Engrish.com: a Must-See Website for Translators

If you haven't already seen Engrish.com, you should check it out. With 80,000 visitors per month, it is the most popular site featuring bad and humorous translations.

Warning: don't visit the site during work. The hundreds of bad translations into English (especially the Top 100) can be a terrible time waster. You should also know that not all bad translations are G-rated.

The video below shows samples from Engrish.com, compiled after the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Where To Submit Press Releases that Target the Translation Industry

If a company is marketing to translators, interpreters, or LSPs, how can it get the word out effectively? Here are a few good places to submit press releases so that they appear for free in some of the best translation news sources:

• MultiLingual News (bimonthly) - complete the submission form
• Global Intelligence Newsletter by CSN (bimonthly) - email a summary and link to news@clientsidenews.com
• inttranews (daily) - email a summary and link to webmaster@inttranews.net
• LISA members can post press releases on the LISA website for free through this submission form, and non-members can do the same for 20 euros
• Translations News (almost daily) - send link through the contact page

You can also post links to the press releases on social networking sites too:

• Translation Groups on LinkedIn - be sure to share press releases as "news" items, not discussions, unless you really are asking a question to start discussion
• Translation Groups on Facebook - links can be shared in wall posts or discussions
• Translation Groups on Twitter - you can "tweet" a shortened press release URL, just as you might share the link in your status on LinkedIn or Facebook. However, if you don't already have a huge following, you might consider joining a "twibe" (Twitter group) like the Translation twibe. This is still gaining momentum - the Translation twibe has only 83 members.

You can also submit your press release to bloggers and commentators who will not repost the release, but may comment on the announcement and link to it.

• Global Watchtower by Common Sense Advisory - send link through the contact page
• T&I Business - email tandibusiness@gmail.com

Other potential outlets for publicizing translation press releases seem to have died out. For example, Elect Online seems to have fizzled long ago.

Am I missing something? Please let me know in the comments below if you read or submit press releases to similar translation industry publications.

Quality Control is Crucial for Public Sign Translation

A little expectation of personal interaction with the translation company could have helped to prevent the Welsh translation blunder that was displayed for all the world to see on a public sign last October.




This is very similar to the amazing translation blunder displayed on a Chinese restaurant sign here.

Large Translation Companies Overlooked for CSA's Top 30

Common Sense Advisory may or may not have overlooked a few companies that should have been on the recent list of the Top 30 LSPs.

CSA has noted that every year it receives feedback with suggested corrections to its report on the Top 20, 25, or 30 LSPs. The feedback suggesting the market is really a different size is to be expected when so many people define the industry differently. The feedback with suggested numerical corrections and notifications that certain companies have been overlooked is also to be expected for three reasons:

• List criteria require that some companies be intentionally excluded as when LLS was excluded from the 2005 list because CSA was not ranking OPI companies
• Few translation companies are public, and not all large private translation companies are willing to disclose their financial information to CSA, so naturally the list is only as good as the data reported
• In such a highly fragmented industry, it is difficult to accurately track all players

At the risk of sounding like a Monday morning quarterback or an armchair quarterback, here are a few companies that were overlooked intentionally or unintentionally. The following companies should probably be listed in the Top 30 based on fairly reliable sources.

• Benesse/Simul International ~$57.6 million
  As previously noted here, Benesse is not only the parent of the language instruction company Berlitz, but also the parent of Simul International. Benesse's 3 subsidiaries with the Simul brand are Simul International ($46 million), Simul Business Communications or SBC ($7 million), and Simul Technical Communications ($4.6 million). This adds up to a total of approximately $57.6 million in 2008 revenue, and revenue for the year ending in 2009 was approximately the same.
• SAIC/SM Consulting ~$50 million
  As previously noted here, SM Consulting is a $75M company that has been providing approximately $50M in linguistic/translation services (what appear to be similar to services provided by L-3 and GLS) to the US Department of Defense since 2004. SAIC is a $9B company that completed announced an acquisition of SMC Consulting in 2008 and completed the acquisition in early 2009. SM Consulting may have been excluded all these years because its linguistic services are somehow categorized differently than those of GLS and L-3, as is often the case with "language" work for government contracts. CSA appears to confirm their numbers directly with each company, and SM Consulting might not be inclined to disclose too much information on its single large government contract. Likewise, SAIC may have been excluded from the most recent list because it is not primarily a language services company; however, CSA does include divisions of larger companies like Xerox and HP on its list.

