New year; New language? Learning a new language: Part 2

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It is that time of the year again; well the end of the year where even though nothing really changes at the same time a whole lot can be changed. As we wave goodbye to 2016 and say hello to 2017 it can be and is widely embraced as a benchmark for better things or a shift in mentality if you will. New mind-set, new goals, new life and yes inevitably, “New Year, new me” posts on social media! But why not a new language? There are so many pros compared to the cons when learning a new language, imagine not having to rely on translation services all the time when you are traveling or the money saved on localisation services.

Following on from our first post on what to take into account when learning a new language we know that even though a lot of people will set new goals and new ways of thinking most will soon drift back into their old ways but fear not we are here to give you some tips on how to stay on track when you hit those oh so familiar speed bumps of the new year.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

When you set out to learn anything in order to grow yourself you will soon encounter some difficulties and learning a new language is no exception. When you are learning new words you only have to look at children as an example, they are not born speaking a language, they learn from their environments and experiment with words that they utter and the reactions they receive. They are not afraid to make mistakes or look foolish so why should you? Leave your ego at the door with 2016 because you will learn much more from making mistakes than not trying at all. You are not a professional translation agency you are going to make mistakes, it is part of life, learn from it!

Consistency is crucial

Consistency in general will get you through anything in life and when you do start learning from these mistakes alongside being consistent in acquiring your newfound language skills you will see yourself becoming more fluent. This would hopefully lead to a snowball effect where you should start gaining more confidence to attempt to carry out advanced conversations and as a result more of the language will stick with you which means you will not need that Mandarin translation service when you travel to China on that impulsive trip you booked as part of your New Year goals.

Remember why

Finally just like any other goal you want to achieve, remember exactly why you are doing this and remind yourself of this reason every time you feel your motivation slipping away! It could be a desire to learn a new language out of necessity like relocating for a job abroad or traveling to a certain country that requires so. On the other hand you could be learning a new language as a passion or part of your New Year resolution to yourself. But whatever your reason for learning a new lingo you will get that motivation back once you have thought about exactly why you started learning it in the first place.

Comment on your experiences of learning a new language.

Image by: Robert Lowe | Flickr

What I didn’t learn in university

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4 years on; Reflections of a graduate

Four years into the so called real world many people do not get time to even stop and analyse how far they have come since graduating from university. Many of us caught up in the so called ‘rat race’ barely get time to actually process and translate what we have or have not achieved in that time. Some have gone into retail work while others have ventured into fields such as finance, translation services or marketing. While most of our weekdays are spent commuting to and from work, working and spending time with family and friends whilst weekends are spent either getting drunk (if you can still keep up, going out to eat and running errands, we even manage to fit in the occasional holiday once or twice a year for the lucky ones both have enough to fund them or lucky enough to get the time off their busy careers.

Before getting into this it is important to highlight that university teaches us a lot both academically and socially. The aim of university is to prepare us for the real world whether that is transitioning into full time employment or perhaps for some of the risk takers venturing out on your own. When at university you learn several skills including how to work with others via group assignments, importance of meeting deadlines, presenting in front of an audience etc. What you don’t learn is that you may not necessarily get into the industry you studied for; you may actually not like working in that particular industry once you get in or getting high grades doesn’t necessarily mean you get the better job!

Once you leave university you begin to better understand the term “it’s who you know more than what you know” as you experience the ups and downs of work ranging from lows such as working under incompetent managers, favouritism in the workplace, or highs such as job satisfaction and bonuses. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it this is something that we cannot avoid hence why many successful people constantly advise on building a good professional network for yourself whether in business or in employment. Networking is something that can be started whilst at university. You do not need to wait for graduation day to start networking. There are many ways you can do so whether it is attending job fairs or local meet ups to applying for internships in the field you hope to get into. Proactively doing so will give you an advantage over other graduates who have not done the same.

