What’s the Italian translation for ‘Haka’?

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A rather bizarre showing last week in a Serie A league match on Thursday night which saw Italian giants AC Milan host Carpi. They say the home team should always try and put on a show for their fans but Milan managed to take it to a whole other level. A video taken from the pre-match preparations depicted both the Milan and Carpi team run out on to the pitch with the Carpi team lining up opposite the Milan team who had stood in a choreographed formation and what followed will surely go down in football fails history. The Milan players then started to perform a very dodgy and awkward version of the ‘Haka’ dubbed the “Tekitanka” and you don’t need Italian translation services to tell you this did not go down well.

It turns out that the Tekitanka was performed not by the actual Milan players but rather actors which were made to look like the players and that this was in fact all a big publicity stunt by the clubs sponsor the skincare company Nivea. The words “uomini questo e il vostro ritual” was seen across the stadiums advertisement boards, the English translation is “Men, this is your ritual” with the players acting out washing their faces and applying the cream instead of the actual battle cry. The Haka is a traditional war cry or dance performed by the Maori’s of New Zealand. The dance was usually performed by warriors before battle and has been used and made famous worldwide by the New Zealand national rugby team the All Blacks who perform it before a match to strike fear into their opponents.

Here’s how the AC Milan ‘actors’ performed:

Image: YouTube

Image: YouTube

 

Image: YouTube

Image: YouTube

As you could imagine there has been a major backlash to both Nivea and AC Milan which has seen people on social media declare the stunt as a ‘cheap rip-off’, ‘fake’ and ‘culturally insensitive’ amongst others which has led Nivea to issue an apology. A statement from Nivea’s parent company Beiersdorf sent to Mashable Australia read “NIVEA Men has organized a one off activity before the match AC Milan – Carpi on April 21. Actors were wearing the shirts of AC Milan and have performed a dance – inspired by the HAKA Maori dance. It was never our intention to offend anyone. We are truly sorry if this has happened.”

Maybe they should have sought professional localisation services first or maybe not done it at all.

Here’s how the ‘real’ Haka is done performed by the All Blacks.

Has this new creation changed translation services forever?

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A clever little idea that could soon render all forms of translation services useless has just been released! But before everyone in the world of linguistics and translations loses their minds let me just reassure you, that was a complete over exaggeration. Maybe not something to put an end to the $33 billion valued global industry but definitely an idea worth a mention. The idea and now product line in question is not a ground breaking, highly advanced, technological gizmo. It is not a real time translation app or service in fact it does not even require electricity or batteries at all and it is wearable.

What can this product be? I hear you frantically ask. Well it is a T-shirt, yes a normal printed T-shirt. The Iconspeak T-shirt is simple but yet effective and is perfect for anyone on their travels around the word who have not yet mastered or bother to learn any of the language or languages they might come across on their foreign encounter. The Iconspeak T-shirt is designed to help you get through basic situations as the shirt has printed on it 40 universal icons in a grid format. From a telephone to a toilet, from bed to wi-fi, all you would have to do is point to the specific icon you require in order to convey your message across the language barriers. Clever stuff?

Say you were in Germany and had no idea what the German word for nightclub is and had no access to German translation services and not one person around you knew what you were talking about, well all you would have to do with the Iconspeak T-shirt would be to point to the music sign and do a little one-two step then problem solved.

Alternatively if you were in Portugal and had no access to Portuguese translation services and needed to us a toilet, you would simply point out the toilet sign on the T-shirt and you can probably guess what happens next. It just goes to show that despite all these technological advances in recent years, you might not always get an internet connection which many of these heavily rely on, your battery could run out or you might not have access to electrical supply. So you might save a lot of time and money by just pointing out a picture of what you want to help you in a variety of situations.

What are your thoughts on this? Leave a comment below.

Forget Iron Man, Student’s smart gloves translates sign language into speech

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When it comes to technology in the 21’s century it is almost as if the moment you blink, some type of a new technology has been invented. Nowadays it is not only professional software engineers working in labs that are able to come up with new inventions such as creating sophisticated mobile phone apps or hardware for appliances. Everyday people can now create ground-breaking technology from the comfort of their homes thanks to the many tools we have online that help with researching information. Something that has recently got people talking, a pioneering creation in the world of translation services in which has seen an undergraduate duo of Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor who are studying business administration and aeronautics and astronautics engineering, respectively at the University of Washington recently invented gloves that translate sign language into text and speech.

Their invention which is called ‘SignAloud’ is designed to translate sign language in a simultaneous way as if professional translation services were being used minus a human interpreter which aims to help break communication barriers between sign language users and non-sign language users. As the University of Washington reports; ‘each glove contains sensors that record hand position and movement and send data wirelessly via Bluetooth to a central computer’. If the data matches a hand gesture then the related phrase or word is vocalised through the computer. The gloves are currently targeted to American Sign Language (ASL) users or learners of ASL but could also be commercialised to work in other fields such as medical technology to monitor stroke patients during rehabilitation as well as provide support to the ever growing world of virtual reality as the University of Washington reports.

As a result of their efforts Pryor and Azodi won $10,000 for the 2016 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize from a pool of students from over 77 universities in the US.

Watch the video below to see the SignAloud gloves in action.

