SPANISH TRANSLATION

In terms of population, Hispanics constitute the largest minority group in the U.S. Nowadays more people travel to Central and South America than they had in the past. Businesses, even the smaller entities are expanding their service areas and thus one can frequently find North American businesses operating in Central and South America. Such developments have fuelled the need for Spanish translators. North American businesses that are extending their services to these areas require, Spanish to English and English to Spanish translation services on a regular basis.

Language Translation of any kind is not simply about transferring words from the source language to the targeted language. It is about conveying the intended meaning of the original content into the targeted language. Now this requires an in-depth understanding of not only the language, but also of the culture of the place where the targeted language is spoken.

Embarrassing mistakes have resulted from inefficient English to Spanish translations, take for example a Coors beer ad campaign which had the tagline “Turn it Loose”. When translated directly into Spanish, it read “Suffer from Diarrhea”. Then there was the American Dairy Association marketing fiasco when it’s highly effective tagline “Got Milk?” was translated into Spanish as “Are you lactating.” In yet another such incident, American Airlines’, “Fly in Leather” tagline read “Fly Naked” in Spanish. You can well imagine the reactions of the targeted consumers!

The above types of errors happen at the hands of inexperienced language translators, or when language translations are carried out through software. In both cases the translator, be it human or machine, simply replaces the source language’s words with equivalent words of the targeted language. However a human translator, who is well experienced, translates keeping the cultural context and linguistic style of both languages in mind.