Translation_Tips – Dragoman Transcreation

How not to use a relative clause

Posted on July 11, 2021July 11, 2021 Editor Notes

One of the key elements of writing well is to understand the use of relative clauses. For non-native speakers, and especially for my fellow Turkish colleagues, abuse of relative clauses is common and easy to overcome mistake. Please do not take me wrong, I am not suggesting that relative clauses are totally useless and therefore one must never use them. I am only trying to show you how to reduce them. Here is an example from Izmir Train – the IZBAN. […]

Decimals and commas – Dragoman Style

Posted on July 10, 2021July 11, 2021 Style

Use decimals and commas for English figures as follows: General Figures: 22,500 people, 1.5 million cars, 42.8 square meters Money figures: $4,564.54, $4.5 million, 5.67 billion Turkish lira Percents: 43.8 percent (in writing), 43.8% (in numbers) Note: Decimals and commas in Turkish figures are reversed. When translating, you need to be careful in correcting the numbers and aligning them with proper English format. Source Dragoman Style Guide for Figures

Spell out Acronyms and Abbreviations on First Reference

Posted on July 9, 2021July 11, 2021 Style

The AP Stylebook cautions against using abbreviations or acronyms that the reader would not quickly recognize, and Dragoman prefers spelling out acronyms and abbreviations on first reference. Incorrect: The CBRT‘s latest interest rate hike, the third this year, drew a muted response from international investors. Correct: The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey‘s (CBRT) latest interest rate hike, the third this year, drew a muted response from international investors. However, if the acronym is rather common and therefore […]

Decades and Centuries – Dragoman Style

Posted on July 8, 2021July 11, 2021 Style

1. Use figures for decades: the 1990s, the ’90s, the mid-1990s. 2. Use an apostrophe before the decade if abbreviated as in the ’80s, the turbulent ’60s. 3. Spell out the decade when used at the beginning of a sentence: Nineteen-eighties business models are no longer sufficient. 4. Follow the “less than 10” as in the fifth century, the 15th century, mid-eighth century, mid-12th century, ninth-century literature, 17th-century poets. 5. B.C. follows the year or century as in 88 B.C. […]

Avoid artificial superlatives

Posted on July 7, 2021July 11, 2021 Style

The following text is taken verbatim from the book, 300 Days of Better Writing: A daily handbook for improving your writing written by David Bowman (2010) “Artificial superlatives are words like really, super, and very. People use them in an attempt to get the reader excited about some idea or topic. Consider these sentences. “The Broncos are really great. They are having a very good year.” The problem is that these words don’t actually add anything to the meaning. For […]

Simultaneous interpreting on Cisco Webex Legislate

Posted on March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 conference interpreting

The legacy trusted corporate conferencing platform Webex finally unveils its interpreting addon. Starting from December 2020, Webex Legislate, a seperate Coscio product for parliaments, legislatures, courts and international organizations, began offering simultaneous interpreting capabilities. We met with Cisco product managers online and reviewed some of the available use cases. The current product is a very nice, secure package. It is highly customizable. Interpretation is performed in virtual booths (rooms). Sign language interpreting can also be provided. Interpreters video will be […]

Translating disabilities

Posted on October 6, 2020March 28, 2021 Editor Notes

According to the AP Stylebook and several other guides, when writing about people with disabilities; Avoid using terms such as “handicapped” or “cripple.” Clearly define the type of disability if you can. If this is not possible, you can use “people with disabilities” or “disabled people.” Example: Inappropriate: Services for the handicapped and their families Use: Services for people with disabilities and their families Avoid language that suggests pity such as “suffer from”, “afflicted with,” “victim of,” or “stricken with.” […]

THE BEST ENGLISH-TURKISH MACHINE TRANSLATION MODEL EVER

Posted on July 19, 2020March 28, 2021 Language Technologies

SYSTRAN & DRAGOMAN LANGUAGE SERVICES LAUNCH THE BEST ENGLISH-TURKISH MACHINE TRANSLATION MODEL EVER MADE Paris, July 1st, 2020: SYSTRAN, leader in advanced machine translation solutions, announces the release of the best English to Turkish neural machine translation model ever built. The model has been trained with data from a trusted translation company in Turkey: Dragoman Language solutions. With the launch of SYSTRAN Marketplace, SYSTRAN opened their proprietary translation technology developed over last 50 years to enable a community of worldwide […]

Are you ready for remote simultaneous interpreting?

Posted on May 13, 2020March 3, 2021 Tests

Events, conferences and simultaneous interpreting in the new normal

Posted on May 8, 2020March 28, 2021 conference interpreting

Online meetings and video conferences were less than 3% of the entire conference industry until only a few months ago. Starting from March and with the global lockdown measures, on-site interpreting was literally obliterated. We found ourselves in an almost 100% remote video format. It is impossible to know what the event industry look like once the pandemic is over, but it is safe to assume that the share of online meetings will not go back to 3%, it will […]