Tips for a Successful Website Launch

Tips for a Successful Website Launch

How to get started New year, new website? Launching a new website can be a stressful experience for the creator. Many questions and concerns can arise, as there are a lot of elements to take into account: content, marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), analytics, design, images, etc. In this blog post, you will find useful tips to get you started in creating an inviting and resourceful website for a successful website launch! Keywords, Keywords, Keywords First of all, bear in mind that you should apply and review the following suggestions regularly. Doing it just once before your website launch won’t be as effective. To start with, you have to think of the content and the design of your website. Who do you want to address? Is your content interesting and relevant enough for your audience? But most importantly, and before writing any content, look out for the best keywords to use and work with SEO. You want to go for balanced keywords that have a high ranking in volume but a low ranking in difficulty and competition. Selecting the right keywords is one of your most challenging tasks. They determine how high your website comes back in the search engine results. If you’re interested in SEO and global websites, check out our post about it! Design and Social Media As for the design, you should test it with browser emulators. See if it works well with major search engines like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera. You also have to think about your potential clients, find a good strategy to get noticed and make your website stand out....
Translators Without Borders: Helping NGOs to Communicate

Translators Without Borders: Helping NGOs to Communicate

What Is Translators Without Borders? Translators Without Borders (TWB) is an independent, non-profit association. It started in 1993, helping non-governmental organisations (NGO) with language barriers around the world. TWB provides free and professional translations that could help those who are not multilingual to get useful information for their health and well-being. Translators Without Borders is associated with Traducteurs Sans Frontières, also a non-profit organization founded in 1993 by Lori Thicke and Ros Smith-Thomas. Goals and Achievements The goal of associations like Translators Without Borders and Traducteurs Sans Frontières is to connect the world’s volunteer translators with non-governmental organisations whose focal point is health, nutrition and education. By providing free translations, they allow the NGO to save money. Because they don’t have to spend money on translators, they can spend the savings on the cause itself. Every year, the two organizations contribute over six million translated words to non-governmental organizations. Among others for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Médecins du Monde, Action Against Hunger, Oxfam, UNICEF and Handicap International. However, this is not enough to cover all of the need. A large number of other organizations still need help breaking language barriers in many countries. TWB are doing their best to improve the situation. They have developed an open digital platform, established an organizational structure, opened better communication between NGOs and TWB workers and translators, and created a training center for translators in Kenya in 2012 to help translate life-saving health information into African languages. Working in Translation Is Important Are you a professional translator and wish to play a role in the success of TWB? Why not apply...
Chilean Christmas and New Year’s at the Southern Hemisphere

Chilean Christmas and New Year’s at the Southern Hemisphere

Sliding from Chilean Christmas into New Year’s After all the Christmas celebrations, we are looking forward to the next event: The New Year! The New Year approaches in every part of the world, for some sooner, and for some later, like in China or India. But isn’t it interesting how both similar and different traditions and the conditions they are celebrated in around the world can be? With that in mind, let’s have a look at Chilean Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. Christmas in Chile For children, the school holidays have just begun. The hot sun burns your skin during Chilean Christmas while you walk along the beach sipping a refreshing beverage and contemplating the Christmas decorations in the gardens and on the streets. There are people dressed up as Santa Claus in his typical red suit and white beard. It is too hot to hang chocolates on the Christmas trees since they would melt. Also the Christmas trees look like firs but are made of plastic due to the different flora. Chile is a mainly Catholic country and many religious traditions apply here as well as in other Christian countries. They have nativity scenes, for example, and go to a church service after dinner that is called Misa del Gallo. What’s more, Chilean Christmas dinner is quite late around 9 pm to 10 pm, often having an asado, a barbecue outside. There are also dinner types more familiar to minds of Northern Hemispherers, however, like turkey (or any other type of meat) and papas duquesas, Dutchess potatoes. After the late dinner and the church service, Chilean people open...
Gibraltar: a dash of Britain in Southern Spain

