As many in our office at Monterey Language Services—including our director—are alumni of the Middlebury Institute, we join the career fair every year to speak to promising students and other alumni who attend the event. Those involved ranged from conference interpreters to patent translators or localization project managers, and each one spoke with lots of enthusiasm and eagerness about their experiences and hopes for the future.

The career fair takes months of planning to invite and coordinate the attending companies. When the doors initially opened at 8:00AM for preparation, we were there to set up. As in years past when the event was live, we prioritized mobility with our booth—with our information placed on the table, we were free to walk around the booth and meet attendees at eye-level. One attendee mentioned that it made them feel much more at ease to speak with company employees while we were all standing, rather than speaking with company employees who were sitting.

Our booth was a roaring success. Between the official hours of the fair, 9:00AM-12:00PM, a never-ending multitude of people came to inquire about our positions. It was a treat to meet such friendly faces and discover talent from across the globe. We hope and know that regardless of the positions these students and alumni earn, they will achieve great careers.

We would like to thank not only the attendees, but also the staff at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies for making this event such a success. We know that many, including ourselves, were eager to come to the career fair in-person after such a long time away, and we think that it could not have been better. Thank you.

This graphic novel project is part a type of new media, a pioneering effort by a handful of creators in search of a new medium for presenting art, story, voice, and music. A pool of talents was gathered for an old-fashioned romantic adventure with elements of Arabian Nights, Cinderella, and the Shangri-la myth. The story depicts a romantic adventure that spans modern-day New York City and the ancient, fictional country of Gao in China. In the midst of modern and old, fiction and non-fiction, West and East, English and Mandarin, romance and mystery, the graphic novel indeed is exotic to watch.

The work has been produced into ten video chapters. To give you a glimpse of our translation work, among what has been published: Chapter 3 has the most translation voices so far. The significant amount of Mandarin presented among English voices indeed makes the graphic novel stand out as a unique and interesting entertainment piece!

Monterey Language Services took extra time to polish the translations into Simplified Chinese to ensure not only accuracy, but an enjoyable and colloquial read for native speakers. Some of the challenges for this project were derived from cultural differences in how to translate certain phrases created specifically for the graphic novel.

For example, we have the “golden doom,” which refers to a specific event in the story. Because the event transports people similarly to the Christian idea of the rapture, our translation was “极乐升天,” which means “bliss ascension” in Chinese language.

One more example of the cultural challenge is rooted in English homonyms. The sentence: “They follow the standard of Lord Kang and swear on his eyes.” In this sentence, what does “standard” mean? If we suggested “average or normal requirement,” it actually would be incorrect! “Standard” in this instance means a battle flag—something ancient soldiers would follow on the battlefield.

Another difficulty was dealing with the ambiguity of written words. In spoken English, a person’s tone can very easily denote sincerity or sarcasm — consider the phrase “good job” being spoken sincerely and being spoken sarcastically, and their meanings become very different. While the context and illustrations in graphic novels can alleviate this confusion in text, sometimes the tone could be just missed. One such problem occurred in our initial translation of “What a stunt,” a line which our translator took be said in admiration, when in actuality, it was an insult. Through our editing/reviewing process we discovered the issue, and the translation was changed from “真是好身手” (really good) to “真有一套,” which has a similar meaning in a more sarcastic tone.

We are incredibly proud of the work we were able to provide for this project, and would like to add more viewing pleasure and excitement by sharing the above behind-the-scenes glimpses to our translation work. We wish all the success to the audience and contributors to the graphic novel. The chapters will be published in video format weekly on YouTube until the tenth and final one is uploaded.

Subtitle translation is a very useful way to relay information, as subtitles are shown alongside videos. Like all media, it can range from simple entertainment, to scientific, political, or anything. We’ve collected some best practices for subtitle translations below.

First, be mindful of the length of translations. You have to remember that subtitles only have a set amount of time and space to be displayed on screen. You should try to be as concise as possible while also staying as true to the speaking character as possible. If you think you need more space to say something, consider how long the character is talking for. Would it be possible to separate the sentence into two or more parts? Let’s say that a character is talking for ten seconds. You could possibly split a line into two five second segments. That should ensure that you get the viewer has enough time to read the entire line without being too distracted by the length of the line.

Furthermore, do not ever exceed two lines on the screen at a time. Standard practice is at most two lines, but any more than that and it becomes a huge distraction and an eyesore to the viewer. The aim of subtitling is to avoid being intrusive while providing viewers a way to comfortably enjoy the media.

Also be sure to use the right kind of software. There’s a lot of different programs out there that subtitlers use, and it really depends on how you’d like to go about it. For example, while not industry standard, many people enjoy using AegiSub for its easy use and features that aren’t too heavy on resources. Other people may use other programs such as Adobe Premiere or even MemoQ. It all really depends on how you work and if your employer has a preference.

