Archives for August 2024

Boost your business with interpreting

28.8.2024 by Katja Virtanen

A typical situation in which the business world relies on interpreters is a head-on collision with a language barrier. This can happen when your company receives guests from another culture, such as China, and you simply do not have any common language. It is self-evident that without a professional interpreter, such a business meeting would yield no results.

However, I would venture to say that interpreting is useful in other business-related situations, too. Even when everyone can use English – more or less fluently. Below, you will find some good reasons to arrange interpreting also for other business situations.

1. Remember that someone may genuinely need interpreting

We often assume that everyone can use at least English. However, the truth is that the ability to speak foreign languages varies just as much as the ability to do maths. The threshold for revealing your own insufficient language skills may also be high.

Interpreting gives everyone an equal opportunity to understand and participate in the discussion. What is crucial is expertise, not language skills.

2. Increase the efficiency of communications

Insufficient language skills can lead to misunderstandings. It can be difficult to find the right words or you cannot express yourself as clearly as in your native language. Good language skills alone are not always enough: there are different accents, difficult abbreviations or culture-specific metaphors, which are something that professional interpreters are trained in.

In a Forbes survey, more than half of companies (65%) admitted that insufficient language skills lead to inefficiency and lower productivity in business. Learning languages certainly helps, but it is slow when compared to using interpreting at key events.

3. Create more business

The more languages you use in your business, the wider the audience you invite to participate and the more business opportunities you create.

A webinar in Finnish about your company’s new services will reach only Finnish speakers and perhaps some others who happen to know some Finnish, whereas including interpreting in Swedish will improve your company’s business opportunities in the Swedish market as well. With remote interpreting, it is very easy to add interpreting in almost any language to almost any remote meeting platform.

4. Improve the customer experience

By providing interpreting in different languages, you not only create new business opportunities but also show that you take into account the variety of languages among your customers. This means you can improve both communications and the customer experience.

A brilliant example of recognising the benefits of interpreting in business and putting the customer experience at centre stage is Nordic Business Forum: Although this mega business seminar organised in Helsinki will be held entirely in English, all main stage presentations will be interpreted simultaneously into Finnish, Swedish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. By providing interpreting in these languages, the organiser welcomes participants from these language areas, giving them special consideration among the more than 6,500 participants. The number of participants from these countries will increase and new business opportunities will emerge.

5. Be a pioneer, try AI interpreting

Given the level of hype about AI, a true pioneer will provide AI interpreting in appropriate situations instead of no interpreting at all.

This kind of interpreting is handled entirely with the aid of computers: speech recognition software converts source-language speech into text and the machine translation engine translates the text, which is then converted into target-language speech.

Naturally, the above-mentioned entirely technology-based interpreting is an alternative that does not fully replace a professional human interpreter in all situations. However, it is undeniable that in some language pairs, the output quality is already quite high. Entirely technology-based interpreting is extremely cost-efficient and a good option when the language pair and the interpreting situation allow it and when the alternative would be to not arrange interpreting at all.

We are happy to advise you on what kind of interpreting and technology is best suited for a certain business situation. You can also read more about our interpreting services here.

How to use AI effectively in sales and marketing

27.8.2024 by Delingua

For decades, companies have looked for ways to improve their sales tactics and generate leads quickly through different content strategies. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by using a generative AI content creation tool.

This next-generation AI technology can help businesses craft tailored offers, persuasive landing page content, and engaging call-to-action messages that compel prospects to act. In this article, we will delve deeper into how a generative AI content creation tool can help companies speed lead generation and conversion in sales tactics.

Customising content creation

One of the key benefits of using a generative AI content creation tool is the ability to customise content to fit the brand’s style and tone. By fine-tuning or enhancing the generative AI model on a narrower dataset (content memory) that aligns more closely with the desired application, businesses can make the generated content even more accurate and tailored to specific tasks. This level of customisation ensures that the content is more contextualised, resonates with the target audience and helps to build a closer relationship with them.

