Golden View Wins Universiade Shenzhen 2011 Tender for Translation Qualification

Software Localization Pros and Common Mistakes

In this information technology times, software is not a strange words any more. People’s requirements on software become higher and more complicated. Software localization is one of the most representatives. According to some report, the number of non-English speakers who like to use localized software constantly grows and grows swiftly.

Undoubtedly, localization will cost software localization companies quite a lot of budgets, but they are still willing to, why? The localized software seems that it is developed from the local factory in target market. Therefore, target users have less or no difficulties to understand the product, its management and its utilization methods – the rate of making costly mistakes drop dramatically. All in all, localization enables users to interact with software in their own language habit and culture via an intuitive configuration.

Briefly, software localization includes the following benefits:

* Target software users could read messages in their native language.

* Keyboard differentiation between source language and target language is taken into account, so it is easy for entering information.

* The content and format of the software are written in the manner that is similar to target native country.

* Localization ensures that error messages will be occurred in native language, so it reduces difficulties for software users to solve them.

Because of the hot competition in the software sector, it is not possible anymore to gain advantage over the competitors by blowing fairy dust in the customer’s eyes. If software provider wants to survive, he/she should make his/her products acceptable by the target consumer at most possible degree. Software localization could help achieve.

Common mistakes in software localization

* Offer unclear, inaccurate text in the target language, making important instructions and commands hard-to-understand or deliver in a nonsensical way.

* Use complicated, long text, not familiar to most people including possible users of the software.

* Neglect the length of translated words which might need to redesign the software to make it suitable for the foreign language version.

* Think localization is equal to language translation. Localization involves many particular elements, for example, date and time format, calendar format, address written way, etc.

Although software localization costs, it is definitely worth. Localization could help software companies break the hurdle formed by language and culture difference, widening the scope of their sale.

Software Localization Brief Introduction from Golden View

The information technology has redefined translator’s working activity and skills that it’s even not necessary to mention any more. All the goods today undoubtedly become more and more globalized and internationalized enforcing translation providers to offer more than mere language translation. This is especially obvious in the world of software, where the product itself consists nearly exclusively of localization information.

Quality assured software localization is not done by someone, besides translators, it involves a variety of other specialists like programmers, localization engineers and project managers. Efficient software localization always take advantage of specialized tools, if don’t, the process will become tough and time-consuming.

Localized software always “speaks” the language of your customers in your target country, so it implies more than mere language translation of the software’s user interface. Such service provider should localize other aspects of the product like the form of time and date and the style. Basically, software localization consists of three procedures, that is, graphic user interface, on-line help and documentation.

I. Software localization definition

 

Graphic user interface – Featuring the extension .rc., they are usually just segments of the resource file that needs to be translated.

Help files – Initially in .rtf format, Help files are compiles and converted into hypertext format. Although most content in the file needs to be translated, hidden text like hyperlinks and “+” footnotes should not be translated.

Documentation – This process usually doesn’t need to translation. It usually includes the following files:

Client-prepared file formats and incidental files

Word processing

DTP files

Readme files

II. Frequently-used software in localization process

1. Operational system software, for example, Windows, Macintosh, Solaris, Unix and Linux

2. Common software for document handling and communication

Word processor including Microsoft Word, Windows notepad, and Ultra Edit

Spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel)

Database software including Microsoft Access, Lotus Notes

Extracting/decompressing software (WinZip)

Uploading and downloading software, for example, CuteFTP and WS_FTP

Screen capture software (SnagIt)

Image manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro

Comparison file and folder software (Windiff)

Document segmentation and consolidation software, for example, MaxSplitter

Disk partition and backup software (Norton Ghost)

Management software (Microsoft Project)

Communication software, such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook Express, Microsoft MSN Messenger, and AOL Instant Messenger

3. Specialized software

Alchemy CATALYST

PASSOLO

RC-WinTrans

Translation Memory or Computer Aided Translation (CAT) Applications (TRADOS and STAR Transit & TermStar)

DTP software, such as FrameMaker, CorelDraw, Illustrator and Freehand

Resource file viewing and editing software, including Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio.Net, Ultra Edit and LXP UI Suite

Document format editing software, including Help Workshop, Html Workshop, and Html QA.

