Work as a translator

Snježana Merdžan Ćuić, Resources Manager

We have imagined today’s blogpost to a form of an excerpt from a translator’s diary written by Veronika Mišura. Veronika graduated in German and English at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb and has many years of experience in translating. This is how Veronika perceives translator’s work:

Anyone can do it. What’s so difficult about it? You graduate from a ‘real’ faculty, and then, for starters, master a foreign language by going to the respective country during summer or in a student exchange programme and return (or stay there) as a multi-functional expert.

How many times have we heard such tips and recommendations, but what you read between the lines is how you are actually not being taken seriously, let alone professionally. Apologies to the rare exceptions who are either people that appreciate the knowledge of a foreign language while having in mind the old saying “The more languages you know, the more of a person you are”, or people who found themselves in a situation where they had to translate a text for someone else, out of need or obligation.

And it all begins with first a lesson: “This is a book. Is this is a book? Yes, this is a book.” And you’re doing great, you understand everything, it all seems simple and easy. Then you start to translate foreign lyrics and feel pride that you get it all and are able to communicate in a different language.

But what is communication? It is the transfer of a message – that can be done in a million different ways: using various signs, body language... If the recipient understands it, mission solved. However, what do you do when you need to be so accurate that even a comma can be the key element?

Now that is what I have almost always wanted to do, though I did imagine my future job somewhat differently from how I do it today. Still, the purpose has remained the same: to transfer a text written in one language to the recipient in another language as accurately as possible, keeping it in the spirit of the language and maintaining the style while of course conforming to the grammar and orthography rarely known by native speakers themselves. Time and advanced technology require new skills, which is why I have learned to use translation tools, a “must have” in this industry.

In any case, I wouldn’t trade my profession for any other since I don’t know if there is another one where you can encounter so many topics from various fields. It seems to me that nowadays there are more and more of people with this global knowledge who can be identified with the man from an anecdote retold a long time ago about an executive who threw a letter on his secretary’s desk saying: “Retype it in English.”

Bosnian – new language on Google Translate

Snježana Merdžan Ćuić, Resources Manager

Google Translate has from the very beginning been quite a popular tool. It was launched in October 2007, although its beta version was launched in 2006, and since then it has gone through 11 development stages. Croatian language was added in the tenth stage, in May 2008. What is Google Translate anyway? It's a free online service that translates texts and web pages. The tool creates a bridge between network content and people's ability to access the data.

On May 8, 2013, 5 more languages were added to the list, one of which was Bosnian. The Google Translate list now comprises more than 70 languages. An important note is that Bosnian constitutes a „full launch", while the other four languages (Cebuano, Hmong, Javanese and Marathi) have been launched as 'alpha' version (meaning that there might still be some inaccuracies in translations). Users who have tested Bosnian found the translations to be imperfect so additional work is still necessary.

Regardless of the initial flaws, this is truly a big deal. Having been included in the language list by Google Translate only proves that no one can or is to ignore localization into Bosnian as one of equal languages in Southeast Europe.

Translator's job

Vanja Vurdelja, Translator

Translating for a translation agency can be a rather interesting job. Many people immediately relate translating to literature or wonder how we can think of our profession as an interesting one if it is not novels that we translate. Isn't it boring to translate user manuals, medical diagnoses, various legal documents such as rulings, excerpts from the court register and similarly boring and monotonous reading? Yet with such translations you can learn a great deal, and even have fun. For example, isn’t it funny to broaden your knowledge of quite obscure topics such as winter service vehicles or colonoscopy? Or boast about how you have translated mayor's memo to foreign countries and by doing so contributed to the strengthening of bilateral relations? Sometimes you don't even have to read or translate fiction so as to come across an interesting story - there are plenty of them in the real life. Rulings related to a certain individual can develop into a true crime story making you translate every following sequel with expectation and feeling content when in the end everything turns out for the best for the unfortunate defendant, whom you've become fond of in the meanwhile, because his crime was turned into a completely minor offense through the change of law.

Besides, every good translator ought to know the grammar and spelling of both source and target languages quite well. Unfortunately, such knowledge can develop into a professional deformation. A few days ago I read a notice on the bulletin board in my building: „Dear tenants, we would like to inform You that several basement storages were broken into last night. (…)“ A normal person would initially get worried about their basement, but not me, that was not my first thought. Instead of the content of the message my critical brain registered the amount of the spelling mistakes in the introductory sentence first. Not only was the verb „break“ incorrectly written, but also the pronoun „you“ was written in capital letter even though they were not addressing one particular person. Compared to this linguistic offense, my brain obviously thought that the news of possible break-in into the storage was of secondary importance. In any case, this is not a regular brain, but that of a translator. :)

Key Difference Award - for encouraging equality and diversity of human resources in 2012

Snježana Merdžan Ćuić, Resources Manager

On Wednesday, 17 April 2013, the Key Difference Award was presented under the patronage of the Ministry of Labour and Pension System. Since 2011 the award is presented in four categories: general equality, gender equality, age equality and equality for people with disabilities.

