Backdated issue of the Into English Ltd. Newsletter - March 2007

Welcome to the second monthly instalment of the Into English Ltd. newsletter!

Newsflash

In this section you will find the latest Into English Ltd. news, hot off the press!

March’s top news at Into English Ltd. was our PayPal registration. We can now accept secure payments online via PayPal. Clients may use PayPal to pay via credit card as well, so you can use this facility even if you do not have a PayPal account.

For further details, please see www.paypal.com

The Into English Ltd. site (www.intoenglish.eu) is also updated and added to regularly, so please visit frequently for the latest information.

Also, if you have any comments, we would be very grateful to hear them. Please email: rebecca@intoenglish.eu

£££ Offers and deals £££

Watch this space every month for our latest promotional deals

Due to the success of last month’s offer, Into English Ltd. have committed to continuing to offer competitive rates for quality translations. If you have a French text which you need translating into English, or an English text that needs proofreading then contact Into English Ltd.

Showcase

Here you will find links to some of our favourite websites of the month. Into English Ltd. accepts no responsibility for the content of external links.

Q. What is the Into English Ltd. top website this month?

A. Eurodicautom, the European Commission's multilingual term bank: http://ec.europa.eu/eurodicautom/Controller?ACTION=guide

Q. Why is it so good?

A. Eurodicautom is perfect for looking up the ‘official’ translation of technical terms – also handy if you only want one or two words translated. Currently Eurodicautom is gradually being replaced by IATE (Interactive Terminology for Europe) – there are links to the IATE site on Eurodicautom.

Other sites we liked this month:

www.lifehacker.com – lots of IT hints and other tips to improve your life

www.myheritage.com – Just for fun, a nifty site which analyses an uploaded photo of yourself and tells you which celebrities you look like!

And finally…

The good, the bad, and the source text

Every month we like to give a reminder of the disastrous ‘translations’ that free translation engine websites churn out. Good for a laugh, but bad for business! If you would like advice on how to get French to English translation done the smart way, contact rebecca@intoenglish.eu or visit our website: www.intoenglish.eu for more information on the polished and professional services we provide.

Step 1. Take one piece of French text from an article:

“Le 23-3-2007 a eu lieu à 0h00 le lancement européen de la Playstation 3 du géant japonais Sony. La dernière née des consoles de 7e génération n'a pas suscité un engouement comparable au lancement de ses rivales, la XBox 360 de Microsoft et la Wii de Nintendo, respectivement sur le marché depuis fin 2005 et fin 2006”*

*This month’s excerpt is from www.quid.fr

Step 2. Ask a free translation engine to do its best:

“The 23-3-2007 took place at 0 h 00 the European launching of Playstation 3 of the Japanese giant Sony. The last born of the consoles of 7th generation did not provoke a comparable infatuation in the launching of its rivals, XBox 360 of Microsoft and the Wii de Nintendo, respectively on the market since the end of 2005 and the end of 2006.”**

** This month’s ‘translation’ website is http://translation2.paralink.com/

And here’s how Into English Ltd. would solve it:

“At mid-night on 23^rd March, Japanese giant, Sony, launched its Playstation 3. However, this latest of the 7^th generation consoles has not provoked as much of a craze as its rivals, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii, which have been on the market since the end of 2005 and the end of 2006 respectively.”

This test once again proving that machine translation is never a replacement for a skilled human translator.

Every month we’ll be featuring different sources for this simple test. If you have any suggestions, please send them to rebecca@intoenglish.eu