Automatic test software (Silk Test)

Golden View Has Acquired ISO9001:2008 Certificate

To offer a worry-free translation and localization services and prepare for Universiade SHENZHEN 2011, Golden View has strived for getting ISO9001:2008 certificate since the beginning of 2010. On July 10th, this language service expert acquired the certificate for their software localization and related language services.

Obtaining such certificate is not as easy as people usually think. It needs the cooperation of the entire company, involving all the departments inside. But all the staff from this Chinese translation and localization company believes that it is worth of striving. A company should improve itself all the time, or it died.

Besides such certificate, Golden View could offer other qualifications for its software localization, translation and interpretation services. For example, Golden View is a representative member of GALA (Globalization and Localization Association), TAC (Translators Association of China), TAS (Translators Association of Shenzhen), CBBC (China-Britain Business Council), London Chamber of Commerce Corporate, IVCA (International Visual Communications Association) and VisitLondon partner. At the beginning of 2010, Golden View awarded “2009 Outstanding Translation Corporation”. Their vice manager, Amy, is elected as One Trustee of the Sixth Council of TAC.

The translation service from Golden View covers diversified areas, including travel, education, law, electronics, medical, chemical, financial, energy, logistics, etc. They are good at translating West European languages, East European languages, Middle East languages, and Asian languages. Over 2,000 intermediate and senior translators world-wide are available for you to choose from the company.

The company’s interpreting services are top-notch. In China, they have established a wide network of professional interpreters covering most major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xiamen, etc. In the UK, they offer interpretation services in dozens of languages.

Golden View always sticks to their company culture, that is, respect, teamwork, exploration, innovation, self-discipline and responsibility and business principles which include integrity, efficiency, punctuality, fairness, etc. They never stop to improve themselves and offer better language services for their clients.

How to Choose Your Suitable Expo

The expo so charming in money-making has made countless heroes bow in homage, why? Expos have higher possibility of bringing tempting profits and motivating swift operation of related industries. As we all know, most expos in China are held in May and June, like Suzhou PCB Show 2010, Expo 2010 Shanghai and Int’l Soft China 2010. However, if you think that you could add brilliance to your corporation’s present splendor or bring your dying industry back to life by just attending some expos, you are probably wrong.

Quite a few of corporations had experienced being cheated – they waste their precious time, energy and money. Choosing expos is not hard, but it needs certain tips and skills.

I. Preparation
1. Material preparation
Usually, expo preparation for the company begins 8 to 10 months in advance. If you attend an international expo and you have no full-time translator inside your company, you need to find professional language experts to help your expo translation while you just need to prepare related material in your own country’s language if your target expo is national.

Generally, the reliability of a translation services providing company is better than freelance translator but might cost you more budget. Comparing to part-time translator, a translation company could always ensure you formal translation procedure – besides offering you subject-matter translators, they provide expert proofreaders and project managers.

What’s more, a translation company could offer you more than mere translation, it is capable of providing localization services which help adapt your products or services to your target market, for instance, software localization.

Prior to choosing a translation company, it’s necessary for you to check your preferred translation service supplying company’s history, outstanding achievements, successful cases, etc.

2. Attending target
You should have a crystal idea about why you participate in the expo, for company reputation or new product releasing? What’s your key point?

3. Adequate survey
Only fools act without surveying. You could get necessary information through internet, consulting related staff from exhibition halls, reading industry magazines and asking the expo host. Of all the channels, directly asking the host of the expo is the most effective, but certain consulting skills would add a flow to silk.

II. Factors for your consideration
1. Expo holding site
In general, influential expo is held in the exhibition halls where has the best facility. Those expo sites are usually distributed in cities where have powerful information emission capability, manufacturing places of the product, places with convenient transportation, export/import costal city or travel scenery.

Expos which are held in confined areas or have bad facility have higher rate of generating bad effects, being canceled/delayed.

2. The result of previous expos
If possible, you should check if there is any company that you are familiar attending. If you could get the company list of last two expos, you could make an evaluation about the expo’s ability and execute power. An excellent, reliable expo’s head-turning rate is usually above 7%.

3. Expo content
Expo is generally divided into two categories, that is, comprehensive expo and specific-area expo, for example, industry exhibition and watch exhibition.

