Monterey Language Services is a translation and interpretation company, offering high quality translation and interpretation services in over 175 languages.

We’ve uploaded some excerpts on our YouTube channel (Monterey Language Services).  Feel free to check these out, you may find them interesting!

Since its creation, Twitter has been a worldwide phenomenon that has connected everyday people with their favorite celebrities, friends, and everyone in between.  Although the service has been provided worldwide, the company has been trying to translate the business tools into 33 languages in order to reach an even broader audience.

These languages include: Afrikaans, Arabic, Basque, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Farsi, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Urdu.

At the Twitter Translation Center, translators can sign on using their Twitter account and help translate various blocks of text for the company. The upside for the translator is experience in the field, as well as their name possibly on the “Top Ten Translators” for those who have been translating the most.

The @MRYLanguages Twitter account isn’t in this top ten just yet, but it does connect directly with Director of Translation Mei-Ling Chen where she will gladly answer questions posed about the company, translation services, or any other related topic in the industry.

I was representing Monterey Language Services, making a company presentation at a client site.  The name “Monterey Language Services” pleasantly and surprisingly initiated a big discussion.    ~By Mei-Ling Chen

Why are we called “Monterey Language Services”?  The answers from the audience included:

• We are located in Monterey County.
• John Steinbeck wrote a lot about Cannery Row in Monterey.
• Everybody knows Monterey.
• When asked where you live and you say Monterey, everyone knows which city you are referring to.

The answers began to branch out further:

• The Monterey area is famous for languages because of several renowned higher education language institutions, such as Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) and Defense Language Institute (DLI).
•  Monterey showcases the language history of the area.  Immigrants of almost every ethnicity worked in Cannery Row.
• ·Monterey has the unofficial title of the language capital of the world.

The name “Monterey Language Services” does have its significance to us, just like names such as Oxford, Napa and The Hague have international significance as authorities on academics, wine, and law.

Because of the name, and the fact that many of us are trained and educated here, we are driven to provide high-quality translation and interpretation services. We are committed to keeping high quality as the leading force in the translation and interpretation services industry.

The name “Monterey Language Services” inspires us to serve the community, as well as every other part of the nation and world.  With this commitment in mind, it is no wonder that the name Monterey Language Services attracted so much interest among the audience whom I met locally yesterday.

What a wonderful time to start a new year!  We wish everyone a successful year to come!

by Mei-Ling Chen

A new client commented: “I trust you will get the meaning as well as the words in all translations. It is very important.”

When customers say this to us, as Director of Translation for many years, I understand what they mean.

It is vital to get the correct meaning in translation. Even more important is to know who your author and target audience are. With this information, the experienced translator is able to make a judgment call.    

Then the translation can be written from the point of view and background of the original author. Whether from a CEO to employees; a department of communications to the general public; or a teacher to a student—the tone, style, and presentation will have to vary. This is a powerful difference that an excellent human translator can make!

With due respect to machine translation, I must say that in order to achieve the above requirements, excellent human translators are needed.  These are translators who have good sense, can analyze the text and the background, and successfully conduct research.

Sure, machine translation may be able to get a rough idea of what a passage is about and what languages are involved. But think twice whether it can boost your company’s image, or provide the quality that your company is looking for.      

If you are lucky, things might turn out right; but if a human has to edit or find bugs in the work done by machine translation, what could possibly happen?

– a waste time, resources, energy
– the need to scrap the work, and redo the entire project
– troublesome enough where you may want to smash the machine software!

This is why we believe in real, genuine devotion to quality and research when working on a translation project.

Monterey Language Services got huge attention from the most prestigious newspaper in Monterey County, and the most famous translation and interpretation school in the world. 

Check us out.

The Monterey County Herald

In the News [click on the image]   

Monterey Institute of International Studies
http://www.miis.edu/about/newsroom/stories/node/21128
[to view it in PDF, click here]

The Californian
http://www.montereylanguages.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/The_Californian_News_MLS.pdf

MLS team members are professional, dedicated and passionate about languages and foreign cultures. We are oriented towards finding the best words for the best translations. As individuals, we take pride in being cultural communicators and in promoting international understanding.

Offering translations from every language into English and vice versa, our company plays an important role in cross-border business communication. We provide translation, interpretation, copy-editing, proofreading, website localization, software localization, multimedia transcription, dubbing, subtitling, foreign language desktop publishing, and more.

At MLS, resources abound to work with foreign languages. Our network is global, and yet locally we are within easy reach of the top language experts in the world. The language history of this area is showcased in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, where immigrants of almost every ethnicity worked. The area has developed into a hub of translation and interpretation education and services. MLS captures the essence of what the Monterey Bay Region offers.

The firm’s website www.montereylanguages.com contains numerous blogs by team members.  Here we recount our experiences working with languages and display a wealth of understanding of how language expresses culture in different parts of the world.

MLS handles all your languages needs professionally. For translation of documents, interpretation for diverse settings or for any other language or culture-related services, email us at info@montereylanguages.com and find out how we can help you:

•    optimize and better formulate your ideas, arguments and concepts
•    enrich your personal or your company’s profile, story or presentation
•    increase your personal or your company’s marketability