Often times it takes people to lose a loved one to realise what so called ‘life’ is about and many say it really puts their life into perspective e.g. losing someone to lung cancer can have a profound influence in helping you quit smoking. Why wait for it to get to that stage why not start living a healthier lifestyle now, why not walk away from that company who values you the same way you value a KFC chicken bone, why not go travelling as you planned 2 years ago? We discussed previously on 3 signs you need a career break how and when it is time to take a career break whether it is to rejuvenate or simply reassess your life goals and such a choice can have greater rewards than you could imagine.

The best Christmas advert of all time?

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Ah Christmas, it really is a special time of the year where you eat until you feel sick and drink yourself silly whilst being surrounded by the ones who mean the most to you, not to mention the best part receiving gifts! What is there not to like about Christmas? Well one section of the world that can’t get enough of Christmas is the retail industry. They have been able to commercialise the Christmas holiday in the UK and US and major companies with the aid of retail translation services the rest of the world.

In the UK we are all too familiar with the battle of Christmas TV adverts mainly from companies such as John Lewis and Marks and Spencer’s who use their advertisements to manipulate our emotions like any advert to be fair but these certain ads always seem to garner so much more attention so it is reasonable to say that it plays a key role in how well these companies are likely to perform over the Christmas period so much so that they are prepared to spend millions in order to see a huge financial translation in sales.

But this year even though Buster the Boxer ad by John Lewis and the Amazon ad involving an Imam and a Priest, just to name a few have caught the eyes of many this year in the lead up to Christmas in the UK there is one advert that has seemingly topped them all, not from John Lewis, M&S in fact not even from the UK.

The ad in conversation is from Poland by Polish based online auction website Allegro. The advert has been viewed nearly 13 million times on YouTube and is titled ‘English for beginners.’  This heart-warming advert begins with an elderly man receiving a package from Allegro which consists of Polish to English translation audiobooks as well as English for beginner’s books. He then gets himself completely immersed in the English language in the following comedic scenes which involves putting sticky notes with English words on objects around the house including his dog as well as copying rude phrases he hears from the movie.

Eventually we see the man as he prepares to board a flight which sees him arrive in the UK to a nice house where he embraces his son who now lives there with his wife when rather timidly, a little girl appears out of a room to which he walks up to her and says “HI, I am your grandfather”. The conclusion was he learnt to speak English in order to be able to speak to his granddaughter the first time he met her. The response for social media was massive with many saying that this is the best Christmas ad ever and even more saying they shed tears just watching it.

We dare you not to cry!

Image by: Art DiNo

Has Google created its own language?

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Will this lead to the end of human translations?

The Neural Machine Translation or simply ‘NMT’ is the name of the latest technology that Google has employed to help improve their real time translation services. Originally showcased earlier this year in September, Google announced that these neural networks are going to be the process behind Google Translate. Google has already started utilising NMT for some languages within the last month.

Traditionally Google Translate has always been a useful tool if you ever needed to know anything from a word to a phrase in another language and was perfect if you required a fast translation as it is instant. But Google Translates’ translations for anything more would mostly be grammatically wrong and lacked a ‘native feel’ (don’t even think about translating slang words). But now with these improvements in technology Google aims to have more accurate translations as well as the NMT being able to learn more with what Google are calling “zero-shot” translations which could be bad news for the professional translation agency of tomorrow.

The zero shot translation is essentially a translation system that has the ability to translate one language to another without previous experience of translating that language pair beforehand. So for example if the NMT had been taught to translate English into Hebrew and vice versa as well as being taught English to Romanian translations and vice versa; now imagine you were in need of Hebrew translation services from the Romanian language the Neural Machine Translation system would be able to translate without having learnt that language pair before.

So for this to happen there must have been some kind of ‘learning’ process involved from Googles artificial intelligence (AI) which begs the question ‘Has Google created its own language?’ that’s the hypothetical thought Devin Coldewey offered when he wrote an article in which he discussed Google’s NMT and its ability to understand a language pair it hasn’t faced before through connections made from prior knowledge.

In fact he is partially correct with these assumptions as AI researchers have suggested that the zero-shot translation might have been a result of Googles NMT being able to communicate with itself potentially bringing the translation level up to exert level.

