Telling the Bad News to Your Employee (Via an Interpreter)

It is a challenge for some employers to communicate with their non-English speaking employees on a day-to-day basis. Because of the language barrier, explaining the company's policy and procedures or giving simple instructions sometimes require a bit more effort. Yet, most of the time everyone seems to be coping well in everyday conversations and get the message across despite perhaps some little misunderstandings.

However, there are situations, where you want to be 100% sure that you know exactly what your employee is telling you and vice versa. These include all types of formal meetings, especially disciplinary hearings or redundancy consultations, when it is absolutely essential that there is no confusion as to what is being said.

Happy International Translation Day 2013!

Today is the International Translation Day!

Translators all over the world celebrate this day by having fun, gathering at various events organised by their associations or simply by working (!).

Why today?

The International Translation Day is celebrated on September 30, because this day marks the death of the patron of translators - St. Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius). St. Jerome is mostly known for his translation of the Bible into Latin, which eleven centuries later was recognised as the official version of the Bible - the Vulgate.

A humble translator

In today's world, translators are all about high quality and perfection. And while we all do and should strive to create the best translation we possibly can, we can't escape the fact that as humans, we are not 100% faultless (thank you proofreaders!). The thing about St. Hieronymus is that he was humble enough to acknowledge that his work - although excellent - was not without errors, therefore he revisited some of his translations, making corrections and additions setting a good example for other translators to follow.

Dear colleagues!

On this special day, I wish you many interesting and well-paid projects, respectful clients who appreciate your hard work and always pay on time, many fruitful and fun translation conferences and events, user-friendly software that never shows up any errors, accessible Wi-Fi wherever you are on the go and need it, source texts that are always clear and easy to decode (along with clear instructions from the client) and many, many successful years in this wonderful profession. After all, it's the best profession in the world, isn't it!

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