Gibraltar: a dash of Britain in Southern Spain

Gibraltar as a Country Within a Country You drove all the way through Spain. You passed by the dry Andalusian landscape and heard Spanish at every corner. Until you have to stop at the border. But it is not the border to France. It is on the opposite side of the country, at the very Southern tip of Spain. It is just a tiny corner of the Iberian Peninsula at its closest point to Africa: Welcome to multicultural Gibraltar. The Rock of Gibraltar The Rock of Gibraltar has always been a very attractive destination since time memorial. Despite its location, this wonderful gem is actually part of the United Kingdom since 1713 with the signing of the Utrecht Treaty designating it as one of the British Overseas Territories (BOTs). Gibraltar is only 7 km2 of surface and a crossroads of different cultures, religions and languages embracing people from all over the world. You can hear people speaking on the street with their strong conservative British accent while watching the typical Sevillana dance and tasting the Genoese panissa. If you love nature, don’t miss the chance to climb The Rock and see the wild monkeys. Visit one of the 150 caves, or just relax on one of the beaches all around the coastline. English as the Official Language and Spanish Wide Spoken As a part of the United Kingdom, this little isthmus has English as its official language. But its proximity to Spain makes the variety of English highly influenced by an Andalusian dialect. The two different languages find themselves in a diglossia situation. That means they have different roles in...
Christmas Spirit, Winter Solstice and Other Holiday Celebrations

Christmas Spirit, Winter Solstice and Other Holiday Celebrations

Christmas Spirit Celebration or Winter Solstice Celebration? These two phrases have been around the world for quite a bit now. But, Christmas Spirit, Winter Solstice, what do they mean? Is there a connection between them? Are they the same celebration? When are they celebrated? Winter Solstice Celebration, also called Yule Winter Solstice is a time of great symbolism and power. It marks the return of the sun, when the days finally begin to get a little longer. Moreover, it marks the beginning of winter which also coincides with the shortest day of the year. The celebration usually is between the 20th and the 22nd of December in the northern hemisphere, and around June 20th and 22nd in the Southern hemisphere. People has been celebrating this major Pagan festival with rituals since before medieval times. It is an originally Nordic tradition that made the burning of a Yule Log its main attraction. Nowadays, terms similar to Yule are used in the Nordic countries to refer to Christmas and its religious rites and holidays of the season. Christmas Spirit Celebration The Christmas Spirit Celebration also has a Nordic origin. It is usually celebrated around the same times as the Winter Solstice Celebration, but it is mainly celebrated in Hispanic countries. It is said that when winter solstice begins, the Christmas Spirit comes down to earth and visits all men of good will who welcome it to their homes with rituals. These rituals bring prosperity, peace, good energy, and love in the new year. If you are interested in Christmas traditions around the world, look here. Steps for a Christmas Spirit Celebration People...
Global Websites and SEO for Everyone

Global Websites and SEO for Everyone

Global Websites for International Audiences If you have a website, it surely is one of your priorities to make it to the top of search engine results. To achieve this, having an excellent SEO strategy is essential. How about expanding your website to international audiences? Do you have to adopt a similar strategy or does it have to be different? Have a look at this article to create global websites! The Importance of Search Engines SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a straightforward concept consisting in making sure a website comes up at the top of search engine results for terms and sentences relevant to the website’s content. In other words, SEO allows users to find the best websites on the web depending on the keywords used in the said search engine. If you have a good SEO strategy, you are most likely to have a successful website! But what if you wish to expand your website to foreign language markets? Your Target Search Engine in a Foreign Country First, you have to ask yourself, can your website be in the target country’s language? You also must not forget to consider the culture of that country, their consumers and most importantly what search engines they use. Yes, Google is not the only search engine. Let’s take China for instance. The main search engine in China is Baidu. In Japan, it is Yahoo. Another example, in Russia Google.ru is not the main search engine. It is Yandex, for the good reason that the latter is built around the Cyrillic Alphabet. So of course, if you have, let’s say, a Chinese website,...
Professional Linguists Behind the Scenes of the Film Industry

Professional Linguists Behind the Scenes of the Film Industry

What we’ve been up to! It has been a long time since we updated you on our on-going projects! At LingoStar, we like to work on a wide variety of topics and we learn from each of them. All our professional linguists are fully-qualified and come from different backgrounds. Therefore, we always have a team member able to meet your needs. In this new blog post, we shine the spotlight on the role of languages in the film industry. We also introduce you to some outstanding projects we recently completed. To what extent are language professionals involved? The film industry relies on a wide range of linguists. You might think of dubbing and subtitling, which are obvious fields of specialization for professional linguists in the audiovisual industry. But there are others you may not have thought about! For example, production companies hire localization professionals for movies made in other countries, or movies that have plots in which different cultures are involved. Indeed, even if the director might know the target culture, it is likely that the actors, screenwriters, costume designers, etc., will need training on the particular culture in the film to portray a true representation of that culture. Behind the scenes, language specialists can play a big role, too! As professional linguists, we contribute! Currently at LingoStar, we are working on an interesting project for a film series where we play both the role of a tutor and translator. The characters in the series often have to speak Latin, which is very interesting for us as Latin is often referred to as a dead language, but in this...
Is the language of Emoji a mirror of our personality?

