Some Projects Completed By The Language Shop in 2012 Specifics/Challenges Encountered and How They Were Resolved (Part 1)

Certified English to Spanish Translations of Personal Documents:  We were asked to provide certified English to Spanish translations of personal documents such as birth certificates, baptismal certificates and correspondence.

Challenge: The client specified that  the translations were needed for Spain. Translators from Spain generally tend to charge a little bit higher than translators in Latin America.

Solution: In order to make the project affordable to the client and to include our tried-and-true translation team, the translation was done by a team in Argentina. We were able to provide the appropriate localization for Spain once the translation was revised by a qualified editor from that country.

Certified Arabic to English Translations of University Transcripts:  A client approached us with University transcripts from Saudi Arabia that needed to be translated from Arabic into English.

Challenge: The client provided specific names on the translations while we wanted to make sure that the names of the student, the school and the principal in the translations corresponded with the names in the original document. Even though we do not authenticate certificates, we obviously would rather not be involved with the certified translations of certificates that are not authentic.

Solution: We communicated the translator’s concerns to the client who produced the English translation by the Saudi Ministry of Education of his third-year transcript in Arabic and was thus able to prove that he was one and the same student in the documents. The translator was satisfied that the documents were legitimate The translation project was completed to the total satisfaction of the client.

Jamaican Patois Transcription and Translation Project:

We were approached with two audio recordings of conversations in Jamaican Patois. The client, another language service provider, wanted not only the English translation but also the Jamaican Patois transcripts of the audio files.

Challenges: Jamaican Patois does not have a standard orthography so everyone writes Jamaican Patois words differently. The project was voluminous and one file was about an hour and a half long. Each time a different linguist started transcribing the file, there would be serious disagreement as to how certain words were spelled. For consistency of the already existing portion of the transcript, time had to be taken to make global changes.

Solution: Eventually, one linguist had to focus on completing the Jamaican Patois transcript to ensure that it remained consistent throughout the document.