Content quality

The quality of content is another critical factor that can make or break a company’s sales tactics. Generative AI content creation tools are designed to produce high-quality content that meets the specific needs of the business. The tool can create content that is grammatically correct, written in a tone, length and format that resonates with the target audience. This level of quality ensures that the content is adequate to the media format, engaging, informative, and compelling, which can help to speed up lead generation and conversion.

Building on success

Another significant advantage of using a generative AI content creation tool is its ability to harness your past content and generate new content based on it. The tool can use past content to generate new content that is similar in style and tone, ensuring consistency in the brand’s messaging. This level of content memory helps businesses to create a unified brand message that resonates with their target audience.

Termbases

Termbases are a critical component of any content creation process. They help to ensure consistency in terminology, style, and tone across all content. Generative AI content creation tools can leverage existing termbases, ensuring that all generated content aligns with the brand’s unique terminology. This level of consistency can help to build trust with the target audience and speed up lead generation and conversion.

LanguageWire Generate is our generative AI content creation tool that can help businesses speed up lead generation and conversion in sales tactics. The tool is designed to create high-quality content that meets the specific needs of the business. By incorporating various parameters to tailor distinct content pieces, and by leveraging company’s content memory and termbases, our generative AI content creation tool can produce and customise content that resonates with their target audience.

Interested in revolutionising your content production processes with LanguageWire Generate? Contact us and let’s talk more!

This article was originally published by LanguageWire Company (Verity Hartley).

LanguageWire provides simultaneous interpreting in the Europe Forum

21.8.2024 by Delingua

Simultaneous interpreting – what is it?

16.8.2024 by Katja Virtanen

Have you ever tried listening to one language while at the same time saying the same things in another? That is, not only translating words one after another but paying close attention to all the nuances of the language and what the speaker really wants to say?

Even the smartest smart devices can’t do that, but professional simultaneous interpreters can.

What is simultaneous interpreting?

Interpreting in which the interpreter translates – or rather interprets – into another language at the same time as the speaker speaks is called simultaneous interpreting. It is exactly this idea of everything happening at the same time that sets simultaneous interpreting apart from other forms of interpreting in which the speaker and the interpreter take turns speaking.

Simultaneous interpreting is often called conference interpreting as it is typically used at conferences, seminars and different meetings. For example, an annual general meeting may be held in English, the company’s working language, but Finnish-speaking shareholders can listen to the meeting in Finnish in real time.

Since interpreting takes place simultaneously, simultaneous interpreting does not take up extra time and can “happen in the background” without disturbing those who don’t need it. At the meetings of international organisations, you might notice interpreting only from the fact that participants are wearing headphones, even though dozens of languages are being interpreted in the interpreting booths.

What happens in an interpreter’s brain?

Simultaneous interpreting is challenging both physically and cognitively. An interpreter listens to the speaker, processes what they hear, stores information and produces speech in another language simultaneously. Linguistic understanding alone is not enough: in addition, the interpreter needs an excellent ability to concentrate and to pick out the essential elements that make up the idea to be interpreted.

In addition, there might be other stress factors, such as poor sound quality, the speaker’s strong accent, speeches read quickly and directly from paper, unfamiliar terms and abbreviations, fatigue and stress. No wonder the work of a simultaneous interpreter is often compared to working as an aircraft pilot or a heart surgeon!

According to several studies, many cognitive systems are activated in the brain during simultaneous interpreting. These include at least listening and analysing, the working memory needed for remembering what has been heard and the ability to produce speech in the target language.

How does a simultaneous interpreter prepare for an assignment?

It is said that most of an interpreter’s working time is spent preparing for their next interpreting assignments. This may even go unnoticed as interpreting services are normally invoiced on the basis of the time spent on interpreting itself.

The interpreter prepares for each assignment separately, but they also prepare themselves on a general level by constantly accumulating general knowledge. Before an interpreting assignment, the interpreter goes over glossaries and texts related to the topic in question as well as any materials they receive from the customer. It is the customer’s task to enable the simultaneous interpreter to prepare for the assignment by delivering the meeting materials in advance.

