Got some time in San Francisco between the end of your business meeting and your red-eye flight back home? We know how that goes. If you don't have quite enough time for Alcatraz, there's plenty you can do in the City by the Bay. Leave your colleagues at Fisherman's Wharf (we know how that goes, too) and check out some of the following....
What can a summer BBQ teach us about preparing for a successful localization project? Get a shish kebab of lessons in this new slideshow on BBQing and localization.
What can you learn about localization from a glass of Pinot Noir? Read on to find out.
On July 1st, the winner of the 2012 Euro Cup will be decided. Have you been following the action with over 150 million others worldwide? If not, some of your clients might be! But don’t worry, there’s time to consider your options.
Join us in the stands in the meantime for a look at the first Euro Cup to be hosted in Eastern Europe, how one company launched a successful 16-country marketing campaign around the event, and what the language of team slogans might reveal about the hearts and minds of football fans across cultures.
What do pizza and translation have in common? You're about to find out...
This summer we’re making localization fun with a series of slideshows on some of our favorite vacation activities. Every week we’ll explore the connections between localization and summer pastimes like barbecuing or a day at the beach. It’s a summer sampler of vivid imagery, tasty recipes and useful tidbits served up with some bite-sized pieces of localization advice.
Face it, America: Japan is tired of reading your movies. You move too fast and your convoluted plots are better said than read. And if you’re a Hollywood actor? Sorry, but unless you’re bilingual, don’t be surprised to hear your voice replaced by one of a cast of Japanese celebrities in the near future. The age of Japanese super dubbing is here.
What is super dubbing, you ask? Read on, intrepid international business leaders. While it may seem like a trend confined to the entertainment industry, it could have an impact on how you release and promote your own products in Japan.
Like a picture, a gesture is worth a thousand words. When travelling internationally or planning creative content for a global campaign, you may be compelled to use a seemingly innocuous gesture of approval, like a thumbs-up or OK sign. Watch out, though, as the thousand words you get might not be the ones you want. Here's a quick guide to common hand gestures and their various global perceptions.
Traveling to Amsterdam soon? Want to blend in and look like a real kaaskoppen, sipping jenever and munching on Hollandse Nieuwe, or perhaps some Vlaamse friet and satehsaus? Read on for a taste of real Dutch culture from a real Dutch person. Guest author Aart Balk gives you a sense of what you won’t want to miss in the vibrant heart of The Netherlands (aka Holland).
Turkey may not be the first place in mind when you think of global expansion, but the country merits serious consideration if you want to establish a presence throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
The country’s future is bright, its people friendly, but there’s an expectation of serious commitment when you bring your company under the moon star (ay yildiz) flag. The Turkish proverb, “Bir kahvenin kirk yil hatiri vardir” (A cup of coffee is remembered for 40 years) speaks to both the social and serious nature of an investment in the region.
In this blog post, we’ll take a brief survey of the business case for Turkey as well as a few cultural guideposts you’ll want to heed when you make the move.
When you’re scanning the globe for a few hundred million new customers, China might naturally come to mind. While China may very well be your next source of international growth, it’s not an easy place for foreign investors and U.S.-based businesses to get a foothold. Global companies stumble time and again attempting to access China’s lucrative market. In this post, we’ve put together seven ways you can make the road to Chinese expansion easier to travel.
If ignored, tetraphobia — literally, fear of the number four — could be deadly for your brand in Asian markets. So what is this common superstition and how can you avoid falling into its trap when expanding your business into China, Japan, Korean, and other East Asian countries? And why are we so brazenly flirting with Fate by posting this on the fourth day of the fourth month? Read on to find out more....
The 2012 Disposable Film Festival, a wonderfully "lo-fi" yet decidedly global short film event, took place recently at San Francisco's gorgeous Castro Theatre. The requirements for consideration are that your film be shot on "anything you might have on you" (according to the submission guidelines), and have a runtime of under ten minutes, Our intrepid in-house cinephile, Stephanie Engelsen, reports on the best of the shortest from around the world.
Do you ever find yourself searching for a word that's not there? Perhaps it's a term you're sure should exist, a certain feeling, or an adjective that you just can't quite pinpoint. If you know more than one language, we know you've searched for a term in one, only to come up short in another. With all the richness of words in the world, there are certainly some words and expressions that are untranslatable when it comes to English. Because language and culture are so closely intertwined, it's no wonder that we cannot fully render all words into all languages. Read on to find out the meanings behind mysterious words like jayus, tartle, and prozvonit.
The Acclaro blog is two years old! Two full years of snippets of localization savvy, language, and international business, all for you, dear Mr. or Ms. Acclaro Blog Fan. Since 2010, we've done our best to bring some pizzazz to your international business life, and we hope we've succeeded. Come with us as we take a trip down blog memory lane.
It's la fin ("the end"). The French government has dropped the title of "Mademoiselle" from "official forms and registries". This leaves "Madame" as the only title option for women, corresponding to the equally matrimonially-neutral title of "Monsieur" used by men. What's good for the goose might be good for the gander, but if you use forms on your website for France and beyond, you'll want to make sure they are properly localized for your global markets.
Can you translate colors? With the variety of connotations for colors worldwide, meanings aren't fixed. Maybe you're savvy; you might know that white is the color of death in China and sorrow in India but associated with peace and marriage in Western countries. Or that red can mean everything from danger to love to luck to mourning, depending on where you are in the world. But do you know about other connotations of colors like orange and purple? When it comes time to reach out to global markets, knowing color associations can ensure your message doesn't get lost in psychological color translation. Ready to see how color connotations translate across cultures?
Imagine: you’re in New York City for a business trip and have four hours after your last meeting to explore a city that many natives and transplants alike consider the center of the universe. You can always follow the sea of tourists to the Empire State Building, but if you’re a business traveler with a non-conformist streak, check out these five things to do in New York City after you log off your laptop.
To celebrate Valentine's Day this year, we'll give you a slightly different gift than the flowers or card you might expect. Taking a cue from Japan, we're all about choko (chocolate) ... but who gives chocolate to whom and why might surprise you. In Japan, women give chocolate to men. Sources are unclear about why but some say it may have originated from a typo of a chocolate company executive working on an initial campaign to introduce the holiday. Ready to see what else translates when it comes to Valentine's Day in Japan?
In today's post, we are going to take a break from our usual hard-hitting, cutting-edge perspective on the world of translation and tell you about a very interesting resource for literary translation: the Index Translationum. UNESCO has been hard at work cataloging translated books and facts about literary translations for over 65 years, and they're all available online.
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