Written by Jennifer Lee

The word “untranslatable” is a little bit of a misnomer here, because technically nothing is ever untranslatable. Meaning can always be conveyed, albeit sometimes less accurately. By “untranslatable words” what we actually mean here are words with no direct translation, no single equivalent. There are many ways translators can deal with these “untranslatable words” depending on the type of text they’re translating. You can leave the word untranslated to emphasise the foreign culture of the source text, you can use explicitation to clarify the meaning of the word, or you can describe the meaning without using the word. All of these translation techniques work perfectly well in the right situation, but no matter how you solve the problem, as the translator you will always be aware of the gap in understanding between the target culture and the source culture. You could see this as sad, that your target audience may never fully understand the culture behind these words, but we prefer to focus on the idea that the language you speak affects the way that you see and interact with the world around you, and the more language you learn, the more you can broaden that experience.

The following is a list of ‘untranslatable’ words to help you broaden your experience:

[Italian verb] Commuovere – to induce emotional participation in a story, to arouse feelings of pity, pain or passionate connection, to be moved in a heartwarming way

[Dutch adjective] Gezellig – having a positive, warm atmosphere, can be used to describe a room, person or social gathering, connotes time spent with loved ones, togetherness

[Greek adjective] Meraki – pouring yourself wholeheartedly into something, such as cooking, and doing so with soul, creativity, and love.

[Welsh noun] Hiraeth – a homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to, nostalgia and grief for the lost places of your past, or places that never were, particularly in the context of longing for old Wales and Welsh culture/language.

[Japanese noun] Komorebi – the scattered light and shadows that appear when sunlight filters through the trees.

[English noun] Serendipity – an unplanned fortunate discovery – originates from Horace Walpole referencing the Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip (old name for Sri Lanka), who were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”.

[Chinese adjective] 香 (Xiāng) – could be translated as “fragrant”, but when referring to food, this term alludes to the rich, strong aroma that opens up your appetite.

[Yiddish noun] Trepverter – a witty comeback that you think of only when it is to late to use. Literally “staircase words”

[Japanese noun] Boketto – gazing vacantly into the distance without really thinking about anything specific

[Farsi noun] Tiám – the twinkle in your eye when you first meet someone

[Nguni Bantu noun] Ubuntu – an important South African philosophy with many different interpretations, essentially meaning “I am, because you are”, a person is a person through other people, community is what gives us our humanity, we belong to each other

[Inuit noun] Iktsuarpok – the act of repeatedly going outside to keep checking if someone is coming.

[Japanese noun] Tsundoku – leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other unread books.

[German noun] Warmduscher – refers to someone who would only ever take a warm shower (not hot or cold, but just warm) – implying they are someone who plays it safe, is a bit of a wimp or is unwilling to step outside their comfort zone

[Korean noun] 눈치 (Nunchi) – literally “eye-measure”, the subtle art and ability to listen and gauge another person’s mood, can be described in Western culture as a form of emotional intelligence.

[Brazillian Portuguese noun] Cafuné – the act of tenderly running your fingers through the hair of someone you love

[French adjective] Feuille-morte – having the colour of a faded, dying leaf, yellowish brown

These ‘untranslatable’ words can be quite beautiful as they often refer to shared human experiences, and describe moments of living that we all know intimately, once more bringing into question whether these words are really untranslatable after all…

Written by Jennifer Lee

Explore the World is a new blog series here at AccuEast, where we take you to different parts of the world to discuss regional languages, language extinction, regional culture, and linguistic history.

Let’s make our way down to central China now, through the regions of Henan and Hubei and south into Hunan.

The three primary regions making up Central China are Henan, Hubei, and Hunan.

Let’s start in Henan. This region whose name means “south of the river” is also often referred to as “Zhongyuan” meaning “central plain” or “midlands”.

During the Xia dynasty (the first known Chinese dynasty, est. 2070- 1600 BC), Henan’s present-day city Luoyang and its surrounding areas were considered to be the “centre of the world” politically, economically, and culturally – as this was where the political seat of the Xia dynasty was located.

