Dragoman Transcreation

Style guides differ because they are written with their specific audience in mind. Bloomberg will present their copy differently to The New York Times because Bloomberg primarily focus on finance and figures. One of the principal reasons for a style guide is to ensure consistency. Our translators work from a wide range of languages and are based around the world. The style guide is what helps ensu...

As we continue to gain more clients from the medical community, a few style notes on how to translate medical files has become necessary. A full style guide has not yet been written. One option is to subscribe to the online style guide of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). In the interim, please follow these rules of style: Use the Dragoman Style Guide for Figures. This style...

General Style for Content Language and Syntax Contractions Quotation Marks Capitalization and Style for Headlines, Headings, and Subheadings Awards, Prizes, and Categories of Awards Titles of Books, Short Stories, Newspapers, Magazines and Journals Titles of Films and so on Academic Writing Sources: AP Stylebook and Dragoman Style General Style for Content The clients determine the final layout an...

General Rules An annual report contains a company’s achievements and financial figures and is provided to shareholders, stakeholders and potential investors. The report uses several styles of writing: descriptive, corporate, advertising, financial, and legal. Previous reports are good benchmarks. Research is key to successfully translate an annual report. Search not only on client’s website but al...

Expressing your feelings requires a little more then just using an adjective. Try the following common words, check out their synonyms and improve your word usage in English. Happy Content Every old person, no matter how content they seem, feels that sense of regret. Earl Woods Satisfied Are you satisfied with your working conditions? Delighted Kate Winslet was delighted with Oscar nominations. Pl...

Expressing your feelings requires a little more then just using an adjective. Try the following common words, check out their synonyms and improve your word usage in English. Happy Content Every old person, no matter how content they seem, feels that sense of regret. Earl Woods Satisfied Are you satisfied with your working conditions? Delighted Kate Winslet was delighted with Oscar nominations. Pl...

Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or computer monitor to detect and correct production-errors of text or art. Proofreaders are expected to be consistently accurate by default because they occupy the last stage of typographic production before publication. Proofreading of a copy or a translated texts is a kind of light copy-editing combined with facts checking. Many people assume that p...

Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations. The voice-over may be spoken by someone who appears elsewhere in the production or by a specialist voice actor. It is pre-recorded and placed over the top of a film or video an...

A translation memory, or TM, is a database that stores “segments”, which can be sentences, paragraphs or sentence-like units (headings, titles or elements in a list) that have previously been translated, in order to aid human translators. The translation memory stores the source text and its corresponding translation in language pairs called “translation units”. Individual words are handled by ter...

Cross-cultural communication (also frequently referred to as intercultural communication, which is also used in a different sense, though) is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavour to communicate across cultures. Translators and interpreters play a vital role in bridging cross...

Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world’s languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb – that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed. This contrasts with active voice, in which the subject has the agent role. For example, in the passive sentence “The tree was pulled do...

Documentation is a term with many meanings, the most common of which are: A set of documents provided on paper, or online, or on digital or analog media, such as audio tape or CDs. The process of documenting knowledge, as in scientific articles. The process of providing evidence. The writing of product documentation, such as software documentation. A synonym for the term document. A synonym for th...

These trials mark the end of World War II and birthplace of simultaneous interpreting.  The Bavarian city of Nuremberg was chosen as the location for the trial of leading Nazi criminals after the end of World War II. The Nuremberg (Nürnberg in German) trials required instant communication in four languages: English, French and Russian – languages of the victors, and German. This communication was...

British English (or BrEn, BrE, BE, en-UK or en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, etc. from forms used elsewhere. The Oxford English Dictionary applies the term to English “as spoken or written in the British Isles; especially the forms of English usual in Great Britain”, reserving “Hiberno-English” for the “En...

Following are some of the most commonly mispronounced words in English. Listen to each word while you are reading on our blog. This exercise will improve your spoken English. For each example try to guess which option is correct: A or B? Share your comments and thoughts with us so that we can provide better recordings for you. If you need personal coaching for your English, we recommend AFFINA, a...

Simultaneous interpreters need a monitor in the booth to see the presentations better. Some conference rooms are large and typically the interpreting booth is installed in the very end of the seating rows. To make the matter worse, attendants may occasionaly walk pass in front of the booth which disturbs the concentration of interpreters. Please note that simultaneous interpreting requires very sh...

Does your venue have high speed boradband internet? Do you want to save on interpreter costs? When chosen carefully and planned-well, remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) apps are magical tools transforming any room or site into a multi-lingual conference. All you need is to download the app. Shall we just dump our conventional equipment; booths and receivers? Of course not! Remote simultaneous...

This article was originally produced by V. Lynn Baucom for Dragoman’s in-house training curriculum. Use of indefinite articles A and an are used if the noun can be counted A shareholder identified an embarrassing error in the company’s investor presentation. A or an is used to introduce a noun when it is mentioned for the first time in a piece of writing The is used afterward each time you mention...

Few tastes compare to a wild mushroom soup served at the Lufthansa Senator Lounge, Heathrow Terminal 2. And this time it felt like heaven after an amazing XTM Live London event, cheerful networking, uber intelligent discussions, all celebrating XTM International’s grand achievements. (More below) Terminal 2 is compact yet does not miss a single luxury, such as nimbling caviar & champagne, single m...

One-third is 1/3 or one out of three. It is singular (one). Two-thirds is 2/3 or two out of three. It is plural (two). Some style guides do not use hypen, Dragoman does. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/dragoman-transcreation--4083088/support .

“It is considered that (…),” “it is probable that (…),” or even worse “it is of utmost importance that (…)” Do we really need these clunky phrases? Dragoman encourages translators to avoid one of the weakest sentence openers: “it is (…) that/to.” By doing so, you will not only eliminate redundancy but also have smooth and creative sentences. Let’s accept, it is a bit lazy to overuse “it is.”   Wor...

Looking for an agile localization provider? You’ve come to the right place. Our secure cloud infrastructure can process your strings, localize them at every sprint and we will only charge you for new or revised content. You will save on time, management and previously translated words. You can add new files or update existing ones as we keep localizing your content. Choose us to monitor your trans...

“in light of the fact that,” “with regard to,” “under the provisions of…” These trite phrases often prevent your text to be clear and smooth. Translators are under the impression that legal texts require word-for-word translations. However, Dragoman prefers being loyal to the meaning, not to the cumbersome structure of source sentences. Here are five phrases that you can eliminate to improve your...

Eliminating redundancy is one of the key skills to fluency, but what is redundancy or a redundant word/phrase? If you can remove a word from a sentence without changing its core meaning, that word is redundant or unnecessary. Not every redundancy is a flaw, sometimes it is helpful to add variety to your sentences. The safest way to get rid of redundant phrase is to hire a professional copy-editor....

A translation memory, or TM, is a database that stores “segments”, which can be sentences, paragraphs or sentence-like units (headings, titles or elements in a list) that have previously been translated, in order to aid human translators. The translation memory stores the source text and its corresponding translation in language pairs called “translation units”. Individual words are handled by ter...