Our team members blog about language, culture, technology, marketing, translation and localization, industry news and more.
Textcase Boston opening March 1st
Translation Agency Textcase will officially open its Boston office on March 1st, 2015. Manager Laura Pepitone will work closely with the existing team in Utrecht, The Netherlands, to manage translation projects for the North American market. A short video pitch...
Reading Translations
Most of us in the translation and publishing industry have heard of Ann Morgan and her Reading the World project. In 2012, she read 196 books in translation, one from each independent country in the world: one book from Swaziland, one from Argentina, and so on. Her...
The Most Important Languages
Yesterday we published a blog about how AdWords can be a great way to test the market potential of foreign countries. One of the questions it didn't answer was which languages are the most important. A few weeks ago, The Economist wrote about the most important...
Internationalization with AdWords
You can't start internationalizing your business before you've tested the waters. Many companies invest in multilingual AdWords campaigns to assess the amount of interest in their services in a particular country and to connect with potential customers. They do so...
Find the Right Translator
When you have a translation project, how do you select the right translator or language service provider? How do you make sure the quality matches your standard and how can you check the quality if you can't read the language? Many marketing and communications...
Translate this Book
Book translations open up worlds, cultures, connections. They spread information across linguistic borders, which empowers people, they improve understanding and bring people together. The financial crisis and structural problems within the publishing industry have...
Internationalization as a Growth Strategy
Could internationalization be the way for your business to grow? New markets are usually within reach and it doesn't have to be an expensive undertaking. As a marketing-oriented translation agency, we work with many businesses – small and large – to offer their...
Creating Better Content
In the early 1990s the internet was a big empty space waiting for people to fill it. Today, there still is a need for new content but the need for better content seems to be growing faster. One of the challenges that online initiatives face is the contradiction...
Starting our Business in Boston
One of my earliest memories is hearing kids speak foreign languages during summer vacations on the Dutch coast. Most of them spoke German. To me it seemed as if they were communicating in a secret language. Confusion made way for intense curiosity: I hád to decipher...
The Challenge of Learning a New Language
On October 22nd, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and co-founder of the social-networking website Facebook, posted a video of himself addressing an audience in Mandarin Chinese at the Tsinghua University in Beijing, much to their delight and absolute surprise. He even...
Frankfurt Book Fair 2014
Last Saturday, my colleague Koert van der Scheer and I visited the Frankfurt Book Fair – the biggest book fair in the world – in just one day (we caught an early train from Utrecht). We met with content distributers, content producers, people who are developing new...
Connotations of Brands and Product Names
‘Fellatio’, ‘pancake’ and ‘waxed mare’: it might be hard to believe, but this is what some product names actually mean in other languages. Many businesses don’t even consider the fact that something as simple as the pronunciation of a product name in a foreign...
The Effects of Poor AdWords Translations
When developing an efficient, multilingual website, reaching the right target audience is paramount. To achieve this, advertising online with Google AdWords is always a sure way to add strength to your organic visibility. You probably already have an AdWords campaign...
Google Skipped Persian Classes
Sadly, our beloved US Market intern Shabnam is leaving Textcase. After 6 months of hard work, she’ll continue to finish her degree at university. Since she is originally from Iran, I wanted to say good bye in her mother language: Persian. However, instead of asking...
My Internship at Textcase: Time Flies
After long days at school and many hours spent huddled over my textbooks, it was finally time to put the knowledge I had acquired to the test and spend my eight-week internship at translation agency Textcase. From the very first time I spoke to Laura, project manager...
Textcase in Dublin: LPMC-diploma, LocWorld and compliments from Google
Earlier this month I earned my Localization Project Management Certification (LPMC) in Dublin. It’s a relevant course, especially because of the importance of project management as a component of translation, optimisation and localization at Textcase. Following the...