Most subtitlers come across a dilemma between “soft” and “hard” subtitles. Soft subtitles are subtitles that aren’t hard coded to the video. The best way to think of it is to imagine a picture. If you try writing on it, the writing will be permanent, unable to be removed. With soft subtitles, however, imagine taping your text onto the picture. It’s not permanent, and you can remove it whenever you like. The advantage to soft subs is that you can give the user more freedom. If they want to turn off the subtitles, then they can. If they want to use a different language subtitle, they can easily swap them out.

Hard subtitles on the other hand are hardcoded to the video. Once you use hard subtitles, they are not coming off of that video unless you manually edit them out. The advantage to hard subtitles is that people won’t have to go through any extra steps to load subtitles. They can easily just use one file to and enjoy the subtitles. Of course, they will lose the freedom of being able to turn them off, but that’s what the tradeoff is.

The last thing to be mindful of is that subtitling is, in most cases, localization. You are not expected to do a 1:1 translation of what characters are saying. You are expected to give characters their voice in another language. That being said, you should be careful of over-localizing to the point that the character is completely different than what they sound like in the original version. This is where it’s useful to have editors and QAers to help review your subtitles and make sure that they’re good to go.

There’s a lot to keep in mind while subtitling, but one good way to keep in mind what best practices are is to review other websites’ guidelines. For instance, many people follow Netflix’s guidelines for subtitling when doing their own, even if they aren’t employed by them.

Subtitling is fun, but it takes time to become familiar with the process. The good news is once you get it down, it’ll be second nature.

Our clients depend on us to get their translated texts to them by a certain agree-upon point, so that they can make their own deadlines. To our customers, we and our translators are just one part in a machine that needs everyone to be on time to run smoothly. If we – or any other part of that machine – fail to perform our part in a timely manner, the entire thing will grind to a halt. Time will be wasted, and time is money.

Missing a deadline by one day, or even just a few hours, can have extensive consequences for a business. For example, if the translation of a manual didn’t arrive in time to be sent to the client’s manufacturer, production would not start on time either. The manufacturer has their own schedule and deadlines, and the client’s order may end up being moved down the queue far more than just one day. The same thing could happen at the next step in process as well.

Compare it to making a connecting flight. If you’re ten minutes behind on the first leg of your journey, you don’t just arrive late, you might not arrive at all.

It is our goal to make sure we meet every deadline, to never put our clients in such a difficult situation.

So how do we do it? Our strict management process ensures that every step of the translation is completed on time and any delays are caught and dealt with quickly and efficiently. We follow up with our linguists by phone and email, so nothing is allowed to slip between the cracks.

We know how important making the deadline is to our clients, and we make sure to do our part in keeping their business machine running smoothly.

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

To assure this, we have developed a rigorous management process, starting with choosing the best translators from our translator database. We always select translators with the subject matter knowledge and experience necessary for the project at hand, using translators who specialize in marketing for marketing translations, medical translators for medical translations, legal translators for legal translations, and technical translators for technical translations.

Using translators unsuited to the subject matter leads to mistakes, and it is the most common problem in translation projects. That is why selecting the right translators is a fundamentally important step in our process.

We don’t rely on just a handful of translators. We have a huge database and network of linguists, many of them accredited and certified, and we are continually expanding it, always looking for the best translation professionals in their fields. We start by screening our translators and testing them to make sure they are able to perform to our standards. We also build and maintain a professional working relationship with them, to make sure they understand our standards and our clients’ needs.

Even after the translation is complete, we further review our translators’ work to make sure they meet our quality requirements. We find, isolate, verify and resolve any issues. With the multi-stage quality assurance process, which uses at least two linguists for every translation, followed by an extra round of QA and Verification, we ensure that no mistakes slip past us into the final product.

Doing the job right the first time is utterly important. It saves time and avoids extra cost. Best yet, it helps our clients increase communication success and business growth. This is our mission every day and we are loving it!

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

For translation and interpretation projects, why do customers prefer to hire a translation company like Monterey Language Services instead of an individual translator or interpreter?

The short answer is a company like ours has a system and resources in place to guarantee quality and availability.  In other words, we provide professional translation and interpretation services.

We make sure all our customers are confident that their projects are being handled by experts and their requests will be met with the highest possible quality. We are our customers’ external team, helping them move forward to the growth of their core business.

Whether it is a request for a Chinese interpreter for two hour or a couple of Spanish interpreters and Portuguese interpreters for two days; a one-page press release to be translated in eighteen languages, or a thirty page manual to be translated into Spanish, French, German, and Japanese, we take care of them all.  That is our everyday life.

First, we recruit highly skilled translators and interpreters every single day – find the best translators and interpreters with the right language pair and expert background knowledge, and test them. Then, we train them according to the customer’s guidelines. We coordinate them and brief them with all the necessary information, so they become a part of the company we serve.  

We also decide on how many linguists to deploy to assure quality in every aspect and provide backup translators and interpreters if one becomes unavailable. We provide all languages assistance in order to meet our customers’ needs for comprehensive and full line services.  Once a customer finds Monterey Language Services, they don’t need to go anywhere else.  We tailor solutions to our customers’ specific needs.

