Translation Services

What is Meant by Translation Services?

Translation services are a broad collection of professional textual, cultural and language services, offered to individuals and businesses, with the aim of bridging linguistic gaps or barriers, promoting effective communication and enhancing mutual understanding.

Today, we live in a global village, a world that is buzzing with content produced in endless languages and available to ever increasing users, readers and consumers. To reach these larger cohorts of people, bringing your content closer to them in their own language, is one effective and indispensable strategy for your growth and success.

Types of Translation

There are numerous types of translation, depending on your needs, your text genre and your target audience. It may, therefore, be useful, if you could specify what type of translation you need. If you are not sure, it may be helpful if you could clarify how you intend to use the translated text.

General Translation

The most common kind of translation of general and informative texts. The main strategy is one of preserving the intended meaning, while producing a clear, accurate and natural target text. 

Domesticating/Foreignizing

This type of translation is relevant to texts with cultural nuances, in particular literary texts. The basic idea of this strategy depends on whether you want your target text to read as if it is at home in the target language, or you prefer that it preserves its foreign nature, texture and/or culture to stand out as different.

Localization

Localization is a specific kind of translation activity that largely focuses on the translation of digital material, websites, and so on. Aspects of audience perception, marketing needs, and cultural nuances require a localizing translation strategy which brings the meaning, function and intention of the target text, and its associated imagery, linguistic nuances and cultural elements, closer to the target audience.

Audio and Video Transcription

Transcription, in simple terms, is the conversion of text that is heard into text that is read. Technology and AI come in very handy nowadays in facilitating the process; however, a human transcriptionist continues to be indispensable. In addition to accuracy and clarity, a human transcriptionist can also be asked to edit a transcription for cultural nuances.

Video Subtitling

If the conversion of the spoken text on a video is not only into a written form, but also into another language, the service is known as “subtitling”. The intent is to allow viewers to hear the original language of the video and find an accompanying translation thereof at the bottom of the screen to enhance their understanding.

Transcreation

Where translation is largely textual, transcreation – as an emerging profession in its own right – is more of what its name says: it recreates while carrying across. Often a transcreator is a combination of copywriter and translator, to be able to reproduce the content functionally, creatively and impactfully in the new context. In other words, if you want to run a marketing campaign in a different country, for example, you may need to rethink the entire concept of the campaign based on the copy needed for the target context.

Types of Texts

There are a large number of text types out there. However, at Niche of Papyrus we focus our efforts on the following genres of texts:

Humanities Texts

The humanities is an umbrella term for a set of disciplines and their associated practical implementation in daily contexts. These include – but are not limited to – sociology, psychology, history, philosophy, education, media studies and cultural studies.

Literary texts

Literary texts include mainly works of fiction and literature, such as novels, short stories, critical reviews. More recently, they have come to encompass also scripts and creative non-fictional works, such as biographies and autobiographies.

Informative texts

These texts are intended to offer knowledge and information, usually addressing a general reader. Their language is more accessible and less technical, conveying the information to readers from all walks of life.

Advertising Texts

The intent in these types of texts is very high, aiming at enticing the reader/viewer and converting them successfully into a purchasing customer. Translation of these texts may involve largely the textual (thus becomes a form of localization), or a more multimodal and cultural transformation (which necessitates an act of transcreation).

Digital Texts

With the rapid advancement of technologies, digital texts are becoming highly diversified, ranging from emails, messaging, to websites and social media, through to digital publications such as articles and ebooks.

Language Pairs

I am a fluent speaker of three languages – German, English and Arabic – and am currently learning French as well. However, in terms of translation quality, the below pairs work best.

EN <> AR

I can move with great ease between English and Arabic, in both directions. This is due to a very long experience working with both languages. Further, you can check my list of publications and/or my CV for details on the translated works published, both in English and in Arabic.

GR > EN / AR

Concerning German, it is easier for me to translate from German into either English or Arabic.

Machine-aided Translation

Reliance on technology is limited to the use of facilitating tools such as memoQ.

We are proud to offer human translation services – punctual, reliable, professional.