It all began in 2007 when the web portal MojPosao.net and UNDP Croatia initiated the Employer of the Year for Persons with Disabilities Award which was presented each year up to 2011 with emphasis on awarding employers who excel in employing persons with disabilities and ensure quality working conditions.

Legal framework - which regulations prohibit discrimination in Croatia?
It is important to note that discrimination is prohibited by EU regulations, and in Croatia by the Constitution, international treaties which the Republic of Croatia joined and several Acts of the Republic of Croatia for which the umbrella act is the Anti-Discrimination Act that prohibits discrimination in 17 discriminatory categories (for example age, gender, disability, nationality, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.) encompassing almost all aspects of life. The Act has no limitations in its application, or simply put, no one is allowed to discriminate others.

Business in modern times
Business is different today as opposed to 50 years ago: the world is globally connected meaning that workers from different countries increasingly travel all over the world to seek work. Such movement leads to greater cultural and religious diversity both in private life as in the workplace. The work force is becoming older, persons with disabilities and LGBT groups are becoming ever more exposed in society, while women are becoming an increasingly important part of the work force. Employers have to adapt to these circumstances by ensuring the same quality of working conditions for all. This approach also has a strategic value for the company: in the competitive market it is becoming increasingly important to be employer who attract and retain talents which will enable them to survive and profit in the market.

Objective of the Award
The Key Difference Award is also focused on protecting human as well as worker's rights in the workplace. Its goal is to identify, raise awareness and encourage the dissemination of information and knowledge on best practices of diversity management as a valuable resource in the business of each company.

Foreign Language Learning in Croatia

Zana Boljkovac, Project Manager

Croatia is located in the south-eastern part of Europe, where each of its neighbouring countries forms its own language community. Precisely because of its geographic position, Croats have been in contact with numerous foreign languages throughout history, and some of them were also official languages in Croatia. Regardless of the fact that Latin was the official language until the 19th ct., Italian was present in Istria throughout its whole history, while German and Hungarian dominated the northern parts of Croatia.

In terms of investments in foreign language learning, we are at the very top of the European average
When we talk about foreign language learning, many studies position Croats at the very top of European charts. In fact, Croatia belongs to the group of countries which are above average when it comes to the proportion of time which is allocated for learning foreign languages in primary schools (11.1%), side by side with countries such as Belgium, Luxembourg and Malta. In addition, 60% of students attending the higher grades of secondary school have learned two or more foreign languages, and this places Croatia very high with 89.9% according to data provided by Eurostat, Directorate General for Statistics of the EU. According to the said statistics, only 10.1% of Croatian students learn only one foreign language, while 89.9% of students learn two or more foreign languages. The most common language is English.

We are no polyglots, but...
One local Internet portal has published a research that shows which foreign languages we speak: for example, 40% of citizens believe that they have a good command of English, 38% believe they know German, and 23% can say the same thing about Italian. Only 9% of them can boast of having a good command of Spanish and Russian. The superficial knowledge of Spanish is probably the result of watching soap operas which took over the TV screens in the nineties, while the most common experts in Russian are the retired who used to learn Russian in secondary schools.

Who speaks foreign languages in Croatia and where
As it is usually the case, in the age group from 15 to 34 years of age, knowledge of foreign languages exceeds 90%, while for those older than 65 this percentage falls below 50%. In Istria and Primorje more than 90% of citizens speak one foreign language, in Zagreb 89% and in Dalmatia 84%. Approximately 21% of citizens do not have command of any foreign language. Since a large number of people works in the tourism sector, speaking foreign languages, primarily English, German and Italian is extremely important. Every guest appreciates being served by a person who knows their own language, because it can make them feel like home, even for a moment, despite being in a distant land.

Positioning and the EU
The promotion of Croatia as a strong tourist destination will grow as of 1 July 2013, when we will also become the official EU member. The community’s education plans suggest that every citizen should know at least 3 languages, and an example of such plans is the Mother tongue + 2 initiative. Croatian language will once again become a part of a
multilingual community as the 24th official language of the EU. It is a common belief that the trend of learning foreign languages will continue to grow, and in the meantime, we can recall some of the grammar rules of our own language.

Creative writing - how and why

Sandra Stojak, CEO

In order to write effective marketing texts able to achieve a desired success, mere skills to express oneself in writing are not enough. Marketing texts must be innovative simply because the market is saturated which is why only that which is surprising and different becomes visible and noticeable. That is why creativity is an extremely important element in written marketing, which, among other things, means that one can establish and follow a new path and abandon previously set up frameworks. Creative writing as a skill in this context can prove quite useful as it can help us to perceive reality and the situation differently with the help of a written word.

