Translation FAQs

Translation is a complex, detail-oriented task. Vocabulary in both languages is essential. Just as important, is a translator's ability to capture the same nuanced tone and context of the source text. Word choice does not hinge on a quick glance in a dictionary; it depends on the content and context of the English message.

For instance: the words "medicine" and "pharmaceutical" have similar meanings in English -- both represent products designed to improve our health and well-being. But depending on the context in which they are used, these words can have very different connotations. If you were translating a paragraph relating to a hospital and wanted the tone to be warm and humane, you'd probably choose the word "medicine," which implies wellness and recovery.

However, if you were translating a paragraph about a new, company that is blazing trails in cancer therapy, you would probably choose the word "pharmaceutical" to describe its products. This word choice is more appropriate because of its clinical connotations.

When our staff translates English text, they are constantly making these subtle, very important, choices that reflect well on your organization, service or product. A mediocre translator, or even computer software, cannot make these essential word choice distinctions with the same level of skill and certainty as MotionPoint's team.

MotionPoint can add any language to virtually any website in 90 days, regardless of its size or complexity.

MotionPoint combines its two key strengths -- technical expertise and word-class translation -- to deliver a solution unlike any other. No other company offers such a rapid, robust turn-key solution.

MotionPoint's world-class translation teams can translate from any language to any language, including all major European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages.

MotionPoint's technology does not require you to have an English source language site. Our technology is designed to translate a website from any language to any language. Our world-class translation teams, who translate and localize websites for every targey market have converted sites from Chinese to English, French to Spanish, and many other combinations.

MotionPoint’s translators are highly skilled professionals who meet stringent requirements before joining our team. They must be native speakers. They must have a college degree in translation, or a degree in the specialty field about which they are translating. And they must pass our rigorous translation tests. Our translations are the very best available in the U.S.

Any alterations you make to the design of your website will not affect your site's translations in any way. That's because our solution does not create a translated "mirror" website. Our technology ensures that whenever you rearrange text items, navigation buttons, etc., on the original language site, the corresponding items will automatically appear in the proper location on the translated site.

If you were to language-enable your website using legacy approaches (building and maintaining a mirror site), altering your site's look and feel becomes exponentially more difficult. Effort is more than doubled, since every change to the original language site must be repeated for the alternate language site, in order to ensure that the look and feel is consistent. With MotionPoint's innovative technology, however, you can redesign your original language site's look and feel as often as you wish.  The translated site will virtually take care of itself.

You never need to notify MotionPoint of any changes. Our proprietary TransSync® and TransScope® tools take care of that. In fact, MotionPoint is the only solution available that does not require you to send or receive any information prior to translation.

In an effort to make the Web conversion process as seamless as possible, our TransSync® and TransScope® tools monitor your English site for changes. Changes are automatically detected, automatically scheduled for translation, and promptly translated.

MotionPoint's technology and service provides a full, turn-key solution that virtually eliminates your internal IT work. In fact, your company's workload can be measured in mere minutes.

MotionPoint typically monitors your website nightly, capturing any new content found on the original language site. The next morning, translation updates are performed promptly.  We always try to have updates completed in one business day.  However, some clients' business needs require that we make all changes within a few hours, which we can easily accommodate. 

Since MotionPoint does not create a "mirror" site, there's no need to worry about removing outdated text items or images from your English site. At its simplest: if a web page doesn't exist on your organization's original language site, it won't exist on your translated site.

If a line of text or a particular image is removed from your English web page, our system automatically removes it from the translated page. If text, images or entire pages are deleted from your original language site, the corresponding translated data also vanishes from the alternate language site.

Our technology continually monitors your site, searching for new content. When it identifies new content, it immediately schedules it for translation. When you update your English website, the Spanish (or alternate-language) website changes accordingly. The sites will always be in sync.

Other companies approach website translation by creating duplicate, alternate-language "mirror" websites. While this is a complex, time-consuming and costly endeavor, the larger challenge lies in ensuring that the English and Spanish sites remain in-sync at all times. This often means hiring additional IT staff and in-house translators to monitor changes on your English website. These new employees must constantly watch for changes, and then make the appropriate modifications to the Spanish mirror site. This is an extremely expensive, inefficient, high-risk method of website translation.

However, MotionPoint's technology and service is truly a worry-free solution. Simply maintain or update your English website as you normally would. Our proprietary TransSync® and TransScope® tools automatically monitor your site to identify your updates and changes. Our team promptly translates the new content and posts it to the Spanish (or any other language) site.

