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.

Destination: Silicon Valley. There is excitement in the air. The atmosphere is electric and the flavor is international. Apple, HP, Intel, Google, eBay, Facebook…the Silicon Valley stalwarts, the biggest high-tech players, the world’s largest technology corporations, they’re all here. And don’t forget Monterey Language Services: We provide conference interpretation services to our corporate clients in Silicon Valley. Seriously, the vibe here is different. We can’t get enough of it. If you want great things to happen, act like Silicon Valley people: move fast and boldly!  And in those instances when language gaps need to be bridged, Monterey Language Services comes to the scene.

Objective: Your Silicon Valley business wants to expand business operations overseas by marketing to international clients. You need to train your multilingual employees to increase their technical know-how and sales skills. You have corporate messages to send to your employees worldwide.  Perhaps you are a high-tech Web media company, a Silicon Valley bank dealing with international clients and transactions, or an international law firm dealing in patents, trademarks and copyrights, private equity, venture capital, and commercial litigation. For clients working in biotechnology & biotechnologies research, medical devices, surgical systems, semiconductors & semiconductors memory and equipment, fiber optic components, entertainment, design, consumer publishing, social gaming entertainment software, business information, and consumer information technology, they all market to prospective international buyers and investors in the most interesting forums and conferences.

Monterey Language Services feels fortunate to have contributed to the success of many of these types of conferences for our Silicon Valley clients. We particularly enjoy interpreting in a forward-thinking and bustling region like Silicon Valley.  To be continued…

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.

Or, put another way, in-person & remote interpretation.

Local interpreters carry out their services in person. They travel to the location – a conference, a business meeting, a doctor’s appointment or a court hearing – and interpret onsite, whether consecutive or simultaneous. There are certainly advantages to sticking with this tried and true approach. Since the interpretation is face to face, there are no worries about technological limitation – no extra delays, always the clearest possible picture and sound, no special adjustment and setup needed.

That is not to say there are no possible pitfalls. Naturally, the pool of available local interpreters is limited, and for rare languages may be entirely nonexistent, not to mention that there is a multitude of travel-related concerns and expenses, from car trouble to traffic.

On the other hand, global interpreters work over the phone or, more often today, through video software. Distance between client and interpreter ceases being a concern, and interpreters’ hours become more flexible. Far more languages and much wider pool of interpreters become available. There are no travel expenses.

However, to balance it out, global interpreters are dependent on cutting-edge technology, with all the attached concerns. Fortunately, nowadays, more and more interpreters can meet these requirements, in terms of hardware, software and internet access, and the technology itself has become much more reliable. We are entering into the future.

There is no clear “superior” choice. Whether selecting a global interpreter or calling up a local one is better depends on the event, the languages, set up and people involved, the situation specifics.

We at Monterey Language Services are always striving to determine the best solution for our customers, and to that end, we offer a full line of interpretation services – whatever your needs, we will find the interpreter for you, whether they are five miles away or on the other side of the world.

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

Can this picture become a reality for the translation and interpretation industry?

As interpreters, we are always interested in the development of interpretation technology, including the possibility of “robot” interpreters. About a year ago, we wrote about the potential of interpretation software and Microsoft’s efforts in that area. Their software is meant to analyze your speech, translate it and synthesize an audio track of your own voice speaking in the target language. (However, the software will first need to study your voice for several hours. Also, it gets around one in eight words wrong.)

So are there robot interpreters in our future? The answer is complicated. Perhaps one day, but not any time soon.

Interpretation software faces many difficulties, in each of its component stages. The first step is speech recognition, an area that has seen great improvement over the last few years. Nowadays, speech recognition figures in our daily lives – when we make a call and are asked to speak to a robot, when we are driving and asked to give commands to the stereo system, etc. Due to its wide range of applications, speech recognition is the most mature of the technologies involved, but even it still has a long way to go before it becomes truly reliable, as we are well aware from our experiences.

Next, the words spoken (and hopefully understood correctly by the system) need to be translated. While machine translation has certainly come a long way, anyone who has tried to use Google or Bing Translate on a foreign language website can testify that what comes out is not always even legible, much less an accurate translation of the source text.

Finally, the software needs to generate a spoken version of its translation through text to speech synthesis. This is possible with today’s technology, but even there many irregularities remain. Intonation, emphasis and other vocal indicators still do not carry over particularly well into artificial voice generators, creating voices that sound, well, robotic.

Beyond these basic limitations of the software, there also remain concerns about the nuances of both translation and interpretation. Questions about homonyms, about words that have multiple meanings depending on context, and of course the issue of cultural differences. There are many situations where even the most sophisticated software will be unable to guess the subtle nuances a speaker intends. A human interpreter does not just translate the words, but also the subtext and hidden meanings within them, judging not only the speaker, but also the audience.

