Many strange things happen in the translation universe. Some are funny and some are quite sad. The picture below is one of thousands of examples that can be seen every day around the world.

The first question that comes to my mind is: What on earth happened here?
My guess is that some company where the national language is not English decided to hire some “translator” to write an English slogan on a shirt. The job probably asked for some catchy words. And we see the result above.
Essentially, it falls in the category of “it’s so bad it’s funny”. It’s just a hodgepodge of random words.
Perhaps the shirt maker is not concerned about the correctness of the translation since the shirt sales are limited to a small number of locals who are not fluent in English. But if the company is actually serious about selling its products to a larger audience then the translation is totally unacceptable.
To me a product like this shows that the manufacturer does not really care about the quality of its products and I would avoid buying its shirts even if they were attractive and fashionable because I would expect other flaws in the design and the finish of the product.
Before you think that ridiculous translations like this one only happen in remote uneducated regions of the world, have a look at product labels, instruction manuals and restaurant menus in your home town. If you’re like me, you’ll find numerous errors every day, just by walking about. The sad part is that the errors are not just made by translators but by native writers of the language as well. How many times did I find errors in the menu of a local restaurant and how many times did the waiter or owner look at me like I’m an extra-terrestrial when I point out that the menu is littered with spelling and grammar errors! If you can’t bother writing a menu without obvious errors, why should I trust that the food you’re going to serve me is actually going to be edible?
Be careful when you hire a translator or a translation agency. Frankly, I don’t care how many diplomas or years of experience a translator pretends to have. The proof is in the quality of the final product. I like to test translators. It helps us hire people that care about the quality of their output. We test all applicants with in-house and third-party tests for greater objectivity before we hire them. Once they are hired, their work is reviewed by another translator and feedback and coaching are provided to new translators to ensure that they deliver quality output.
Only hire people that take pride in constantly improving themselves, that are humble enough to understand that learning a trade is a never-ending process and that only a product of quality deserves to be delivered to the customer.

As a professional translator using proper terminology is essential to deliver quality translations. As much as we’d like to think that our vocabulary is extensive, we have to be humble enough to admit that we cannot know the correct translation to every technical term in use today. Technology and lifestyles around the world change on a daily basis and we need tools to stay abreast of neologisms.

Since I deal mostly in English to French for Canada personally, I favor two Canadian tools that I consider world class both in terms of the extent of their database and their ease of use.

The first one is Termium Plus from the Translation Bureau of the Canadian government. Its database is actually trilingual: English, French and Spanish. It’s free and it contains a wealth of guides for writers and translators. The link is here.

The second one is Grand dictionnaire terminologique from the Office québécois de la langue française. Its database is trilingual: English, French and Latin. It’s also free and the Office also has a wealth of guides mostly for French writers and translators. It’s link is here.

Sometimes we need to translate terms that are less technical in nature, my favorite website so far is Larousse, the famous French dictionary company. Its website offers multiple languages: French, English, Spanish, German and Italian. The link is here.

Do you write or translate a lot of French text? Do you find that Microsoft Office’s spellcheck is not adequate for your needs? You need a better tool.

The one I’ve been using personally in the last 10 years is Antidote, an excellent software that has been developed by a small software company in Canada for a number of years and has developed a good following.

What’s so great about Antidote? Aside from the fact that it will find spelling and grammar errors quickly in your documents, it’s a great tool to check punctuation, anglicisms, barbarisms, style and all those little bugs that you might have peppered your text with.

Another great feature is that the software can be used as a standalone application or as an integrated plugin with most of the office software that people use nowadays: MS Office, OpenOffice, Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Chrome, etc. It’s available for Windows, Mac OS X and even Linux! There’s even an iPad version.

For more info about this great software, visit the Antidote website.

What on earth is the “singular they”? To me, as a translator it’s a disease of the English language that has taken epidemic proportions in recent years. Consider the following text:

Please call your agent. They will be pleased to help you and answer your queries. You can reach them during business hours from Monday to Friday.

Who are “they” and “them”? It’s the agent. How many agents are there? There’s only one agent. One agent means we need to use the singular when we refer to the agent. So if we know that the agent is male, we use “he” and if we know the agent to be female, we use “she”. We don’t use “they” unless we have more than one agent, be cause “they” is plural, not singular. It’s basic grammar.

Why do so many people use “they” to mean one person? The reason is that people want to include both genders, male and female, in the sentence to avoid offending people. The expression “he or she” could also be used but in practice, it’s generally cumbersome unless you use it sparingly. What are better alternatives?

• Avoid using pronouns
• Repeat the noun
• Make the whole structure plural (“agents” instead of “agent”)
• Use the neutral pronoun “one”
• Use the neutral relative pronoun “who”
• Use the imperative mood
• Rewrite the text to simplify it