Different languages have different rules for capitalization. For example: in English, months and days of the week are capitalized. In Spanish, however, these words typically are not. In English, only proper nouns (such as names) are capitalized.  In German, all nouns are capitalized.

Generally, MotionPoint adheres to the capitalization rules of the alternate (or translated) language, unless otherwise instructed by a client. MotionPoint's team of expert translators has more than 1,000+ person-years of translation experience. Grammar, punctuation, capitalization and word choice will always be accurate and appropriate.

Thanks to our approach to numerical data, our software does not translate numerals and numeric dates. No matter how frequently these numbers change, your translated website will always be up to date and accurate. Our service is especially beneficial for websites whose numeric data changes frequently or is calculated (such as retailers, e-commerce companies and financial institutions, etc.).

This feature is also ideal for retailers who sell identical products in various sizes. For instance, because MotionPoint does not translate numerals that represent size, an electronics retailer may be able to translate five television descriptions for the price of one.  MotionPoint is also able to convert currency and reformat dates for retailers that reach a European audience. 

MotionPoint will never charge you for duplicate content.  Unlike other translation companies, which -- under the best of circumstances -- may charge a reduced fee for repeated text, our innovative technology easily recognizes repetition.

The only way to ensure that a site is truly "in-language" is by tending to every detail, including what we call "translatable" images. Such images include JPGs, GIFs and other graphics in which English words appear.

Members of our multimedia translation team meticulously create translated versions of your site's original images and files. For images, we require no "source" files from the client.  Our team also translates the images' alt tags. Neglecting these important components would leave your consumers feeling as if your company made a half hearted attempt to address their needs.  In website translation, halfway is not enough. 

MotionPoint's service delivers a fully translated, fully functioning website including text, images, banners, alt tags, meta tags, etc. No other company offers this unique, complete solution.

Spanish content, on average, tends to be 25 to 30 percent longer than its English counterpart. (For instance: a 100-word paragraph in English will likely be 130 words in Spanish.) We call this unavoidable phenomenon "word growth." It's a vexing problem for most translation companies, since most web pages are designed and optimized for the English language. Increasing the number of words on the page -- as would be the case when translating English to Spanish -- often distorts the visual presentation, destroying the alignment, look and feel of the site.

But not with MotionPoint's technology and service. Your English and Spanish websites will look identical, because we approached the problem from another angle ... and developed an innovative, common sense solution.

Dealing with Word Growth: The Legacy Approach
Before we developed our unique technology, adding Spanish to a website was a painful, iterative process. Translators had to download the English text to their computers, then translate the text and images ... and finally upload the translated copy. Only then would a translator discover that the translated web page "broke" the design of the webpage template. This cycle would be repeated again and again, making minor changes to the translation, until the English and Spanish sites appeared identical. This is not an efficient use of time. Even more challenging and painful is translating daily updates using this method. 

Now There's a Better Way
MotionPoint developed TransMotion WebCATT®, a revolutionary tool that allows translators to view English and Spanish pages simultaneously when translating new content. Because our translators view both the English and Spanish sites side-by-side, they can visually monitor the look and feel, making appropriate adjustments and corrections as they translate. It's real-time translation and editing, word growth is never an issue.

MotionPoint's world-class translation teams create and maintain client-specific glossaries. These databases feature preferred word choices for every client in our roster.  These glossaries and notes capture not only a client's preferred word choice, but also its company's voice. 

Once a translation is approved and added to your client-specific glossary, it will appear consistently throughout the translated text. If, for instance, you prefer the word "autumn" rather than "fall," we will note this preference in your client-specific glossary.  Our team will translate all future text accordingly.

All of MotionPoint's translations undergo a four-step quality control process:

• Translate
• Proof
  
• Edit
  
• Web review

With MotionPoint, you receive nothing less than world-class translations. Our team of translators has more than 1,000+ person-years of experience. The quality control program is supervised by a Ph.D. in Linguistics. Our team has worked for industry leaders such as Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Delta Air Lines, Best Buy and many more. Our translations are the best in the industry. All of our 400+ clients are able to give us a positive reference.

With MotionPoint's solution, we can translate from any language to any language, including all major European and Asian languages.

Perhaps, but it's not recommended. To provide your audience with expert translations, you need the services of a professional translator. Translation is a skill that requires specific training, an understanding of language that transcends vocabulary and grammar, and considerable experience in the industry. Translation is best left to these experts. Spanish translation can be surprisingly complex, requiring words and phrases that are "universal" and "non-confrontational" since there is no one Spanish regionalism that is understood by all Spanish speakers.