Thus, Henan is one of the birthplaces of Chinese civilization, with over 3200 years of recorded history. It left behind many heritage sites, such as the ruins of “Yin” city, the Shang dynasty’s capital, and the Shaolin Temple (birthplace of Chan Buddhism). In fact, four of the Eight Great Ancient Capitals of China are found in Henan province.

Henan is also the birthplace of Tai Chi (Tàijíquán), 3 schools of which (Chen, Yang and Wu) were first practiced in the Chen Village.

The primary language spoken in Henan is Mandarin. However, there are also a number of Jin speakers in the Northwest of Henan.

Moving further south, you may know of the Hubei province by its capital city, Wuhan, which is the most populous city in Central China and has over 11 million residents. Much like Henan, Hubei also primarily speaks Mandarin, although in the Southeast (where it borders the Jiangxi region) you can also find speakers of Gan, a language originating in the Jiangxi province, but more on that next time.

Xiang Chinese, also known as Hunanese, is the primary language spoken in the province of Hunan and has roughly 38 million speakers. The language has been heavily influenced by Mandarin, which is spoken in some of its northern and western regions, and also by Gan, which is attributed to the large migration from Jiangxi to Hunan during the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644).

Xiang-speaking Hunanese people have played an important role in modern Chinese history. They massively contributed to major revolutionary movements such as:

• the 1911 Revolution, which ended the last imperial dynasty and led to the establishment of the Republic of China,
• and the Chinese Communist Revolution, which was a conflict in the Chinese civil war led by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1949, ending the Republic of China and establishing the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The founding father of the PRC, Chairman Mao, was actually a Xiang speaker himself, as was famous military leader of the late Qing Dynasty, General Tso.

Thank you for joining us on our journey through Central China! Join us next time as we continue South…

Article written by Dawn McIntyre

The world of translating documents can be challenging, especially when working with subject matters such as finance, legal and life science. It is essential when choosing your preferred language translation service provider, that you fully understand their project management experience.

AccuEast have a trusted and reliable process in place when it comes to translation and  project management. Here we provide some information to help you understand the process a little more!

What does TEP mean?

Translation work is completed by a native speaker of the target language. The linguist must have a minimum of 2 years’ professional translation experience, to include subject matter and specific knowledge (including cultural experience).

Editing is completed by an experienced, native speaker who usually has more experience than the linguist who translated the work. They must have subject matter experience and review the translation work thoroughly.

Proofreading is where the final checks are completed i.e. formatting, reviewing against the customer’s requirements. This is completed by the in-house project manager to ensure accuracy and quality prior to returning the translated document.

Project management is really crucial within the language translation industry as it steers the end result for returning the work on time, ensuring accuracy and quality control. Making sure to ask questions regarding the project management process is a valuable key to identifying if your project is going to get the right care and attention it deserves.
If you have a translation project in the pipeline and would like to speak to us or receive a free, no obligation quote, please contact us info@accueast.com or visit our website www.accueast.com

Written by Jennifer Lee

Explore the World is a new blog series we’re doing here at AccuEast, where we take you to different parts of the world to discuss regional languages, language extinction, regional culture, and linguistic history.

Let’s continue our journey through Inner Mongolia, and down to China’s Northern regions of  Hebei,  Shānxī and Shǎnxī.

Inner Mongolia is one of the largest regions of China, spanning from the East of the country across to the West, and making up roughly 12% of China’s total land area. Back during the Mongol Empire (famously founded by Genghis Khan) and the Yuan Dynasty (founded by his grandson Kublai Khan), this region would have been considered part of Mongolia. However, when the Manchus founded the later Qing Dynasty (which you may remember from our journey through North-eastern China), they were able to invade the regions of what they referred to as “Outer Mongolia” and “Inner Mongolia”. Given its closer proximity, they were able to influence Inner Mongolia much more heavily than Outer Mongolia, using diplomatic tactics such as encouraging inter-marriages (and less diplomatic tactics such as threats and torture) to bring the Inner region of Mongolia firmly under their control using language and culture. Thus, when Outer Mongolia was liberated (with the help of Russian government) in 1911 and made independent after WW2, Inner Mongolia was retained within China’s borders.