Remote simultaneous interpreting

Before the coronavirus pandemic, simultaneous interpreting was mainly available at meetings where both participants and interpreters were present at the meeting venue. However, in these exceptional circumstances, the need for remote simultaneous interpreting increased exponentially, and today more and more meetings and conferences offer the opportunity of remote participation and also remote simultaneous interpreting.

It is possible to incorporate interpreting in, for example, the most common videoconferencing services such as Teams, Zoom, GoToMeeting, etc. In addition to this, there are hybrid models where the conference or meeting is organised on-site to some extent and only participants attend remotely. In practice, participants can, in both cases, listen to one of the language channels offered either with their computer or smart device.

Why should you offer simultaneous interpreting?

It should be kept in mind that even if people have small talk skills in a language, their language skills may not be sufficient to understand special terminology or complex linguistic structures. Speeches and presentations may be superficially understood, but the nuances of the language, the deep meaning of the message or the quick speech of a native speaker, for example, might not be fully understood.

When participants have the opportunity to follow the meeting or the conference in their own language, they get the feeling that they and their language needs have been taken into account. By offering simultaneous interpreting to a participant with insufficient or no skills in the speaker’s language, the organiser responds to the needs of customers or participants, which is one of the key issues, especially in the world of business.

5 reasons why integration is a good idea

1.8.2024 by Delingua

LanguageWire’s APIs and connectors are a time- and effort-saving solution, helping you avoid copying text unnecessarily from one place to another and import any changes, no matter how big or small, to all language versions of your website in almost real time.

A connector is a kind of system integration that allows the customer to order a translation of the content through an existing publishing system. In practice, a customer who uses a publishing system to process their website content can use our connector to order website translations from within their content management system. Once the translations are ready, they are imported into the system as localised copies of the original page.

We have listed five key reasons why integration is a good idea.

1. Work in a familiar publishing system

LanguageWire connectors and custom API work with your CMS, PIM or DAM. You can order translations and track the progress of projects directly through the digital platform you are already using.

Integration can be built with nearly any generally used content management system. We have Adobe, Drupal, inRiver, Optimizely, Sitecore, TYPO3, Shopify, Umbraco and WordPress connectors – and many others! If you didn’t find an option suitable for your platform among our connectors, you can use our API to create a custom integration between your digital platform and LanguageWire.

2. Automate your translation management process

Copying source texts from websites and emailing them to be translated is a time-consuming process. A smarter and more efficient way to manage large volumes of website content and numerous language versions is to integrate the systems so that the process for managing the translations is as highly automated as possible. Managing online store product information in different language versions, for instance, is much easier when the processed are automated.

LanguageWire’s APIs and connectors make full automation of the process possible. Simply connect your application to a tech-enabled translation management tool, and your translations can be imported directly from the translator to the page.

3. Save time and reduce workload

By using integration, you can publish content in every language as simply as in one. Integration is a better option than time-consuming manual work, and you receive ready translations right into your own publishing system. Managing translation orders is quick and easy with a user-friendly interface. This allows you to save time and money and, above all, gain additional peace of mind when the most monotonous part in the language version release process can be eliminated. With aid of a connector, you can import any changes, no matter how big or small, to all language versions of your website or webstore in almost real time.

4. Minimise risks

Furthermore, the likelihood of making mistakes increases when a large number of files are sent back and forth, with internal editors’ modification proposals. With LanguageWire, you don’t need to make any compromises on security. HTTPS-encrypted transfer of data increases security and you can manage the integration between LanguageWire and your system with modern access control.

Our APIs are built to be very stable so you don’t lose any jobs or complete translations in the event of a network outage. With integration, you can send texts for translation securely without a flood of emails and a need to worry about human errors.

5. Higher translation quality

We work as an extension of your business by building a permanent team of project managers, linguists and engineers. By connecting your digital platform to LanguageWire’s system, you will have access to our network of over 7,000 language experts. Our experts translate more than 450 million words per year, in 500 different language pairs. No matter what languages you are looking for or what sector you work in, we’ll bring you in touch with a language expert who best meets your company’s needs.

Interested? Contact us – let’s make translation management easier!