Atlas Translations: About Atlas

Atlas Newsletter – May 2009

Atlas Translations takes part in the Museums & Heritage Show

This month, for the third year running, Atlas Translations had a stand at the Museums and Heritage Show, which took place at Earl’s Court on the 13th and 14th May. The Museums & Heritage Show was established in 1993 and since then has continued to be the UK’s leading trade and event for museums, galleries and the cultural heritage sector. Its aim is to help suppliers and operators within the sector by providing them with solutions, ideas and inspiration and that’s where Atlas came into play.

“It was interesting for us being a translation company, as Museums increasingly need information and leaflets about their exhibits translating into foreign languages to suit the needs of those tourists who don’t speak English. I guess it makes tourists feel a lot more welcome if they can read or listen to information about the exhibition in their own language.”

Sara Roden-Scott, Project Manager

“It was a great opportunity for us to attract new clients and to talk to them about our business. I was surprised how many people were interested in translation and interpreting services. Quite a lot of visitors asked for Welsh translations and they were impressed that we offer BSL and Braille. I enjoyed informing people about Atlas Translations in this enjoyable and friendly atmosphere.”

Julia Walther, Work Placement Trainee

Question of the month! Test yourself with our May question: This country is voted the most peaceful in the world! Which Northern language is spoken there? (answer can be found at the bottom of the newsletter).

Bad Translation Turns Racing Product Racist then Racy

The German automobile company, Audi, recently demonstrated that they lack cultural sensitivity and professional linguistic ability when they marketed a car with the name 'White Power.' After controversy broke out, Audi released the following statement and apology:

“Dear visitors, readers and customers,

We are very sorry and unfortunate for what has actually happened and is currently happening to our first press report. Due to a mistranslation of our latest project car - the Audi RS6 V10 biturbo - there were lots of radical right-wing rumours on all different blogs and pages that received our first press report. We distance ourselves from the project title - it was done by our press agency, which obviously mistranslated our German project name into English. Furthermore we distance ourselves from anything that has to do with that group synonym and we would also like to say sorry if anyone got personally touched.

Deepest Regards,

The AVUS PERFORMANCE Team”

As can be seen from that release, it appears that Audi still has a little more to learn. For one, Audi should certainly contact a translation company like Atlas for all its future translations of brands, press releases, and apologies so that professional native English speakers can guarantee not to "personally touch" anyone in the future. Sometimes people understand when they are reading sloppy communication from non-native speakers and sometimes they don't. Fortunately most people will assume that Audi meant to say 'personally offended' or 'personally affected' instead of 'personally touched.'

May fun!

A disappointed salesman of Coca Cola returns from his Middle East assignment. A friend asked, "Why weren't you successful with the Arabs?" The salesman explained, "When I got posted in the Middle East, I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch as Cola is virtually unknown there. But, I had a problem I didn't know how to speak Arabic. So, I planned to convey the message through three posters... First poster - A man lying in the hot desert sand...totally exhausted and fainting. Second poster - man is drinking our Cola. Third poster- our man is now totally refreshed. Then these posters were pasted all over the place.” "That should have worked," said the friend. The salesman replied, "I didn't realise the Arabs read from right to left."

Other News…

More than one month into her work placement at Atlas, Julia comments on her time with the company so far. “After just a short time at Atlas, I can already say that I have learnt a lot, including administrative tasks, project managing and I have also improved my social skills. I like being part of this lovely team. Everybody is friendly and there is such a warm atmosphere in the office. I don’t feel like a work placement but part of a real team due to all the tasks I get to do. I like most of the jobs I do for Atlas, especially invoicing and dealing with private individuals who need documents translating. This can be really challenging. Of course there are jobs that I don’t find so interesting, such as manual word counts, but these tasks also have to be done!”

Atlas welcomes new work placement Gilles, from Strasbourg in France. Gilles always enjoyed studying languages from an early age, mainly Italian and English. He recently completed a BA degree in Applied Foreign Languages at the University of Strasbourg and during the third year he chose to specialise in translation. He hopes to do an MA in translation in the future.

Franconian

Gilles has only been with Atlas a short while but has already taught us a bit about the ‘Franconian’ dialect he speaks. He explains, “I was born in the ‘Moselle’ region of France, which for many years belonged to Germany but is now French and thanks to my grandmother, I can speak the region’s dialect!” Moselle Franconian is a group of High German dialects spoken in parts of the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, in the south of the German-speaking Community of Belgium, in the neighbouring region of Moselle in France, as well as in Romania, because of the emigration of numerous German families between 1100 and 1300, primarily from areas in which the Moselle Franconian dialect was spoken at that time. Moselle Franconian is spoken in around half of the Rhineland and is part of Franconian West Central German.

Answer to May question:

Norwegian.