This all sounds impressive but in the longer run could this ‘Interlingua’ that this AI possesses be the foundations for something more sinister? We tried to warn you before in our previous posts. But in all seriousness it is the forward step in making language translations easier to obtain.

What are your thoughts?

Image by: Kathryn Decker

Blame it on the Translation?

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A rather amusing story has emerged from Australia in recent times, which for once is nothing to do with dodgy retail translation services. For the first time we are actually bringing you a story of a translation fail without any help from a less than accurate translation service at all. No instead this story involves a Uruguayan footballer, an Australian team’s cup glory, an ‘alleged’ and very odd translation fail and a rather rude word. We will leave it up to you to make up your mind.

It all started on Wednesday 30th November in a Westfield FFA cup final that was contested between two Australian teams Melbourne City FC and Sydney FC at AAMI Park. The tightly fought cup final was eventually decided in the second half when Australian footballing legend Tim Cahill scored with one of his trademark headers on the 53rd minute to secure Melbourne City FC the win and their first ever trophy in the clubs history.

As you can imagine emotions were most likely running high after such a historic game for the club and this is where the controversial and comedic moment happened. Melbourne City’s Uruguayan captain Bruno Fornaroli was giving a speech to the fans in the stadium on his side’s extraordinary win, bearing in mind his mother tongue is Spanish and his English has been described as ‘broken’ so he was reading his speech from cue cards; when after he ended his speech he threw the cards into the air and screamed out ‘And f..k off!’ Perhaps better localisation services are needed here?

But in all seriousness Bruno came out the next morning to explain this odd expletive. According to the skipper himself, he apparently was meant to say ‘vamos’ which has a Spanish to English translation of ‘let’s go’ to cheer on his team refer to his excitement and overjoy as the reason why another word came out instead, he also apologised to anyone it might have offended.

We are not sure how true that explanation is or that anyone has been offended but one thing is for sure it is definitely hilarious. Let us know what you think about him blaming translations, see the footage below and tell us your conclusion.

Image Screenshot: The Tight Five Football YouTube

Can you really be yourself at an interview?

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Interviews, that thing you have to do to get that new job you really want; yes that thing the majority of us dread and just wish getting a job was as easy as handing your CV and getting a no or when can you start answer. Sadly that is not the reality we live in, interviews are a big part of not only our professional lives but also translate into our personal lives and mastering the art of interviewing can enhance ones prospects in life.

One common misconception about interviews is that you cannot really be your true self and well in some respects this is right. In order to make it in life you have to be able to adapt accordingly in different situations whether its having your first child and the need to spend less time at the bar or getting that first mortgage and cutting down on the number of holidays you take in a year, being able to adapt well in these situations surely will lead to more successful outcomes. Also knowing the type of interview you will be taking part in is key as your approach will differ. Perhaps you have a competency based interview at a language translation agency applying for a Russian translation role you will find that practicing competency based questions will enable you to go far in the interview process as these types of interviews require you to provide solid examples of your previous accomplishments on the spot. Having an idea of what to talk about whilst relating to the role you have applied for will make you appear as a well-researched candidate, something recruiters admire.

When it comes to attending an interview many people feel as though they have to be someone different to who they really are and very often going in with this approach ultimately ends on a sour note as further down the line you realise you cannot pretend to be someone you’re not all the time especially if you will be spending the majority of your time at work interacting and living up to expectations you may not fit.

One thing to note is that human beings come with multiple layers of personality and habits. Perhaps you are one of those people who laugh a lot at any statement made, surely you will not do that in an interview as maybe your more professional side kicks in. Let’s face it people are rarely altogether ‘themselves’ all the time especially at interview stages because they often are trying to be the person they feel the interviewer wants to hire. Really the best way to approach this is to showcase your personality in a professional setting and that is something that takes practice. Try it out with friends and family and get some feedback on how you come across before going to interview and you will become more conscious of what to reveal and what not to at that interview.