A Dilemma of Epic Proportions…

The face of the translation industry is changing more rapidly than most of us can keep up with.

To the horror of many professional translators of my generation, machine translation entered the “mainstream” in 2013—and the repercussions will be widely felt in 2014 and beyond.

The drivers for such extraordinary developments are simple enough to identify. The global penetration of the Internet has created an unprecedented commercial demand for communications in languages other than the sellers’. However, converting messages from one human language into another is a task that requires more skill (and time) than most would-be global traders realise. This raises a dilemma of epic proportions—there are simply not enough humans who have the sort of highly developed linguistic skills to meet the exploding demand.

Predictions for the Translation Industry in 2014

Happy New Year to you! Another chapter has just begun in our lives and most of you probably wonder what 2014 will bring to you personally and professionally.

 I was wondering, however, what 2014 will bring to the translation industry and to the translators themselves. In order to find out, I asked a few successful professional translators what they think we can expect to happen in 2014. Here’s what they said:

An Interpreter, please

The demand for translators and interpreters in the UK is on the rise. Recent numbers show that the Government’s expenditure on translation and interpreting services is higher year by year.

Last year, NHS spent more than £16million on interpreters to help their patients from foreign countries communicate with healthcare specialists. Based on the information from the 63 NHS trusts, the top-requested language in 2012 was Polish (which has also been ranked as the second most commonly spoken language in the UK). The demand for Arabic and Slovak interpreters is also significant – both were classified as second.

The 20 most frequently demanded languages are (in alphabetical order): Arabic, Bengali, Czech, Farsi, French, Gorani, Kurdish, Lithuanian, Mandarin, Panjabi, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Somali, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese

Source: Ministry of Justice

Networking inside vs outside your industry

Many translators do not find networking easy. Although a few of my colleagues are networking animals, and easily turn networking to business, the general trend is that translators are rather confined to their bedroom offices and hardly ever stick their noses out, but when they do – they mostly network with people from the same profession. Is this the right thing to do?

Which method of networking would be more beneficial to your business: networking inside or outside your industry? Where and whom to network with? How to network wisely?

These are the questions I will be answering at this Friday’s virtual conference: “Take control of YOUR business” organised by Sharp End Training. There are still places left, so grab one before they’re gone! 

The Failure of Bing's Language Translation Tool

I am delighted to introduce a new guest post. This time it's from Emily Matthews who is currently applying to masters degree programs across the U.S., and loves to read about new research into health care, gender issues, and literature. She lives and writes in Seattle, Washington.

Versatile Blogger Award

I feel truly honoured to have been awarded the Versatile Blogger Award by Liudmila Davydova. The joy is even greater given the fact that Liudmila is an excellent blogger herself, writing not only about translation and language but also on marketing and networking. Here is a link to her blog http://ldlanguageservices.com/

Official rules of the award
1. Thank the award-giver and link back to them in your post.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass this award along to maximum 15 recently discovered blogs you enjoy reading.
4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know about the award.

Seven things about me:

1. I'm a Polish native speaker but I live in the UK.
2. I'm passionate about languages and I'm interested in law and business, this is why I became a translator specialising in law and business.
3. I love hazelnut latte and chocolate.
4. For me the glass is always half full.
5. I'm listening to chillout music when working.
6. I can survive a few days without checking what's up on Facebook.
7. Networking is my new hobby.

My nominated blogs:

Acgtranslation by dr Aga Gordon @acgtranslation
Adventures in Freelance Translation by Catherine Christaki @LinguaGreca
My Lord, my fam, my job, my friends  Olga Arakelyan @Olenkaarakelyan
Wordyrama by Konstantina Drakou @wordyrama

The translation business  Paul Sulzberger @PaulEdgar1

Swedish Translation Services by Tess Whitty @Tesstranslates

Cooee - look at me! by Jane Buswell @Janebuswell

Transliteria made it to the Top 25 Language Lovers Twitterers!

Huge thanks to everyone who voted for my Twitter account in the Language Lovers 2011 competition. I am truly honoured to be in such great company of excellent Twitterers who made it to the top. Congratulations to Catherine @LinguaGreca, Silvina @ATGTranslations, Olenka @Olenkaarakelyan and Paul @PaulEdgar1

POLISH TRANSLATOR AND BUSINESS CONSULTANT HELPS BUSINESSES EXPAND INTO THE POLISH MARKET

A warm welcome to my colleague, Aga Gordon (@acgtranslation), who is my first guest on this blog. Her post will also appear as a press release in a Kent business magazine.

Poland has become one of the largest and fastest growing emerging markets in Eastern and Central Europe since joining the EU in 2004.  Furthermore, the large Polish community is now an extremely important part of the UK demographic makeup.  It offers endless opportunities for SMEs willing to increase their ROI through expanding their client database. Thanks to globalisation and the ease of communication afforded by the Internet, such an opportunity lies within reach. However, expanding into such a promising market should be planned with care to ensure success.  

Transliteria's New Role

This is my latest press release that I sent to a local business magazine. Fingers crossed it gets published!

Transliteria, Polish translation services, and the Polish Courier – the largest Polish weekly magazine in the South of England – have significantly expanded their collaboration into marketing and advertising. So far, Ewa Erdmann, the owner of Transliteria, has been a journalist for the Polish Courier, writing articles on legal and social issues as well as covering local and global news. This has earned her considerable credibility among her clients, who are confident that Ewa makes the best use of her legal expertise and linguistic skills in translation.