Alongside Mandarin, Mongolian is the official language of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Most of the region’s population (~80%) is Han Chinese, which is the largest ethnic group both in China and the world. However, 17% of Inner Mongolia’s population is made up of Mongols, and the region actually has a larger Mongol population than Mongolia does, numbering around 4 million. This is because during the Northern Yuan Dynasty, when Mongol ruler Esen captured the Ming Dynasty emperor, there was a large influx of Mongols from Outer Mongolia to Inner Mongolia, leading it to become the cultural and political centre of the Mongols at that time.

A subgroup of this Mongol population is the Buryat people, who number roughly 500,000. Buryat is also a variety of Mongolic languages spoken by this ethnic group and also by the Bargas. The Buryats are one of the two largest indigenous groups of Siberia, and yet in 2010, UNESCO classed the Buryat language as ‘severely endangered’.

The majority of Buryat speakers (265,000) live in Russia and along the norther border of Mongolia, however as the northernmost part of Inner Mongolia borders Russia as well, you can still find roughly 65,000 Buryat speakers living within the People’s Republic as well. You can also find a small number of Daur, Manchu and Oroqen people in this region as well, ethnic groups which you may remember from our journey through North-eastern China.

Jin (or Jinyu meaning “Jin language” in Mandarin) is a language spoken by roughly 63 million people in China. There has been much debate about whether or not it can be grouped within Mandarin as it is very closely related. There are 8 subgroups within the Jin language, some of which closely mirror Mandarin and some which have preserved archaic features of the Jin language, such as the glottal stop. In the image gallery below, you can see a map showing which regions these subgroups are spoken in. Jinyu is not only spoken in parts of Inner Mongolia, but also in regions such as Henan, Shānxī, Hebei and Shǎnxī.

Article written by Dawn McIntyre

If your business needs a translation service then it is important that you fully understand the key elements for success. Choosing the right service for your document, website or other product needs careful consideration. Here we set out some quick tips for you to consider when choosing your language service provider!

• Language Proficiency

This is the number one important aspect (along with translator experience, specialism) which you will need to consider. Fluency is not just being able to speak the language, it means understanding other aspects such as grammar, tenses and local dialect.

• Life Experience

As a professional language translation service provider, AccuEast’s advice is to ask if the translation is from a fluent language speaker or machine translation. The best translation you can receive is from a native speaker who can provide knowledge about colloquial terms which will not be included in machine translation or the dictionary.

Life experience is also about culture, habitat, tone and phrasing. AccuEast only use native-speaking translators.

• Specialisms

Linking with life experience, specialisms connects the quality and accuracy for the translation. This relates to a specific topic, sector or knowledge where the translator has life experience. Always ask the translator’s specialisms to ensure you are pairing up the right translator for the work in hand. This can be life science, travel, technology or finance and legal.

Selecting the wrong translator for your project will be a big mistake!

There are other key qualities to consider and we are happy to talk further to you for any advice needed. 

If you have a project you would like help with for language translation services, feel free to contact us on info@accueast.com 

Article written by Dawn McIntyre 

Translation for any documentation needs to be accurate especially within the financial sector. It’s not just about translating word for word, you need to have a translator who has expertise within this field for understanding the terminology, industry and jargon. Getting it wrong can have severe consequences.

Financial documents are often time constrained because of editing and proofreading, ensuring accuracy is the number one point of the work. This can create a longer timescale required from the provider to the customer, depending on their experience. 

When choosing a provider for financial translation services, always check the provider has experience within this market. Don’t just take their word!

Human Translating Method

Computer assisted tools i.e. Google Translate can be very inaccurate and damaging therefore the human method/specific software tools via an experienced and professional translator is often the safest route. 

Translation speed is only one piece of the qualities required for your checklist; whereas considering the complexity of the financial document, repetition of the words or phrases and following a quality process needs to be factored in.

