Experiencing Different Languages and Cultures: An interview with Lenka de Graafova, CEO of LingoStar Language Services Vancouver, Canada We recently interviewed Lenka de Graafova, M.A., CEO and Managing Director and owner of LingoStar Language Services Inc., who told us why she decided to provide translation services in Canada and set up her own agency in Vancouver, and what her experience of languages and cultures around the world has been like. Who is Lenka de Graafova, M.A.? In addition to being the director of LingoStar Language Services, Lenka de Graafova is a lover of world cultures and languages. Together with her team of multilingual writers, she regularly posts articles on foreign languages and cultures on social media. She is also an expert in creating websites in foreign languages and wrote the ebook How to make money online, not just in Czech in 2016. She is now about to release a brand new series of Localization Guides and the Beginner’s Guide to Multilingual Website Translation in English, published for the North American market. You can also download her free ebook for a quick overview of what to expect >> How to expand your online business – An Introduction Guide to Multilingual Website Translation. Lenka, you’ve been living in Canada for some time now. What brought you to Canada? I have lived in Canada for 16 years now. I’m originally from the Czech Republic. The desire to experience life on the other side of the world brought me here. I studied translation in the Netherlands and the UK and I wanted to experience everyday life in an English-speaking country. My goal was...
Vancouver Chinese and English Certified Translator and Interpreter An interview with a Certified Translator and Interpreter in Vancouver At Vancouver-based translation company LingoStar, we help our clients find a professional interpreter or translator who will fit their exact needs. For 14 years, Lenka de Graafova, LingoStar’s Managing Director, has been working with Wenhui Zhong, a certified translator (Chinese/English) and interpreter (Mandarin/English and Cantonese/English), based in Vancouver. Wenhui has worked as a Chinese Mandarin and Cantonese interpreter at all levels of Canadian governmental departments and agencies as well as companies in the legal, financial, medical, IT, media and gas industries, to name but a few. With this Star Story interview, we aspire to allow our readers to see how it all works behind the scenes of the interpreting profession. In this case, we introduce you to Chinese interpreting specifically. What does it take to become an interpreter? How do you handle the stress of interpreting and fatigue? What is the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese interpreting? Wenhui has kindly accepted to share his experience with us! Check out our interview! You are a Chinese translator and a professional interpreter in both Mandarin and Cantonese. These are two varieties of spoken Chinese that are actually very distinct. Can you explain how you became fluent and professional in both? I grew up in the city of Guangzhou, also known as Canton in southern China. It’s the traditional place where immigrants leave to go to other parts of the world like Southeast Asia and North America. When people talked about Chinese immigrants about 50 years ago, they were actually talking about Cantonese...
An Interview with Certified Translator Angela about the Canadian and American Translation Certification Process At LingoStar, a Vancouver-based translation agency, we work with different types of translations on a daily basis. Not all of our private clients know what kind of translation they require for their personal documents. “Do I need a regular translation, a certified translation, or a notarization?” In order to provide some clarification on the translation certification process and the pertinent requirements, we met with Vancouver-based translator and interpreter Angela Fairbank for an interview. Angela has worked as a linguist in many different subject areas and has traveled extensively throughout her career. She has worked with LingoStar’s Managing Director Lenka de Graafova since 2004 and has completed translations for the agency from French and Spanish into English ever since it was founded. She has a long experience in the translation and interpreting industry and has recently become a certified translator, which is why we believe that her input is the most up-to-date available to us. We met Angela in a lovely café in Kitsilano, Vancouver, right at the beginning of Spring 2019. We were thrilled to receive answers from a professional on many pending questions. Angela, thank you for accepting to participate in our interview series. We are trying to spread the word across the community about people who have a great deal of experience in translation and interpreting, so I’m really happy that we have the chance to chat with you today. Can you tell us a little about the different associations in charge of the certification process here in Canada? The certification body in...
Vancouver-based Arabic translator Jim-Ryan in an interview with LingoStar About the translation industry and the challenges of Arabic translations Arabic is the third most spoken language after English and French by the number of countries in which it is spoken, the fifth most spoken language by the number of native speakers, and sixth most spoken language by the total number of speakers, both native speakers and second-language speakers included. These numbers clearly indicate that the Arabic language is important worldwide. This led us to invite our Arabic translator Jim-Ryan to do an interview about the challenges of Arabic translations, the characteristics of the Arabic language, and the translation industry in general. We met passionate Arabic translator Jim-Ryan, who has cooperated on translations with LingoStar since 2010, in a café in Vancouver. 2010 was also the year in which his translation career began. Born in Syria, his native language is Arabic. Having lived in France and French-speaking Canada for several years, he became fluent in French as well. However, with English as his second language he mainly translates from English into Arabic these days. He told us that languages have always been a passion for him, although the translator job is not even his main career choice: Jim-Ryan is also an actor. So, we started by talking about his first job for LingoStar – a translation of a script. It turned out that he had also auditioned with a film company for parts of the script that he had translated. Jim-Ryan pointed out that it was challenging to experience both the actor’s approach and translator’s approach to the text. That’s...
