Blog

  KFC Original: ‘Finger-lickin’ good’ Chinese translation: ‘We’ll eat your fingers off’ Ford Marketed its ‘Pinto’ model in Brazil, where ‘pinto’ is a slang term for ‘tiny male genitals.’ Coors Original: ‘Turn it loose’ Spanish Translation: ‘Suffer from diarrhoea’   These examples might sound funny to us, but spare a thought for those behind these … Continue reading Why ask for creative translation of marketing materials? →

  Picture the scene: somebody needs a service which you provide and they simply arrive at your office and ask you to help. Sound unlikely? Well, that’s because this hardly ever happens. For starters, a lot of companies don’t realise that to reach a global audience they need to have their commercial, legal and marketing … Continue reading How to market translation services to your potential clients? →

Do you require the professional help of a linguist? Perhaps you have a document in which you need help translating from German to English? Or maybe in your profession you receive documents in various languages, and are concerned they’re not translating clearly? If so, look no further than Surrey Translation Bureau for all this and … Continue reading Translate German To English →

  We all have that special Christmas wish list we secretly, or perhaps not so secretly, want to share with Santa. This year, here at STB, we were lucky enough to have some of our translators share with us what they, as linguists, would really like for Christmas.   Let’s have a look at some … Continue reading All I want for Christmas this year… →

  More often than not, inexperienced translators find themselves in a Catch-22 situation: they need to gain experience in order to get started in the industry but clients and/or agencies may be unwilling to allocate work to them as a result of their overall lack of translation expertise. So how can this cycle be broken? … Continue reading Turning pro bono translation on its head →

  Translate Greek to English. We are a trustworthy organisation who keep all documents confidential. So worrying about security is not something you need to think about. This is one of the reasons why we are rated as high as we are by our customers. Here at Surrey Translation Bureau, we strive towards the best, … Continue reading We can help you translate from Greek to English! →

  Technological advances over the last century or so have meant that newer, and in some cases easier, means of communication such as emails and Skype are now commonplace, whilst good old-fashioned face-to-face communication is fast becoming a thing of the past. This is particularly the case in the corporate world as many businesses are … Continue reading Face-to-face communication is essential for driving businesses forward! →

One of our Project Managers, Ruth Bond attended the ‘Interactive Time Management Workshop’ organised by the Institute of Translating & Interpreting (ITI) earlier this month. Here is her account of how the day progressed and what she gained from it:   Are you struggling to prioritise all of the tasks that need to be done … Continue reading Time management or self-management? →

In the first part of this series about free translations, we discussed why it can be a bad business decision to ask your international distributors to look after your translations. In this part, we’ll focus on reasons why you should avoid using Google Translate to translate business documents.   Part 2: Why Google Translate can … Continue reading The perils of a free translation … and an insight into Machine Translations →