Document Visuals

It’s not just about considering the wording but visuals such as charts, diagrams, images with titles or captions, need to be included into the word count. Video translation has become popular with the translation of the speaker.

Language Choice

As a general guidance, a translator can translate approximately 2,000 to 3,000 words a day, not using computer assisted tools. This depends on the language as it differs, the type of document and experience.

AccuEast has been translating financial documents over the last few years, understanding the quality process and terminology needed for this sector. 

If you would like to know more about financial translation or you would like a free, no obligation quote, feel free to contact us info@accueast.com 

Written by Jennifer Lee

Explore the World is a new blog series we will be doing here at AccuEast, where we take you to different parts of the world to discuss regional languages, language extinction, regional culture, and linguistic history.

To begin our journey, we’re going to take you through China – from the provinces of the Northeast, through Central China to the South, and finally to the regions of the West.
When asked what languages are spoken in China, most of us will be able to name Mandarin, Cantonese, or perhaps if you remember some of the autonomous regions of China then you might include Tibetan or Mongolian. However, if you include all of the languages and dialects spoken, China actually has 298.
Let’s begin our journey through China in the Northeast.
Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning are the 3 main regions that make up the Northeast of China, also known by its exonym “Manchuria”.
Given that Jilin and Liaoning both sit on the border of North Korea, it’s unsurprising that Korean is widely spoken in all 3 of these provinces. Obviously Mandarin is as omnipresent here as in the rest of the People’s Republic, however there are also the languages of Oroqen, Manchu and Daur.
Oroqen is a Northern Tungusic language spoken in the Heilongjiang region and some parts of Inner Mongolia. Tungusic languages are a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. There are only 1,200 people who speak Oroqen, and much like the other Tungusic languages, it is rapidly becoming extinct.
Another Tungusic language spoken in this region is Manchu. This is a critically endangered language native to the Manchus. The Manchus are the descendants of the Jurchen people who established the Jin dynasty (266 – 420 AD). They also established two of their own dynasties, the Later Jin dynasty (1616-1636) and the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). Manchus form the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples (numbering over 10 million), but despite their language once being China’s official language, there are only 10 known native speakers left. If you include those who know Manchu as a second language, there are still less than 1000 speakers left.
In the Heilongjiang region and parts of Inner Mongolia, you can also find Dagur (or Daur) speakers. The Daur are a Mongolic people and are numbered around 132,000. There are an estimated 96,000 native speakers and the language has no standardized writing system, instead borrowing those of Chinese and Mongolian. During the time of the Qing dynasty, however, Dagur would have been written using the Manchu alphabet, which is pictured in the Cultural Gallery below.

Written by Jennifer Lee

The advent of Machine Translation (MT) has made massive changes to the field of translation. New roles are emerging and old ones changing. Gone are the days of grunt work, of searching through a dictionary for the right word. Now machines can translate the bare bones of a text for us, leaving us with more time to focus on the important translation decisions. Now we have post-editing, where translators are paid to correct and edit machine translated texts. It’s safe to say that Machine Translation has completely changed the way we work as translators, but we do still work as translators. Rather than merely operating a machine, we are still writing, rewriting, and translating texts in a uniquely human, creative capacity. Of course, the question on everyone’s lips is, “But for how long?”.

There’s plenty of voices today doubting that translators will be needed when MT technology is continuously improving. The favourite contender to ‘take over’ is Artificial Intelligence, or AI.

Artificial Intelligence is a programme or computer that can sense, reason, act, and adapt to data that is fed into it, mimicking human intelligence. Within AI there is machine learning, which continues to improve its performance as it is exposed to more data over time, similar to the way humans learn with experience. Finally, within machine learning, there is deep learning, a subset which is able to learn from vast quantities of data due to its “neural network” that simulates the workings of the human brain.

The complex workings and power of AI certainly make it seem like an intimidating contender in the debate of whether translators will be needed in the future. However, we all use this technology on a daily basis and know very well the quality of the translations it produces, because Google Translate is a neural MT system. Anyone who has used Google Translate knows that its reliability is not always the best.

