator’s desires, it is not always possible with some deadlines.  Freelance translation is a job for a certain kind of personality; I think most can agree on that.  For starters, one must be a good writer and...

SEO: By language or by country?

Dear Colleagues- This article was sent to me by a friend and I found it to be very simple and helpful. It was written by Christian Arno and I am passing it along because it is such great information!! English could be seen as the lingua franca of the Internet, just as it is in the business world. It’s certainly the most commonly used language online in terms of content, but even so it...

Chinglish: how Chinese will change the way we speak English

Actual street signs seen in China: “If you are stolen, call the police at once.” “Please omnivorously put the waste in garbage can.”" Deformed man lavatory.” These are the types of goofy transgressions that we in the English homelands love to poke fun at, devoting entire Web sites to so-called Chinglish. (By the way, that last phrase means “handicapped...