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Translating material from one foreign language to another can be tricky. As an example, a person wrote to friends in Norway in Norwegian and wanted to tell them the record of the soccer team at the college where he worked. Later, he learned that he had used the Norwegian word for “neckties” for “ties.” Fortunately,…

A big part of providing translation services is keeping in touch with what’s going on globally when it comes to translation. Although translation is an art that has existed since ancient times, languages keep changing and translation has to evolve as well.  The demands on translation today are different than they were a hundred or…

If your Hispanic target market is Texas’ largest city, Houston (metro population 6 million+), you’re in exactly the right place. To reach that market you’ll need to employ Houston translation services.

Houston Hispanic stats

Consider the following stats from the HispanicAd.com on potential Spanish speaking customers:

• Hispanic population: 2.4 million (about one-third of the total metro population)
• Annual household expenditures: $23 million (21 percent of the gross)
• Spanish speaking (includes bilingual English or Spanish preferred): 1.6 million. (About 416,000 of that total speak no English at all.)

No shortage of media outlets

The Houston broadcast area accommodates 10 Spanish TV and 5 radio broadcast stations. Six print outlets, including the “Houston Chronicle” and “La Voz de Houston” target a vibrant Hispanic population with spending power, which according to one piece in Demand Media’s online Chron, “is at its highest point in history.”

Targeting advice

Chron’s article, “Hispanic Marketing Strategies” has some sage advice on reaching your potential Hispanic customers:

• Avoid Hispanic stereotypes at all costs! According to Chron, “Not only is this approach ineffective, it can be viewed as insensitive and can backfire,” because Hispanics do not want to be viewed “as different or separate.”
• Use content language that shows you understand the local culture, which includes family and business integrity.
• Be sensitive to Hispanic traditionalists, who are older or are newly relocated. Spanish for this group is the primary language, and they tap into Spanish media for their information and consumption ideas.
• Go for the later (second, third and fourth-generation) Hispanic market. View them as bicultural and consider simultaneous English and Spanish ad campaigns in your marketing.
• Work on brand awareness, and you will build lasting loyalty. This takes time and requires an extra effort in the areas of community activism and service.

If you are located in Houston (or anywhere else inside or outside Texas) and want to reach out to the growing Hispanic market, contact us. No matter what your translation need (from advertising to media campaigns to websites), we can get your message out and you’ll gain everything in the translation with nothing lost in cultural fidelity.

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The Study of Language Form

Although linguistics is a really broad field covering the study of language in all its forms, it can be essentially broken down into three parts.  The first part is the study of language form, which includes morphology—the study of words and how they are composed, syntax—the study of how these words are formed into phrases and phonology—the study of the sounds of language.

One might think that this first part, which is just the study of form, is all that a speaker or translator requires in order to translate from one language to another and, essentially, this is true.  Once you know the form of a language, you have enough information to convert words from one language into words from another.

The Study of Meanings

However, there are other parts of linguistics as well, such as the study of meanings.  A translator might assume that two words in two different languages mean the same thing.  However, we often find that there isn’t such a one-on-one correspondence between words and meanings.  Sometimes, a certain word or phrase just doesn’t have a corresponding word or phrase in another language.

For example, take the French phrases “joie de vivre” and “je ne sais quoi.”  “Joy of life” and “a certain something” are the closest translations to these phrases in English, but they don’t express exactly what the phrases mean.  “Joie de vivre” is more than just “joy of life”; it’s a philosophy of life.  It’s about living the life of a “bon vivant,” someone who enjoys the good things in life.  It’s about approaching life in a certain way and enjoying it in all its sensual aspects.

So when it comes to the study of meanings in linguistics, one might make a distinction between the denotations of words and their connotations.  Denotations are simpler to define e.g., the word “book” refers to a physical thing which has pages, a cover and writing in the middle.  Connotations are not so simple and refer to what a certain culture or group of people might mean by a certain word e.g., all the above meanings of “joie de vivre” which, simply speaking, only means “joy of life.”

Language in Context

The third part of the study of linguistics involves studying language in context.  So it might refer to studying the evolution and history of languages.  Then there’s sociolinguistics which studies language within society or culture.  Neurolinguistics studies language as a function of the brain.

Translation Services and Linguistics

A good translator needs to be aware, as far as possible, of all the three branches of linguistics.  Just knowing the words and the grammatical structures is a good start, but a study of the meanings of words takes us a little bit further towards a good translation.  And knowing the context within which a language arose or how human beings as social creatures form languages helps to capture the subtleties and nuances of language that are important in translation services.  Contact us for translation services that go beyond the basics and capture the real essence of your words.

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