Globalisation is Important and so is HR German English Translation!

HR is the means used by companies to ensure useful communication takes place between company employees and when seeking new recruits.

You may have set up a company but maybe you have found that you cannot get enough workers to take up vacant positions. This is where you may need English German translators to help you with the recruitment process where advertising overseas for employees may be necessary. You need to ensure all the information about the vacancy such as wages, job conditions and hours are available in the languages which the best potential employees are likely to speak. Misunderstandings can often take place if the job specifications are not clear to potential candidates.

To get your human resources from outside your own country you will have to ensure all the information about the job is translated using a good German English translation so that you have access to the highest quality candidates.

Submitting immigration paperwork

Accessing human resources overseas is more than just advertising and selecting the best applicants but your new employees will have to go through a mountain of paperwork before they are given permission to land on the shores of your country. There will be immigration documents to complete, a contract will need to be signed and details regarding additional benefits that go with the job such as health insurance and help with housing. If all this is made available with a proficient English German translation this will make the process faster and simpler.

Understand company training documents

If your new employees are not completely fluent in the language of your country you will need to translate important information about your company to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings. This includes your company's policies on certain things like what an employee should do if unable to come to work due to sickness or has a complaint to make about the company.

Communication with employees

Once your new employees have settled into their jobs it does not mean that human relations comes to an end but your employees should be kept up-to-date on happenings in the company through newsletters, key announcements and blog posts. Providing a suitable German English translation of HR documents such as these can help to speed up understanding by new employees.

All HR departments that need to communicate with employees who speak a variety of languages will need top professional German translation help to facilitate communication.

What a Translator Puts in Reflects the Quality of the Translation

This is without a doubt a true statement when it comes to translation. Machine translators are an example of the effects of bad input, so it is necessary to ensure that all input is relevant and accurate. A machine translator works on the basis of what has been fed in reflects what it is able to translate accurately when it is given a translation task.  It is particularly important with translations that are prepared with localisation in mind that the correct words are used for the audience, otherwise it will have difficulty understanding the true context.

Most translation companies have devised a checking tool so that it ensures that each translation matches the target audience. There is one important but often overlooked fact and that is the way punctuation and sentence structure can impact on the reader. For example, long sentences and long words are difficult for some readers to understand.  The target audience will detect how the words, sentences and paragraphs should be organised in a text. Some people simply have better grasp of their own language and can tolerate reading more complex vocabulary while others can’t. If you, as a translator, get this wrong your translation could be a complete waste of time as it could be falling on deaf ears.

Not all people who seek translations necessarily understand how difficult it is to translate some texts accurately as the context may be unfamiliar to the German English translator. Often, some research may be necessary on behalf of the translator before an accurate translation can be undertaken. It is quite surprising how when a client receives a translation he or she does not think it reflects the message he or she is trying to convey. 

When the translation is checked for accuracy it is frequently discovered that the translation is quite correct and the problem is more to do with what the client has asked to be translated as it does not quite suit the target audience that he wanted. 

If you are seeking an English German translation that you wish others to see you should ensure the information you want translated suits the target audience it is intended for. 

German Super Words Have no Literal Translation

German translation is in a world of its own. German as a language is linguistically similar to several other European languages, but seems to be unique in its ability to construct complex words by combining several others together into a ‘super word’. These super words cannot easily be translated literally. In fact, if you have a German dictionary you might not even see some of these words in it unless it is a very comprehensive one. Professional German translators need to have a very extensive vocabulary if it is to include the rich diversity of German super words. Not sure what we are talking about?

Here are some examples below. 

Have you ever eaten ‘comfort food’ if you were bored, lonely, or just stressed out? If you do that on a regular basis, you may just put on a few extra kilos of weight, what is called in German Kummerspeck, literally ‘grief bacon.’

If you do end up with too much Kummerspeck, you will have to fight quite hard against your natural tendency to do nothing about it to shed those kilos. What is called in German Innerer Scheinehund is the tendency in each of us to put off doing now what could be done later, our ‘inner laziness’. In fact, the German term literally means ‘inner pigdog,’ which somehow or other becomes something quite different!

Have you ever thought you really wanted to be somewhere else, somewhere altogether more exotic than the place you are right now? Of course, you have. It’s common in winter, when the skies are grey and drab. Germans feel it a lot and call it Fernweh, or in English literally ‘distance pain’. Perhaps that’s why so many Germans can be found all over the world in exciting locations. They just love to listen to their Fernweh!

Some of us keep working and living the same old life until suddenly we get the feeling that we really should have done something more exciting. Maybe it’s now too late? That funny feeling that we might be missing out on something is what Germans call Torschlusspanik. It literally means ‘closing gate panic’ or in other words a fear that an opportunity is going to disappear!

Have you ever been caught out doing something you shouldn’t and have given some kind of lame excuse? Some of us do it all the time, especially kids! A poor excuse in German is called Erklärungsnot, although the literal explanation is ‘explanation poverty’!

As you can see from just these few examples alone, learning German is actually a lot of fun, so don’t leave it all to the professional German translator. German words might seem like Zugenbrechers, (tongue twisters) but most of them are easier than that and once you’ve mastered a few yourself, you can try them out on your German speaking friends!

Another Discussion About Human and Computer Assisted Translation Quality

Machine translation or automatic translation is an accepted part of many translation services these days and there are few English German translation service providers who are unaware of the pros and cons associated with the technology. Automated technology has been evolving quite fast and these days the more sophisticated technology allows human translators to intervene in a way they were unable to before and it is not seen as a definitive alternative to human translation itself.

It should be recognised here that by non human or computer aided translation we are not referring to the simplest type of computer translation which can be readily accessed on the internet. These are rarely used by professional German translators or shouldn’t be! However they do have a place when used by the individual who wants to know quickly what an individual phrase might mean or wants to compose an email to a foreign business or supplier in a simple sort of way and is not prepared to wait for a professional translator to do the job for them.

The type of translation described in the last paragraph certainly has its uses, but is not up to the standard of most translation requirements. Computer aided translation software and related technology has been specifically designed to help the professional German translator cope with voluminous and often repetitive text. Instead of laboriously translating this sort of text every time it arises, it can be remembered by translation software and then used in any translation task. Basically, the translation memory is instructed to retain chunks of translated text whenever these chunks are repeatedly used over and over again.

In some translation tasks, a German translation service will use the computer assisted software to translate a text, and then improve it based on their own translation and language experience. This cuts down the time taken to complete a translation task without compromising on quality. This is of benefit to both the translation provider and the client. The client benefits because the time taken to retrieve what they wanted to translate is reduced and the translator benefits by completing more work and therefore earning more money in the same time period.

What the computer aided translation technology cannot do very well is translate nuanced text and idiomatic expressions. Time and time again, attempts to incorporate more idiomatic expressions into this sort of translation software have been unsuccessful as it is often completely context dependent.

There have been estimates that in the near future that “intelligent” robots could take the place of as many as 50% of all jobs presently performed by people, but it seems that human translators are still quite safe from getting the sack, even if some of them are beginning to look over their shoulder!