Last but not least, often times, a translation project, a conference interpretation event, or a voiceover/subtitling project requires a team effort.  Projects are usually supported by a group of professionals rather than a single-handed individual effort.   It could involve so many aspects that only an experienced and professional company like Monterey Language Services can excel in it.

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

You have found us – we provide quick & easy solutions for all your translation needs. Tell us about the subject of the text to be translated, its size and the languages you want, and we will provide a quote. Send us the files, and within short order, we will deliver a clear, accurate, complete translation.

That’s it! That’s all you have to do. Simply send us the text you want translated, then leave all the rest to us.

Of course, quite a bit more goes on behind the scenes, starting with doing the translation right the first time. We use a multi-step process to ensure the quality of our translations, starting with the translation itself, then editing, followed by proofreading and QA. Every translation is confirmed by at least one other linguist to assure that the meaning of the original is conveyed clearly and accurately. 

We also check for completeness and formatting and can perform DTP image editing as necessary. We work with any format, from Word documents, to PowerPoint presentations, to Excel spreadsheets, to software applications, to website localization. Whether you’re looking to translate a code of conduct, an employee handbook, company policies, a slideshow, a survey or a script, we can make it happen.

We can also handle any subject matter. Whether legal documents, technical manuals, or medical reports, our highly-trained translators will rise to the challenge. Our specialization is in highly-technical subjects.

Furthermore, we provide over 175 languages (including Arabic, Japanese, Hebrew, Malay, German, French, Indonesian, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Italian, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Russian and more).

We treat every project with special care, and our goal is to always try our best to make sure the readers understand the original text in their own language, as clearly and as easily as possible. 

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

Before the curtain opens, there is a lot of preparation to be done. From selecting a team of conference interpreters, putting together interpretation equipment & the audio and video system, setting up interpreter rooms or interpreter booths, to studying the conference materials in advance, there must be an architecture, a design, a goal in order to achieve the best result in a conference interpretation assignment.

With so many aspects involved, conference interpretation is a perfect example of a team at work.  A team consists of project managers, interpreters, engineers, technicians and conference organizers. Orchestration becomes such a complicated task that it requires a division of work and a smaller team within the team.  Therefore, a conference interpretation event is usually supported by a group of professionals rather than a single-handed individual effort.

At Monterey Language Services, a simulation is often conducted before a conference interpretation event goes live.  This quality check process is valuable to ensure that we contribute to the success of a conference.  From one successful event to another, we have had many wonderful experiences and truly enjoyed every part of conference interpretation.  We are proud to call “conference interpretation services” one of our best expertise!

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

Professionalism—Medical Terminology and Quick Reactions

To be able to interpret in the medical field, a solid knowledge in the medical terminology is essential. Because palliative care is often utilizes multidisciplinary approaches, the medical interpreter needs to be equipped with both general and specific medical terms. In addition, to ensure the completeness of information, the interpreter needs to react quickly to the situation. For example, when family members engage in conversations among themselves instead of having a discussion with the medical provider, it is often recommended that the interpreter switches to simultaneous interpretation to convey as much information as possible.

Human Qualities—Composure and Compassion

In the medical interpretation, the interpreters often need to deliver serious messages such as the time the patient has left or an unfavorable prognosis. While the patient and family members may become distressed or emotional over the news, it is vital that the interpreter remain calm and composed in these situations. This can be a very difficult balance to achieve as medical interpreters should embrace compassion and empathy for the patients but at the same time need to maintain their professionalism. However, this aspect also injects humanity into this profession, making it extremely fulfilling.

Interpretation, therefore, is beyond simply converting one language into another. Because human beings are lively creatures who show emotions, human interpreters should take both professionalism and humanity into account to ensure optimal communication.

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for more information.

The story below is shared by Ringo Li who came to this country as a young immigrant.

Imagine that you just arrived in a new country and you do not understand its official language very well. The excitement and apprehension you feel are equally intense. For many international and immigrant students, this is an experience they have gone through at least once in their lifetimes.

As the number of foreign or immigrant student increases in public schools, professional translators and interpreters are oftentimes required to assist the newcomers. While the demand for language services increases, the language services in California’s schools and districts lack consistent standards and guidelines. In some cases, these departments are not ready to serve the students and the families who speak different languages.

What Is The Cure?

According to the quality indicators released by the California Department of Education, some attributes a quality interpreter should possess include:

-The interpreter should have extensive understanding in both languages

-The interpreter should convey the messages clearly and accurately.

-The interpreter should be experienced in the fields of his or her qualifications

Why Is This Important?

Without clear and accurate communication, foreign or immigrant students may not be able to voice their concerns and opinions. This lack of clear communication may lead to cultural misunderstanding or even conflicts on campus. Unquestionably, quality translation and interpretation services are the key to quality communication. In the end, a more harmonious education environment can cultivate better citizens, and a more beautiful world will no longer be a dream. The power of language is greater than we think.

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for more information.