4. Classes, scale, and reputation of other companies which attend the same expo as you

5. Expo scale
Expo scale usually includes international scale, national, area and individual company. Different scale expos have different features and advantages. You should choose according to your own company’s practical situation and requirements.

6. Expo host background, capability, and reputation

7. Holding time of the expo
If there are several expos which have the same nature or similar nature to the expo you are going to participate, the number of the visitor might not be so optimistic as you forecast. As to seasonal products, their expos are usually held at the same time as busy sale season or prior to the popular time.

Choosing an expo in an appropriate way could help you save time, energy and money. This job needs preparation, patience, and adequate investigation plus research.

Top 6 Difficulties in Chinese Learning

Learning Chinese has become a tendency all over the world. From some foreigners’ point of view, Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to learn. Why?

First, Chinese writing is complicated. Different from English word, Chinese is not very phonetic. Foreigners often forget how to write a character completely as they couldn’t get semantic clue or helpful component in the character.

Second, Chinese character doesn’t arranged like English alphabet. English is easier to study as we don’t need to grasp any difficult writing system. English words are written from left to right horizontally. Chinese has nothing that related to alphabet, although all the characters are made up of recurring component.

Third, Chinese dictionary is hard to use. Knowing 26 English letters means you have access to almost all the English words. However, Chinese learning is different. Using Chinese dictionary needs more than knowledge of Pin Yin, you have to know its phonetic radical, strokes, sequence of strokes, etc.

Fourth, classical Chinese is too difficult to understand. Classical Chinese is made up of esoteric anecdotes and in-jokes written in a kind of terse. Many Chinese couldn’t read it as they are not acquainted with Chinese literature, culture and language habits.

Fifth, Chinese language tone seems so weird. This problem is probably one of the hardest for those who intend to study Chinese. Comparing to English which only has rising tone and falling tone, Chinese has four tones, including upper tone, lower eeven, falling-rising tone and falling tone. Memorizing and practicing those tones will cost foreign students or Hongkong and Macao compatriots huge time and energy, let alone flexibly use them in daily lives.

Sixth, culture difference between eastern and western forms an intangible but ubiquitous obstacle for Chinese study. Although the contact between China and western countries become more and more frequent than before, there are still a large part of Chinese knowledge and ideology that don’t share by both cultures.

All of the above are common in Chinese Study and Chinese training. For those who want to study Chinese, nothing is difficult if they put their hearts into it. They are so many people who succeed in studying Chinese, you could be one of them.

Chinese Localization Solution from Golden View

Consumer market in China is a big pie for almost all the business world wide. How to grab the pie needs preparation and skills. The first and the utmost important question is language. Nearly all the Chinese tend to use stuff that suit their culture and language or be managed in a Chinese way. Here, Golden View would like to provide you one stop Chinese localization solution for your Chinese market marching.

The company was established in 1996. Since the startup, they have provided IBM China Simplified Chinese localization service. In 15 years, this company has offered localization services for numerous companies including many Fortune 500 companies. Golden View has accumulated precious localization experiences.

The following are our Chinese localization services:
Software Localization
1. User interface translation and engineering
2. Help translation and compilation
3. Manual translation and typesetting
4. Large volume localization engineering, etc.
Website Localization
1. Website Structure Localization
2. Website Content Localization
3. Website Style Localization
4. Website SEO, etc.
Multimedia Localization
1. Voice-over
2. Dubbing
3. Subtitling, etc.
Desktop Publishing
1. Experienced in InDesign, FrameMaker, QuarkXpress, Illustrator etc.
2. 80+ language DTP capabilities
3. Tens of thousands of professional fonts
4. Strict DTP QA process
Software Testing
1. Install and Uninstall testing
2. Linguistic testing
3. Cosmetic testing
4. Function testing, etc.

Expo Translation & Interpretation Solution from Golden View

Expo 2010 Shanghai, which will be held on the 1st, May, brings distinct business opportunities for people all over the world. It will last 6 months in total. Hundreds of countries will attend this Expo, so, numerous biz chances wave to you. However, language difference forms a barrier for normal communication, even business success. How to Solve?