We' ve seen it all.  Our translation team is comprised of world-class experts.

Editing machine-translated content often results in disaster. The quality of machine translation is usually so crude that the result -- even after multiple edits -- is awkward and poorly written copy. The only true method to make the translation "read" well is to re-write it. The editors are better off starting from scratch.

Why is machine translation so ineffective? Computer software rarely accounts for linguistic nuances such as syntax and context. Additionally, machine translation cannot rearrange words in a sentence in accordance with alternate-language grammar rules the way professional human translators can. Further, machine translation can't express the tone and mood of the source text.  Most importantly, it's impossible for machine translation to capture the voice of your brand. 

In contrast, MotionPoint's technology relies upon 100 percent human translation. Your organization can depend on MotionPoint for accurate, timely, professional-quality translations.

This issue often confuses many non-Spanish speakers. In our 1,000+ person-years of translation experience, MotionPoint has realized that there are almost as many regionalisms of Spanish as there are Spanish-speaking countries. Each regionalism has words, preferences, phrases and slang that are unique to its region.

Choosing the proper Spanish regionalism in which to translate depends on your target market. For instance: If the Spanish-speaking constituents or consumers in your areas are predominantly Mexican, then the regionalism you should choose for translation must appeal to Hispanics of Mexican origin.

But what if your target market is the entire U.S.? Your company should choose a type of Spanish translation that MotionPoint calls "universal" or "non-confrontational" Spanish. MotionPoint's translators are experts at this kind of translation. Universal Spanish uses words, terms and phrases that all Spanish speakers can easily understand. Words are carefully selected as to not offend any particular Hispanic group. This does not mean the words used in universal Spanish are stuffy, inflexible or unimaginative. In fact, universal Spanish can be as freewheeling as the wittiest English marketing copy (or as formal as legal or technical texts). Our professional human translators always account for the context and tone of the text they are translating, and choose words accordingly.

Such translation is challenging, and requires a comprehensive understanding of English, as well as many Spanish regionalisms. Few companies have this understanding. MotionPoint's experience -- and the size of our translation team -- assures you that we will supply you with translations that can be understood by all Spanish speakers.

Absolutely not. Although MotionPoint utilizes proprietary technologies to optimize the website translation process, all text and images are translated by a team of highly skilled, professional human translators. Our unique technologies automate the more mundane "nuts and bolts" aspects of website conversion. But we recognize that translation is an artform best left to professional, human translators.

With MotionPoint's technology and service, not one word of your website is translated by a machine. All text and appropriate images are translated by our team of professional translators.

You'll never worry about the quality of MotionPoint's translations, as you would with machine-translated content. Machine translation has severe limitations -- including the inability to distinguish word choice based on the context of the text it's translating.

MotionPoint merges the best of both worlds -- professional, certified human translators and technology -- to bring you a solution that's rapid, reliable and affordable.

Machine translation -- also known as "computer translation" -- utilizes computer software to translate text from a primary language (such as English) into a secondary (or "alternate") language. It is often the least expensive method of traditional text translation. While the pricing may seem attractive at first glance, machine translation features several significant drawbacks -- especially when applied to websites. For most public and private sector applications, it is an impractical solution.

In many industries, such as banking and telecommunications, machines are equipped to keep up with -- and even outperform -- human beings. Translation, however, is not one of those arenas. Machine translations are vastly inferior in quality, compared to content translated by professional human translators. Machine translation provides literal, word-for-word translations while struggling to account for the nuances of syntax and context. This means machine translation often fails to recognize that many words in the English language have multiple meanings. (For example: In English, a "kid" may be a child or a baby goat, depending on the context of the text. Translation software can rarely make this distinction, and may choose an inappropriate word that might insult or confuse the target audience you're trying to reach.)

In contrast, professional human translators can carefully examine each word in a sentence, as well as the entire paragraph (or document) to ensure the true meaning is accurately conveyed in the translated text. Human translators add further value because they may choose translated words that reflect the "mood" or "tone" of your English message. If your company's literature is snappy, irreverent or reserved, a human translator will select the proper words to meticulously re-create your message. No machine has this level of intuition and skill. Furthermore, only human translators possess the ability to rearrange words in accordance with the alternate language's grammatical rules.

Your website is a reflection of your organization. It may also be the first opportunity you have to make a positive impression on potential consumers, constituents or business partners. When you choose to have your site translated by MotionPoint's team of professional, certified human translators, you'll receive world-class translations. This will reflect your company's professionalism, and will appeal to its target audience.