SEO those translations... please!

When we are dealing with the translation of marketing materials for the Web, such as press releases, features analysis, and usage tutorials, one of the prime priorities to bear in mind is the proper usage of particular keywords in text titles, subtitles, headers and associated tags. This is a legitimate and wise method to ensure the webpage in which the text will be included ranks high in particular websearch engines, such as the ravishing popular "word-magnet & SEO-nemesis" Google.

This is one of the strategies to bring value into the translation process and must be brought into different types of websearch optimization, consider, for instance, news search, local search, video search, and audio search. Translation for SEO must bear in mind the way search engines deploy their results and the search preferences of the target audience, which includes the words or terms used as well as the preferred search engines.

Careful and persistent work is always involved when dealing with a team of translators and designers so that no detail is forgotten while keeping content open for search engines. An example we like using is the huge void left inside PDF files, so many fields to add information which will help sort and rank your document, we are talking about fields, such as, base URL, title, author, subject, keywords, description, copyright status, and others, and all of these are accelerators for page views and website ranking...

In any case, keep an open and proactive approch towards search engine optimization while you translate or proofread texts and documents for the Web, even if there's no SEO manager to offer you guidelines and a sense of priorities for words...

Open publication - Free publishing - More from TwColour

Top-notch conference interpreting assignment last June!

June 2011 saw another English/Portuguese interpreting assignment being trusted to Translation with Colour®.
The background for the two days - 6 and 7 June - was the Environment & Sustainability Week promoted by a Portuguese local government which included a conference on the role and responsibilities of municipal authorities for sustainable development. The audience of this seminar was mainly composed by political decision-makers and senior technical staff.

The individuality I was personally assisting was ICLEI expert and United Nations Secretary-General's Adviser, Mr. Ruud Schuthof, during the Portuguese language presentations, while consecutive interpreting had to be performed for the audience in the hall, which included Spanish-language native speakers. This context demanded extra care in pronunciation and use of the microphone as the interpreting was made not from the booth but on open view from the chairman's table.

Interesting, challenging and rewarding!

Crowdsourced Translations of TED conferences turn them global

TED is turning to the crowd for help in opening its popular talks to a broader audience.

The Technology, Entertainment and Design conference, which turned a Swedish academic into a rock star and introduced the world to Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight, has launched a new project to translate its celebrated video talks. And it wants your help.

The $6,000 invitation-only conference for the elite digerati set began posting free videos of its talks online a few years ago. Since then the videos have been viewed more than 100 million times. But until now they’ve only been available in English.

After receiving repeated pleas to translate the talks, the organization is doing just that.

The Open Translation Project, launched Wednesday, combines crowd sourcing with smart language markup to provide translated and transcribed videos in multiple languages that can be indexed and searched by key words. The cool part is that users can click on any phrase in the transcript of a talk, and jump to that point in the video.

Some 300 translations have already been completed in 40 languages — from Arabic to Urdu. A handful of talks were translated into 20 languages by professional translators. But most were done by more than 200 volunteers around the world. Another 450 translations are in the works. A drop-down menu on the main TED Talks page allows you to sort videos by available languages.

“The entire goal and inspiration of the project is to be truly global and spread talks beyond the English world,” said June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media.

The videos are all in English with subtitles. A drop-down menu lists subtitle languages from which to choose. Next to the video a window displays a full transcript of the video to allow viewers to follow along with the talk or find the most salient points and skip ahead. Click a phrase in the transcript — such as the point where director JJ Abrams discusses his grandfather’s mystery box — and the video immediately jumps to that spot. Users can search for key words in a specific video or among all of the translated videos.

The transcripts also mean that key words in each video can now be indexed by outside search engines. Type the term “green rooftops” into Google, and among the links in your results page will probably be one that takes you directly to the point in Majora Carter’s talk where she discusses a green roof project in the Bronx.

Anyone can sign up to translate a video. But at least two fluent translators are required to work on each video for quality control and to discourage mischief-makers who might want to introduce inappropriate material into the translation.

“The second translator’s role is the editor’s role,” Cohen says. “Proofreading, checking for typos and questions of style to prevent the use of regional terms that won’t be widely understood.”

TED matches translators to work with one another, or groups can volunteer to work together. All translators are credited on the site.

TED provides guidelines and a professionally generated English transcript of the talk to each translator to ensure that translators don’t misinterpret a speaker’s words and that every translation starts from the same master transcript.