Many people probably think that they could turn to translation companies in China to solve their Expo translation & interpretation needs – that is a good idea. But scams, tricks and cheats are so common today that you should think twice, three times, or even more before you make your final choice. Usually a reliable translation company always:

* Feature a stable, wide network of translators and interpreters all over the country as well as the world
* Established at least 5 years ago
* Have translated for world-famous companies
* Have complete departments like sales department, marketing, financial, translation, project, etc.
* Be able to offer translation or localization cases on which to pride themselves
* Have been awarded, no matter big or small

Our Company, Golden View, established in 1996, is one of a few such companies in China. We have offered our services to Fortune 500 companies, for example, IBM and Apple. For our successful cases, you could get from case study part of our main website gvlocalization. If you couldn’t read Chinese and English, doesn’t matter, our another website, could offer Japanese, Spanish, Korean, Italian, German and Spanish translations of our general services, history, solutions, clients and contact methods.

Localization services from Golden View could help you adapt your products or services to the language and culture in the target market of your intended country. The localized products or services will have your desired local look and feel. They will seem that they are developed from the local area.

Our interpretation services, including simultaneous interpretation, consecutive interpreting, ad-hoc Interpretation, etc., cover most major cities in the country, especially in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing, Qingdao, Dalian, and Xiamen. China interpreters from us either come from subject-matter areas or have been in specific interpretation areas for several years.

Golden View offers translation services in 60+ languages, covering most Asian and European languages. The fields we are excel at include finance, law, electronics, chemical engineering, education, energy, life science, humanities, logistics, games, computer, telecommunication, semiconductor, banking equipment, automobile, digital printing, machine, etc.

Golden View Launches Trados Training Course

Trados has become an integral translation tools for professional, efficient translators. If you want to master this advanced tool and be a senior language talent, why not consider the Trados training course launched by Golden View, who has been a professional translation and localization service experts since 1996.

The company has served numerous companies, including a lot of Fortune 500 companies like Apple, IBM and BMW. What they will teach is not just theory on the book, Golden View would like to share you with their accumulated precious practical experience. You will definitely learn a lot from their Trados and desktop publishing courses.

During the training, you would learn how to use Trados and desktop publishing tools under the guidance of distinguished, famous teachers. All of their teaching materials are well selected and elaborately edited. To allow you to have a better studying circumstance, systems of small-sized class teaching, multimedia teaching and hands-on operation will be implemented in the Trados training as well as translation training, desktop publishing training and business training. After study, certificates will be given to qualified students. For excellent learners, if they are willing, they could be employees in Golden View.

Golden View not only offers physical address for their training classes, but also provides video study all over China. In order to celebrate their training classes’ startup, they will cut 20% off the original prices if applicants have leaflets of their training courses. What’s more, for the first 10 enrollments, Golden View would like to slash another 10% off.

Physical address:
Anhua Bldg 6#, Tairan Golden Valley, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

Time schedule:
Trados Elementary Course: Saturday 10:00 – 12:00 AM, 6 periods finished in three weeks
Trados Intermediate Level Course: Saturday 2:30 – 4:30 PM, 6 periods finished in three weeks
Desktop Publishing Course: Sunday 10:00 – 12:00 AM, 1:00 – 4:00 PM, 20 periods finished in four weeks

Golden View Has Finished Uploading 8 Languages to the New Website

Today, Golden View, which is a professional translation and localization provider, has finished uploading 8 languages to the new website Golden View Biz. Those eight languages are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

Not all the web pages of the site are translated into those languages. The translated web pages include Home Page, Service Overview Page, About Us, Solution Page, Client Center, and Contact Us.

Of all the language versions of Golden View Biz, the English version and the Chinese version offer detailed information about the company’s services, including software localization, website localization, multimedia localization, desktop publishing, software testing, translation, interpretation, global marketing and training services. Chinese version of the website is redirected to old website of Golden View, that is, gvlocalization while English is not.

Golden View Biz targets at creating a better user environment and an easy access to our services, history, solutions, etc. for language-differentiated global translation and localization demanders. Current visitors of the site are not only from China, but also from other countries, for example, United States, Korea and India.

“We are sure that our new website will allure more visitors. But Golden View Biz still needs improving. We will continue striving for making it become better and better as soon as possible.” one employee from Golden View said.