BURG Translations Blog
The future is now: Real-time translation has arrived on Skype
Without a doubt, the world is shrinking. Today’s global business climate involves more deals with overseas clients. More conversations with people in other languages are taking place. And, more partnerships across borders are forming.
Conducting business across international time zones is often tedious, though usually beneficial. When you arrange a meeting, you must also arrange to have a translator present. That is, until now.
Is french the language of the future?
When you think of common languages of the world, French is not one of the first that comes to mind. There’s a good reason for that. French is the sixth most common spoken language in the world. It only takes a backseat to English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic.
Now, new reports have a few eyebrows raised. According to a study by investment bank Natixis, more people will speak French by 2050 than any other language.
Today, 220 million speak French. The study determined that by 2050, an estimated 750 million people will speak French globally.
The rise in numbers is shocking given its current position in the global language rankings. Without a doubt, English holds the spot as the top language spoken around the world. For a long time many have considered Mandarin Chinese as a fast up-and-comer because of China’s strong position in the global economy.
Although a seeming unlikely threat, French has one strong weapon in its arsenal to take back its spot as the lingua franca of the 21st century: the large colonies with growing French speaking populations around the world are set to explode over the coming decades.
The proof is in the numbers. Read more
The rise in popularity of machine translation
It’s the start of many memes, jokes, and laughs on the Internet: machine translations. Anyone who has tried to plug a sentence into the Google Translate tool knows that once in a while, a computer struggles to churn out a perfect, grammatically correct translation. While some errors are subtle, many are humorous. In the worst-case scenario, machine translations are culturally offensive.
With so much on the line, many wonder why a company would ever leave marketing materials, product information, or research in the hands of a computer. Yet, studies show that machine translations continue to increase in popularity.
The state of the translation industry
Translation services continue to make great advancements. From enhanced machine translations to streamlined human written translations, a lot is happening. Companies in the life sciences, legal, and manufacturing industries see the benefit of this forward movement.
What translation services refers to
Translation services encompass a variety of types of translation work. The two primary categories the work of this industry falls into include:
- Perfectly translated written material needed for legal documents and use in high-compliancy industries.
- Interpretative services needed to get the general idea of the message conveyed in the source text. Read more
What real-time translation means
Imagine you are on a business trip to Paris. Your company just launched a new prescription drug with great success in North America. Now you are ready to bring it to France – a market that has yet to see a drug like yours.
Upon arrival, you realize that those basic French classes you took in college are not going to get you through your trip. Although you know the basics, finding your way around the capital city is difficult. To make matters worse, the only samples of your product you have available are in English.