An example from our own archives is when MT translated a meaningful Chinese idiom “好景不长” (hǎo jǐng bù cháng – a good thing can’t last forever) in the context of a medical text.

“However, the good times did not last long. At the end of August 2020, the patient once again experienced…”

This is obviously incredibly inappropriate when translated into English, particularly with the use of the term ‘good times’, and so we had to change the translation to “However, the improvements were short-lived”. Using slightly idiomatic phrasing to match the Source Text, but not so much as to seem belittling to the patient discussed in the study.

While machines can master ‘direct’ translation methods, it is unlikely they will ever be able to know how to translate a text into different contexts, such as translating an informative article to be used in an advertisement or translating an advanced text to be read by people not versed in the subject. Machines cannot learn when or how to use explicitation (explaining the definition of a specialist term), to translate idioms, to translate puns. Machines cannot learn in what context they should write emotively, or in a specific style.

MT has been an invaluable tool for translators, speeding up turnover and giving translators more time to focus on important translation decisions of a text, but at the end of the day it is just that – a tool. AI will certainly continue to improve machine translation as a tool for translators, but not as a substitute for them.

Here at AccuEast, MT helps us to get your translations back to you even faster and gives us the time to translate them even better. To get a quote, please contact us at info@accueast.com.

Written by Jennifer Lee

People often think of a translated text as being an objective representation, but in reality, a translated text tends to be more of a subjective interpretation. In order to make a text readable to speakers of another language, some information or phrasing may have to be rearranged to create the target text. The meaning behind the words may be drawn from another writer, but the words that are used belong to the translator alone, and so, when the act of translation is performed, the resulting product is an entirely separate, new entity to the original text.

For example, the translation theory of Functionalism argues that the style a target text is written in depends on the purpose that the text is going to serve. If the text is going to be published in a magazine for light reading, the translator is going to use more informal and simplified wording than if the text were going to be published in a journal. If the text is going to be read by a British audience, the translator may use more UK-specific terminology than if it was going to be read by an international audience.

Art is, by its broadest definition, the arrangement of things to create something new, and translation takes the meaning of a source text, and arranges it into a new form, while still expressing what the source intended. If someone creates a beautiful statue, and another person paints a picture of that statue – you would say that both the original sculptor and the painter had created art. If a group of painters all gathered around the sculpture to paint it in an art class, they would each produce different pieces of work, despite having the same source. Each would have produced a unique work of art. So, perhaps in the same way, a source text and a target text could both be seen as works of art, and each person that translates that text will create a unique piece of writing that did not exist before.

Each of the translators working at AccuEast has spent time honing their skills in the art of translation so that we can provide our clients with quality pieces. To find out more, contact us at info@accueast.com.

Written by Megan Jones 

If you are due to have a project, article or anything else translated soon, this blog has landed in your hands at the right time! As we have mentioned before, translation is more than just converting one language to another, there is much more. But let’s talk logistics, please make sure you don’t fall for the following and take deeper consideration with the following: 

An incredibly attractive low price

Although AccuEast takes pride in being competitive with the cost of our clients’ work, we are also realistic. It’s essential that you are not automatically drawn into an agency’s work solely due to price. If they are charging you a cost that is too low, this could certainly be an indicator of poor quality, or even worse, unqualified ‘experts’. 

Poor, disappointing quality

Developing from our previous point, no matter how much you pay, the objective is to have a quality translation piece delivered to satisfy your needs. 

Fast turnaround

As a client, you have to be considerate of the project management process and how long this takes. AccuEast has a wealth of linguistic knowledge within our registered linguist network, though it takes us time to reach out to them and ensure they are briefed adequately on our clients’ needs. This is why if your translation project is completed very quickly, this could be a red flag for a poor translation agency.

If you require translation services in the near future, we really hope you will avoid the above pitfalls! Equally, we hope you will join our existing satisfied clients and enquire with AccuEast for all of your translation needs at info@accueast.com