“Reading the audience” to judge their understanding and reception of the translation is a vital skill for an interpreter. It is also one that becomes even more important in smaller, more intimate settings outside of presentations and conference interpretation. In a business meeting, at a doctor’s appointment, even in court, the message needs to be tailored based on the reactions of the listener.

Can you image a robot, as they as now, doing medical interpretation or legal interpretation?

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

Conferences are exciting, especially when they include an interpretation service.  Multicultural and multilingual aspects are added to the conference, creating additional dimensions beyond the subject matter, the speakers, the participants, the location, the room and other details.

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.

The power of language can transform a company in a number of ways. We are continually amazed by how well companies and organizations understand that power and utilize it to its fullest potential.

Through accurate and clear translation of corporate communication materials, customers and employees can gain a better understanding of the corporate message and guidelines and can thus better contribute to the greater success of the corporation.

Global companies working with Monterey Language Services are growing stronger because they have chosen a translation and interpretation company that gives individualized attention to each translation project entrusted to them.

Our company stands firmly by what we believe in and provides the following to our global corporate customers.

Specialty: Translation and interpretation that require high level of expertise

Domains: Medical, legal, technical, and business subjects

Approach: Clear, accurate, and complete translation and interpretation

Value: Professional, efficient, and high quality services

Languages provided: 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)

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

Operated by graduates of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, an internationally renowned school of translation and interpretation, Monterey Language Services draws from a wide range of interpreter networks.

Our interpreters are professionally qualified. They have studied translation and interpretation at the graduate or undergraduate level, or are professionally certified, or have received training in medical, legal and technical subject areas. They are experienced medical interpreters, legal interpreters and technical interpreters. Furthermore, they pursue continuing on-the-job training and education.

Our interpreters are not only local, able to come to our headquarters or to our client sites to perform services, but also distant, working remotely through a range of technology options such as video remote.

Our interpreters work consecutively, but also at conference, offering simultaneous interpretation.

Monterey Language Services has been providing language support to hospitals for years. A short list includes Spanish, ASL, Vietnamese, Arabic, Mandarin and Cantonese, Korean, Tagalog, Russian, French, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Punjabi, Gujarati, and indigenous languages such as Triqui, Mixteco, Zapotec. Even when a rare language is needed, we can vet and bring interpreters to our customers in a matter of hours.

We stand by ready 24-7, either work with a regular schedule of interpreting appointments, or provide last minute on-demand interpretation, for example for a hospital’s emergency needs.

It is our goal at Monterey Language Services to provide a full line of interpretation services. And it is to that end that we maintain our huge pool of professional interpreters to serve you whenever or wherever you need them.

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

Video Remote Interpretation (VRI): What is the first thing that comes to your mind? For the most part, it’s technology. Without technology, VRI would not be possible.

We are already at the point where technology can make this possible with just an app that can be used on any device – tablet, smartphone, laptop or desktop. Our VRI services make sure that an interpreter is just one click away.

Technology such as Skype and Google Hangouts are very popular. However, the downside is that they are not known for being secure, private or reliable, but security, privacy, and reliability are absolutely necessary to serve medical and legal industries.

Monterey Language Services’ video conferencing capabilities are in compliance with HIPPA regulations and meet all the requirements set by the court.  Working together with medical and legal interpreters, technical and project management teams, we provide a solid infrastructure for video remote interpretation serving hospitals, clinics, legal offices, and business nationwide and worldwide.

One of our missions is to assist communication in the mobile age. Through modern video and audio systems, we are one step up to bridge the world’s languages nationally and globally.  See http://www.montereylanguages.com/video-remote-interpretation-services.html

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

Summer is the season for interpretation, especially here at Monterey Language Services! 

Interpretation, however, can mean many different things. It can be in-person, when interpreters travel on-site, to hospitals and doctors’ offices or to conference, including seminars, workshops, and trainings. They provide consecutive or simultaneous interpretation, using transmitters and receivers or, alternatively, the booth, or even simply through whisper interpretation.

Interpretation can also be done from a distance. One option is using a video conferencing system, which can provide private and secure communication that meets medical and legal industry requirements. Another option is Video Remote Interpretation through the use of a tablet, smartphone, laptop, desktop or HD.

We offer all of these options, and more. It is our goal to provide a full line of interpretation services, including any necessary equipment, Spanish to ASL relay, etc. Which method of interpretation would better serve your needs? No matter what it is, you can always find it here at Monterey Language Services.