How to step forward with creativity?
Creativity is a process of creating which refers to imagination, meaning that the possibilities of expression and innovations are practically infinite. To work on your inspiration, try to test the following verified pieces of advice that can help you to advance your imagination while generating new, creative and effective texts.

1. The change of perspective
The main goal of a marketing text is to attract the attention, but to achieve such an effect among the multitude of other texts is indeed not easy. One of the possible ways of attracting attention is to establish an unusual context which means that the title stands out due to certain circumstances. The change of perspective implies that the title is formulated from another angle, for example, from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about a particular thing or from the perspective of a targeted user, or maybe even of an omniscient entity. It is therefore necessary to perceive a text as a creative game, as well as to change the message in such a way to give it new outlines that attract attention.

2. Minimalism
It is highly significant to remove all the redundancies from a marketing text and allow the transfer of information that really matter. It is of course essential to keep the creativity as an attribute, but it should certainly not harass exc

3. Poetry
Does poetry contribute to the efficiency of a marketing text? The answer is yes, still one ought to be careful and moderate as well as know how to use it correctly. Poetry may be what makes all the difference and that singles out a text from a stack of texts with similar content. However, it is definitely not appropriate to turn a marketing text into poetry and expect to blow the customer's mind. Poetry can be a good addition to a selling strategy; it can ensure some bonus points with the readers, which is what it does in the best marketing texts.
essively as the message will be lost all too soon. What people seem to appreciate most is to receive in a short time clear and effective information that can be used instantly.

How to Create Multilingual SEO Translation of Tourist Websites

Mladen Stojak, Managing Director

How to accomplish good rating of tourist websites on search engines like Google, attract more visitors and turn visitors into customers? The answer is high quality content. That can be accomplished by content which is reliable, professional, authoritative and original; content which is characterized by appropriate style and with titles, subtitles and meta descriptions that are designed in a way to attract, interest and keep visitors and motivate them to act. Another issue is that of increasing reach and becoming visible globally and not just on the local market. The answer to that problem is multilingual SEO. This concept allows tourist websites to move past local frames and become more visible and available on national and international search engines in different language combinations. With the right application, multilingual SEO can lead tourist websites to better positions on search engines and help increase their reach on markets that were previously unavailable by removing language or cultural barriers for potential customers or users of services. As we have already pointed out on this blog, people worldwide generally use the Internet, i.e. search engines, for getting information, choosing and booking their holiday destination. Another fact that should be taken into account is translating content into English simply isn't enough. Although many people would disagree at first, the influence of English on the Internet has decreased and it is no longer the most popular language according to the number of searches (it has been replaced by Chinese). In addition, research states that more than 75% of Internet users view sites with non-English content and almost 98% of Internet users search for content using their mother tongue. Therefore, multilingual SEO translation is simply a necessity if you want your tourist website to be visible globally.

The importance of the right selection and localization of key words
People in different countries can search for the same things in different ways. There are various reasons for this – cultural, economical, political, geographical or other. Because of this, the approach to each country has to be unique as well. This entails the choice of unique target words and the creation of SEO translations. When choosing key words it is necessary to conduct research with the aim of understanding specific words and phrases used in tourism and gaining the knowledge regarding different foreign markets' values on tourist websites. It is also essential to create a choice of alternative terminology, such as slang and idioms, linguistic hybrids and dialect differences.

Localization of multilingual content
Multilingual SEO translation refers to website localization with the goal of accomplishing the best possible reach in the target language and culture and the best possible rating on search engines. This is why different aspects of multilingual SEO translation just like for SEO copywriting include the distribution of key words density, the number of words, the choice of the best key words, which do not necessarily have to be the same in different languages, and entail the engagement of native speakers who have the ability of SEO copywriting in the target language. With regard to multilingual SEO optimization, the content in each of the languages has to be optimized as if it was completely independent, seeing as every language has its own structure, different key words and terms. It is not enough to simply localize key words, terms, descriptions and titles and use them as a basis for writing the content without previously testing and researching the market, because that has a direct influence on the overall positioning of the website. After the localization of key words, we can optimize any website creating content in accordance with the defined SEO guidelines. Multilingual SEO projects are best performed as team work and in complete cooperation with a partner for localization who understands the issue at hand and has experience in multilingual SEO and SEM projects. It is necessary to understand the complexity of such projects and include your partner for localization in cooperation with your organization, to discuss your strategy and the choice of key words, and tIn cases such as this one, translation is definitely not enough to succeed.
o ask for advice regarding cultural differences etc. We do not recommend simply sending Excel spreadsheets with key words for translation.