The strange tale of the Mechanical Turk The Mechanical Turk was a chess-playing automaton built in the 1760’s by the Hungarian inventor Hans von Kempelen, reputedly to impress the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. It consisted of a large, box-like chess table, with an ornately costumed mannequin sitting behind it, and intricate mechanical systems for […]
What lies hidden in the machine? Read More »
People unfamiliar with the Japanese language (or with the translation industry in general) often tend to assume that translation between any two languages poses roughly the same degree of a challenge to the translator. This is far from being the case, however, and the Japanese-English language pair must rank as one of the most difficult
Why is Japanese-English translation more difficult than other language pairs? Read More »
How should a translation company approach a high-volume project? And what is the most ethical response to a client that insists that it needs an extremely high volume of material translated in an unrealistically short time?
A bridge too far—how not to manage a large-scale translation project Read More »
A bad translation is good when the quality requirement is low and does not justify the cost of high-quality translation.
The ROI of translation—when is a bad translation good? Read More »
In Japan, with its huge Japanese‑to‑English translation market, the caveat that a translator should only translate into his or her own native language goes largely ignored, and a huge volume of Japanese material ends up being translated by native speakers of Japanese—often with dire results.
The good, the bad and the ugly—ensuring quality in Japanese‑to‑English translation Read More »