5 times retail translation and localisation services failed in China

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We all have heard and know of China’s importance to the world’s economy. In fact since their economic liberalisation in the late 70’s, China has been one of the fastest growing economies which has led the country to emerge as one of the top major players of global markets subsequently becoming the second biggest economy in the world today. So it makes complete sense that major companies of the western world have followed suite and have tried to gain a foothold in the country for a number of years. The first obvious issue they face is the language barrier which any professional translation agency worth their weight would be able to handle properly through their translation services.

But one other big issue they face is the sheer fact that the Chinese culture has many differences when compared to western cultures. This means that the way they market their products and services will differ from say the US market. That is why for years big businesses have been producing products and promotions specifically for the Chinese markets with the help of good Localisation services to pinpoint Chinese culture.

But this tactic has not always been seen as successful; in fact sometimes theses localisation attempts have been near disaster and some to comical effect. Some of these products and promotions backfired and were mocked amongst Chinese people. A popular Chinese fashion blogger on Weibo called ‘Gogoboi’ shared these localisation fails amongst his 5 million followers. Business Insider, with the help of a global brand consulting firm, Landor managed to compile a list of top five times global brands absolutely failed in China.

  1. Nike

This is truly a case of retail translation services gone wrong when Nike had an idea to release special edition trainers with Mandarin characters sewn into the pair. On the left trainer was “Fa” which means “Getting Rich” and on the right trainer was “Fu” which translates as “Fortune arrives,” which doesn’t sound too bad. But when you put them together it means “Getting fat” definitely not what the biggest sportswear company should be promoting.

  1. Louis Vuitton

The high-end fashion house Louis Vuitton is the next culprit in these localisation faux pas. Maybe with good intentions or maybe naivety decided to honour the Chinese year of the Monkey by releasing a special edition necklace, which can only be described as an odd looking, gold finished necklace vaguely resembling  a monkey. In which Gogoboi’s followers described as “creepy,” “like an alien,” and ironically a “knock-off” considering it retailed at $2,450 (£1,720). Ouch!

Image via: Louis Vuitton

Image via: Louis Vuitton

  1. Dior

Dior, another massive French brand of luxury goods committed a near enough exact offence as Louis Vuitton. Dior also saw fit to release a monkey-inspired piece of jewellery to celebrate the year of the monkey but the limited edition “Diorelita” was rather underwhelmingly likened to a ‘piece of red rope’, probably not the type of response Dior where looking for.

  1. Givenchy

Another Chinese year of the monkey inspired product fail, another French fashion brand behind the failure. This time it is Givenchy had used images of not so much your typical chimpanzee looking monkeys but rather images of orangutans, which needless to say left Gogoboi’s followers largely unimpressed. Fail!

  1. Burberry

Last but not least comes another fail celebrating the Chinese New Year, this time from up-market UK brand Burberry. They had made a different error to the rest; they decide to release their classic print scarf in a special edition with the Mandarin character “Fu” which as previously mentioned means “fortune arrives” printed in red which didn’t go down well as a design with Gogoboi’s following. But the main error was that when worn “Fu” was displayed upright which in Chinese culture “Fu” needs to be upside down to actually carry its meaning which is “beckoning in fortune.” As the special edition scarf retails $215 (£150) more at $925 (£649) that unsurprisingly left people totally bemused.

How accurate is Google Translate when Russia is translated to ‘Mordor’

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Anyone familiar with world politics will know that over the years there has been tension between Eastern European country Ukraine and Eurasian country Russia. Just when you thought couldn’t get any worse, the most popular machine translation platform Google Translate managed to muddle up some sensitive words when it came to the translation of words from Ukrainian into Russian. Needless to say had this been for professional or business use, professional Russian translation services should have been sought after.

Reports by Russia’s News state news agency RIA Navosti stated that words relating to Russia and one of its politicians were improperly translated from Ukrainian to Russian. The words that were interpreted were insulting and demeaning to Russia and its people. The words in question include the phrase Russian Federation which translated into Russian as Mordor when inserted into Google translate. Mordor is a fictional place in the world created by writer J. R. R. Tolkien which is most known for its depiction the Lord of the Rings as an evil place where cruelties such as torture are an occurrence. Newsweek reported that Pro-Ukranian groups took to the term when referring to Russia. Newsweek also reported that when translating the last name of Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, the machine translation interpreted his name as ‘sad-little-horse’. Another glitch which was spotted was the word Russians which when translated from Ukrainian read as ‘occupiers’ in the Russian language.

Whether or not this was a result of successful hacking or perhaps just a machine error, Google did respond by saying that Google Translate “worked by looking for patterns in hundreds of millions of documents but translation remained difficult as the meaning of words was tied to the context in which they were used”. “This means that not all translations are perfect, and there will sometimes be mistakes or mistranslations”.

Such happenings always create a debate as to whether platforms such as google translate are reliable when it comes to website content translation or even Russian financial document translation to be specific. Google has stated that ‘although translations are conducted automatically it is possible for users to suggest alternative translations manually’ which can sometimes leave room for biased results. The best way to be sure to receive an accurate translation is to use translation services by human translators especially when you are translating for work, legal or educational purposes.

Have a comment about this? Let us know your thoughts below.