Atlas Translations: News

Atlas Newsletter – February 2008

Atlas to attend Language Conference

Project Manager Agnieszka will be representing Atlas at the upcoming Language Conference being held at Hillview School for girls in Tonbridge, Kent on 28 February 2008. The Conference is chiefly aimed at the school's pupils, with the objective of ensuring that they leave their studies fully prepared and qualified for the requirements of the profession that they wish to pursue. It was inspired by a recent study indicating that an increasing number of adults have to retrain at some point during their employment in order to develop their language skills.

Laptop and Globe

Frederic Canicio, the school's Language Conference Co-ordinator, explains

“We would like our students to understand that nowadays with more and more business happening abroad and companies growing to international dimensions, languages will be more and more essential to secure a job or promotion, even in branches of work that would not be traditionally associated with foreign languages.”

In order to promote language skills, the school decided it would be a good idea to encourage students to interact with professionals from the world of work and higher education, who can demonstrate the importance of the role languages play in a business environment. The Conference will include a series of sessions in which small groups of students will have the opportunity to watch speakers, listen to presentations and take part in role plays.

Money talks (more than just one language)

A recent report commissioned by Hodder Education found that over a quarter of UK companies are losing money because their employees do not speak a foreign language.

Banknotes

The research, conducted by Gfk NOP and which examined over 500 different companies in the UK, revealed that the shortage of language skills present within these firms had stopped 17% of them pitching for business on a global scale, causing them to lose out on new business. What is more, at least 10% of those companies surveyed had incurred costs by being forced to outsource to translation of documents to other companies.

Sarah Carroll, the author of the series Teach Yourself Business Language explains:

“As companies begin to operate more within the international community, they must ensure they hire staff with good language skills. It's encouraging that some companies are beginning to recognise this demand and that they are prepared to offer foreign language speakers a premium salary.”

The study also found that one in four medium sized businesses believed that they would benefit from having more foreign language speakers in their workforce and a quarter would seek to hire a candidate who spoke a second language over one who did not. Many of those firms questioned also said that they would consider paying staff with language skills a higher salary.

Certainly having multi-lingual staff helps Atlas to offer services to a wider client base overseas. Languages spoken in-house at the moment include French, Spanish, German, Polish, Japanese, and Chinese.

The last in the series of Harry Potter books hits the shelves in Poland

The eagerly awaited final instalment of Joanne Rowling's Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , went on sale in Poland at the end of last month. The Polish translation of the book, which delves into the theme of death, was released during a time of national mourning for the victims of the 2006 roof collapse in Katowice.

Splotter

The wide-reaching appeal of Harry Potter is reflected by the huge number of sales the books have achieved across the globe: having been published in 200 countries and translated into 67 languages, over 325 million copies of the series have now been sold.

In Poland, all seven books in the series were translated by Andrzej Polkowski. Each translation took him between three and three and a half months, due to the complexity of the language employed by Rowling. The large quantity of idioms, made-up words and cultural references in these books make them far from simple to translate into other languages, and when translating into Polish, Polkowski also had to take into account that he was dealing with a far less concise language than English. Subsequently, the translated Polish text often contains many more pages than the original English version.

As Polkowski explains, some fans were difficult to satisfy:

‘With each book I was faced with more pressure and awareness that each and every word is under scrutiny and any flaw will be immediately caught and criticised.'

However, Robert Gamble of Media Rodzina publishers believes that the quality of Polkowski's translation is second to none:

‘There are many young Polish people who read in English so they know, they have suggestions. So he had a lot of people looking over his shoulder. But most readers do not worry about that; they read it as if it was written in Polish, which is a sign that his translations are excellent.'

Atlas welcomes new work placements on board!

The Atlas team would like to wish a warm welcome to new work placement students Justine, from France, and Natalia, from Spain!

Language learning event at London's Institut Français

In celebration of the Journée Mondiale de la Francophonie, the Institut Français is holding an event organised by the French Embassy , dedicated to implementing initiatives in schools to encourage more pupils to take up foreign languages.

Vampires!

The event, taking place on 20 March 2008, will include talks and workshops on various language initiatives, including: videoconferencing and the teaching of a foreign language, short films and the teaching of French, and using drama as a pedagogical and linguistic tool.

Press/Public Relations

Press Office
Atlas Translations Ltd
Clare Suttie
Director
Phone: +44 (0)20 7240 6666
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Site: www.atlas-translations.co.uk

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