The following companies are reported to also be large enough to be in the Top 30, but the sources appeared to be more questionable. Not all business databases are very reliable (for example, some have reported that certain translation companies make $2 billion or more in revenue). Some of these errors may be the result of failed currency conversions. We'll let CSA use their resources to double-check the numbers.

• STOPS, Inc. ~$23.8 million?
  Update 8/24/2009: See comments below indicating that STOPS is not a LSP (language service provider), but instead a LSP client and company that resells the services of other LSPs.
  STOPS stands for Specialized Transportation/Translation for Out Patient Services. So, not all of their revenue comes from translation. Some of it clearly comes from transportation services. But according to the D&B Million Dollar Database, STOPS earns $23.8 million in revenue. If that really were the case in 2008, that would be quite a large jump (60% growth) from revenue of $14.9 million confirmed by Inc. 5000 for 2007.
• Kyiv Translation Center ~$80 million?
  According to Gale's Business & Company Resource Center, the Kyiv Translation Center does $80 million in revenue. This looks a little suspect when Gale notes that the KTC only employs 150 people and therefore does $533,000 in revenue per employee, which is not only well above the typical rate for that part of the world, but also well above the highest rate in the current Top 30 list. However, top500.de claims KTC revenue is even higher than 100 million euros.
• Japan Translation Center ~$421 million???
  According to Gale's Business & Company Resource Center, the Japan Translation Center does $421 million in revenue. However, the JTC website notes that it employs only 15 people. Chances are that the JTC actually has revenues of 421 million yen or $4 million.

Other translation "companies" survive on millions of dollars in donations, not sales. These companies do not fit the traditional mold of CSA's top performer, which are all for-profit.

• Wycliffe Bible Translators ~$153 million
  According to the D&B Million Dollar Database, Wycliffe has $142 million in revenue and 900 employees. According to the financial reports on its website, Wycliffe received $153 million in 2008 contributions (revenue) and spent $138 million on "Bible translation and related activities." Wycliffe has also recently begun a 17-year, $1 billion dollar "Last Languages Campaign." This would require average funds of more than $58 million per year.

CSA is open to suggestions and has openly solicited input. Unfortunately, they often limited by the fact that some companies refuse to confirm financial details. The above information has been sent to CSA, so some of these firms may appear on next year's list. Until then, kudos to CSA for pulling together a lot of information that otherwise would not have been public and thereby helping us to satisfy our curiosity with these Top 30 lists and market size estimates.

If you know of additional companies that should be added to the list, please add a comment here. If you want to be kept up-to-date on information like this, then subscribe to the T&I Business Blog RSS feed and email list above!

How Fragmented is the Translation Industry?

Just how fragmented is the translation industry? Common Sense Advisory recently noted that the 30 largest firms generate only 26.6% of total industry revenues and the industry has an extremely low Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) concentration, indicating a very large amount of very small firms.

In a 2007 ATA Conference presentation, I noted some US Census numbers that also show a very large amount of very small firms, which we also call 'mom and pop shops'. See the charts below showing percentage breakdowns of US translation and interpretation firms by number of employees. In 2006, 79.2% of 1,818 total US translation and interpretation firms had 4 employees or fewer. 98.7% had fewer than 100 employees.

That percentage has varied little since at least 1998.

Employment size is not the best number for measuring fragmentation of the industry, especially in an industry that largely follows the agency model and therefore makes heavy use of freelancers. However, even when following the agency model, a firm with 4 employees can only grow so large.

Although these numbers are taken from US Census data, it is pretty safe to say that the rest of the industry is also similarly fragmented. For more on the actual size of the translation and interpretation industries, see the market size links in the right sidebar.

Bad Translation Irritates Women in India

A government order to monitor human trafficking of women was erroneously translated last month in a way that has offended many women in the Southern Indian state of Kerala. The resulting mistranslation appeared to want to keep "a close tab on the wrong movement of women" in a misogynistic Big Brother-ish way. Read more here if you can decipher the English of this original news article.

Does the Translation Industry Benefit from Facebook Networking?

Are there Facebook networks for professionals in the translation, localization, and interpretation industry? Yes. Do translation professionals gain any business benefit from those networks? Or are those networks only useful for shooting the breeze?

A few ways to quickly connect on LinkedIn and benefit professionally from that social networking site were highlighted in the list of the Top 5 LinkedIn Groups for Translation, Localization, and Interpretation. Is it worthwhile to network professionally in a similar way on Facebook?