Is the language of Emoji a mirror of our personality?

A decade of change in communications Can you picture yourself answering a simple “Ok.” when receiving a text? Ten years ago you certainly would have and it is likely that you didn’t even know what an Emoji looked like. With the exploding increase in use of smartphones, you won’t have missed that the language of Emoji has been added to the 7,000 languages spoken worldwide. The 7001st language During the last decade, we have seen that people don’t use their phone as a simple tool anymore. It has quickly become a second version of one’s self.  Your smartphone is your reflection in the mirror. You can easily tell whether someone likes a little colour in their life or prefers minimalism by looking at their phone case. The apps they download reveal a lot about their lifestyle. The wallpaper hints about their personal life. But what is betraying us in our way of speaking? Guess! The language of Emoji allows us to transcribe our emotions and tone much more efficiently than using words. How and when did the language of Emoji appear? It all started with the emoji’s ancestors : the emoticons. Emoticons were the very first common digital language. Combining existing characters in chatrooms allowed to insert emotions in a message. For example, if something made you happy you would write “:-)”. The first actual Emoji is born in 1999, in Japan, by Shigetaka Kurita, by request of the mobile carrier company DoCoMo. Their aim was to offer their customers a catchy and effective new way to communicate. For example, one could send an icon of a raining cloud...
Children and the importance of foreign languages

Children and the importance of foreign languages

Academic year resolutions for your children The backpack is ready, the sandwich is in the lunchbox, fall breeze starts to blow… it’s that time of year again: back to school! What resolutions have you made this year for your children? At LingoStar, we think that speaking foreign languages from a young age is an asset in every aspect of life. What is your opinion on the matter? Why is childhood the best time to learn a foreign language? Many studies prove that the best time to introduce someone to a foreign language is before the age of twelve. The language function is in development and soaks up vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation much easier than it will ever do in the future. Now, you might be wondering if it is not confusing for children to be exposed to foreign languages while they are still learning their native language. Scholars have demonstrated that bilingual children have the capacity to differentiate between two languages before even having the ability to talk. Therefore, they won’t mix them up when it is their time to talk, as changes are naturally made in their brain to assign certain words and sounds to the language they belong to. They also claim that it is totally fine to teach children two languages until the age of five. After this age, three new languages can be introduced. Is the study of a new language profitable to my children’s personal growth? Teaching different languages to your children is a very good way of providing education. It will improve their creativity, develop curiosity and give them more general knowledge. The...

Machine and Human Translation: Latest Trends

Is machine translation about to replace human translation? Translation companies have always tried to provide the best quality translations possible. So far, using human translation seems to be the best option. However, some companies have recently announced new translation systems that would bring considerable improvements to the industry. Their promise is to provide high quality and natural sounding translations through convenient devices. Recent breakthroughs in the real-time translation field After adding instant image translation to its “Google Translate” service in 2012, Google launched its first headphones in November 2017. They enable users to have direct access to Google Assistant. They can listen to music; ask for traffic information; write emails and have a conversation in another language thanks to Google Translate. Google’s earphones – the Pixel Buds – are a real-time translating device that can translate 40 languages. Although its product gathered impressive press coverage, Google wasn’t the first company to develop this kind of technology. In 2016, Waverly Labs, an American company, produced the first earpiece language translator. Since then, real-time translation has been a trend that no company wants to miss. Several companies worldwide have been developing their own devices such as LeTrans, Travis The Translator, Ili Wearable Translator and Bragi Dash Pro. How do these new technologies compare to human translations? These technologies are very easy to use. For most of them, all you need are earpieces and a smartphone. With the translating earphones, two people who speak different languages can both hear the words in their own language instantly during a conversation, and straight in their ears. These technologies aim at making international communication easier....