Nokia has sponsored the subtitle project, and dotSUB provided the platform that translators use to create the marked up transcripts.

Cohen says they’ve had interest from other groups and web sites that are interested in launching similar translation projects.

“Our hope is to pave the way and to provide an example a proof of concept for where we think the web is heading – in terms of the accessibility of video content through subtitling and through interactive transcripts to make online video documents radically more accessible,” says Cohen. “There’s a lot of ways it can go wrong. So we’re hoping to provide the proof that this can actually work and it can work beautifully and on a really large scale.”

from TED Crowdsources Translation of Its Talks

The way it looks...

My Bajan "Days" as Translator/Interpreter

Interview with Maria Helena da Rocha Pereira (1 March 2006)

Get your own - Open publication

Interview with Maria Helena da Rocha Pereira, the decane of Classical Studies in Portugal. Renown "author of translations", she dislikes this trade and considers it a burden, a consequence of her field of research. One of the first translation exercises of this poliglot was the translation into Portuguese of Greek classics for a students' scenic group at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Her work comprises more than 300 titles, such as translations, papers, books, and encyclopedia articles. Yet, her passion are Greek vases.

On Portuguese Legislation about Translation / Acerca da Legislação Portuguesa sobre Tradução

Get your own - Open publication

Collection and Brief Commentary on the Portuguese Legislation about Translation: The translator and the translation / Recolha e Breve Comentário à Legislação sobre Tradução em Portugal: O tradutor e a tradução

My paper on Bilingualism: Characteristics, benefits and the translator's circumstance / Bilinguismo: Características, benefícios e o caso do tradutor

Get your own - Open publication

My paper on Bilingualism: Characteristics, benefits and the translator's circumstance / Bilinguismo: Características, benefícios e o caso do tradutor

Bilingualism: Characteristics, benefits and the translator's circumstance / Bilinguismo: Características, benefícios e o caso do tradutor

Get your own - Open publication

Some of the tools in the "workshop"

Every trade has its own tools and translation is no exception. Nowadays, the diversity of publications, electronic dictionaries, online terminology databases, CAT (computer-aided translation) software, and even eye-catching online automated translation services bring together the two texts in translation (source and target texts).

We do our best to keep our shelves and bookmarks updated. You are welcome to take a look at our tools cabinet...


(1992) – Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM (version 1.02). Oxford, Oxford University Press.

(1999) – Microsoft Encarta 99 Encyclopedia. Redmond, Microsoft Corporation.

(2002) – Macmillan English Dictionary (for Advanced Learners). Oxford, Macmillan Education.

ANDRADE, Maria Paula Gouveia (2005) – Dicionário Jurídico Português-Inglês/ Inglês-Português. Lisboa, Quid Juris.

CARVALHO, Olívio (1982) – Dicionário Francês – Português. Porto, Porto Editora.

CHAVES, Maria Chaves (1985) – Dicionário Jurídico Português-Inglês/ Inglês-Português. Rio de Janeiro, Barrister's Editora.

COSTA J. & A. Melo (coord.) (2002) – Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa 2003. Porto, Porto Editora.

CUNHA, C. & L. F. LINDLEY CINTRA (1984) – Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo. Lisboa, Edições João Sá da Costa.

FERREIRA, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda (1999) – Novo Aurélio Século XXI: O Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro, Editora Nova Fronteira.

FRANCO, F., A. HOUAISS & M. VILLAR (dir.) (2001) – Dicionário Eletrônico Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro, Instituto Antônio Houaiss/ Editora Objetiva.

FRANCO, F., A. HOUAISS & M. VILLAR (dir.) (2007) – Dicionário Houaiss de Sinónimos Antónimos. Lisboa, Instituto Antônio Houaiss/ Círculo de Leitores.

HOUAISS, Antônio & Ismael CARDIM (1989) – Webster’s Dicionário Inglês - Português. Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores.

KENYON, J. Richard (1990) – The Kendale Glossary of Basic Textile Terms. Huddersfield, Kendale Publications.

LICKER, Mark D. (publ.) (2003) – Dictionary of Engineering. New York, McGraw-Hill.

PIRES, Sónia (2000) – Dicionário Prático de Informática. Alfragide, McGraw-Hill.

SAWAYA, Márcia Regina (1999) – Dicionário de Informática & Internet: Inglês/Português. São Paulo, Nobel.