Check out he following example. Translation is largely a B2B industry, and an article on the Community Marketing Blog recently noted after testing the benefits of Facebook, "there is little question that in a business to business communication the best place to build relationships is either LinkedIn, twitter or email." This assertion was made after a bit of a competition was organized to test the value of these social networks.

Out of the many social network choices for reaching business professionals, LinkedIn stands clearly above Facebook, twitter, Google and email according to findings from a recent Blog-Off contest. LinkedIn dominated hands down with 55% of 2,350 directly referred URLs (separated from the 6,000+ total page views) over two weeks in a Blog-Off contest that involved 12 marketing and social media thought leaders. Facebook eked ahead of twitter with 13% of direct referring URL's versus 11% from the rapidly growing micro-blog site....
Read the rest of the article here on the Community Marketing Blog.

If you still don't believe me that Facebook is not really the place to grow a translation-related business then join the top translation-related Facebook groups and see for yourself:

1. Leave translation to translators!
   (7900+ members, 60+ discussions, 470+ wall posts)
2. Translation Jobs
   (5400+ members, 110+ discussions, 780+ wall posts)
3. Interpreters and Translators
   (4600+ members, 60+ discussions, 390+ wall posts)
4. Soy traductor(a)/intérprete, no un diccionario
   I'm a translator/interpreter, not a dictionary
   (3400+ members, 4+ discussions, 160+ wall posts)
5. Spanish Translator
   (2600+ members, 10+ discussions, 90+ wall posts)

(Note that these numbers refer to total discussions and wall posts, not just recent discussions as measured for the Top 5 LinkedIn Groups for Translation.)

Facebook has many more users than LinkedIn, and Facebook's top 5 translation groups are much larger than LinkedIn's top 5 Facebook groups. So why would Facebook be less valuable? It's really quite simple, and probably more than obvious. Because of each site's targeted focus, it seems that LinkedIners tend to link to colleagues and business relations while Facebookers tend to connect to friends and family. The natural result is that people will then look to LinkedIn for business networking and Facebook for social networking.

LinkedIn group discussions and news seem much more professional and useful to group members overall. Facebook group discussions and wall posts are largely just a mess of freelancer advertisements to other freelancers. Facebook group posters write "I translate from language x to language y and I'm available for work" but the message is only seen by other freelancers, and I'm guessing that group members to not check the discussion boards often if all they see are these advertisements. Please don't misunderstand, some of these groups still offer value to someone. Here are some of the benefits that translation industry professionals appear to be gaining from Facebook:

1. Making a statement "Facebook style"
   Translation professionals like to make statements to their social networks about who they are professionally, and joining a group is something announced on one's feed and in one's profile. Some of these top groups simply make a statement about the members' beliefs or identity.
2. Driving web traffic to the home page of the group owner
   Other groups appear to be directing traffic to other online networks. For example, "Spanish Translator" is clearly directing traffic to http://www.english-spanish-translator.org/, a translator forum, and at least one agency is using a Facebook group to recruit freelancers. However, I would bet that the "Spanish Translator" group on Facebook benefits more from the actual Spanish Translator Forum than vice versa. (The real forum boasts 30,000+ total members and 6,000+ active members.)
3. Marketing to freelancers
   Some discussion posts and wall posts are clearly advertisements selling dictionaries and other products to freelancers, and they might generate a few clicks.
4. Posting freelance jobs
   The "Translation Jobs" group above appears to at least produce a few posts showing jobs and openings for freelance and full time translators. But this group appears to be better for sharing leads than actually promoting oneself and expertise as can be done through LinkedIn.

How effective is Facebook at providing the above benefits to many users? I don't know. Do you have any experience generating good results (or no results) from Facebook? If so, please post a comment here. I would love to hear that I am wrong and that someone in the translation industry has seen wild success thanks to Facebook.

Dilbert: Minor Translation Issues

Freelance translator Terry Gallagher (Japanese and German to English) pointed me to the best translation-related Dilbert cartoon that I've seen. See Dilbert's "Minor Translation Issues" here at the bottom of page 91 in Try Rebooting Yourself by Scott Adams. Naturally, this little gem involves relationships with the Elbonians.



In the first two frames, the pointy haired boss is talking to an Elbonian.
Elbonian: "My Elbonian factory can manufacture your product for pennies."
Pointy Haired Boss: "Is there any downside?"
Elbonian: "Minor translation issues."

Last frame: Two Elbonians, one on phone.
Elbonian on phone: "They either said `plastic' or `the spleen of a pig-footed bandicoot.'"
Other Elbonian, standing next to a box labeled "SPLEENS": "We don't have any plastic."