For the first time in nearly 70 years, the machine of Pomp and Circumstance is in full swing as preparations are underway for the Coronation of King Charles III this coming Saturday, 6 May. For many in the United Kingdom, this will be the first time they witness a coronation, as the last, for the late Queen Elizabeth II, took place 2 June 1953. But the ceremony won’t only be viewed by Londoners as anywhere between 100 and 300 million people around the world are expected to tune in.
Despite garnering international interest, the ceremony remains a symbol of the United Kingdom for the British citizens. As an outsider, the question I have is whether it’s a symbol of an antiquated system of bygone days or a unifying force for a country and a people.
London: Where History Meets Modernity
Just two weeks ago, I visited London on a spring holiday. It was actually my first time visiting anything other than Heathrow Airport, which is technically inside the M25. As a first-time visitor, I was absolutely taken aback with how the city so seamlessly incorporates the old with the new. The nearly 1000-year-old Tower of London shares the skyline with 30 St Mary Axe. Towering metal and glass skyscrapers loom over traditional pubs rich in wood and textures. And yet, none of it is jarring or looks particularly out of place.
If there is anywhere where modernity and history meld together seamlessly, it’s in this city and its 33 boroughs. And perhaps, in much the same way, this antiquated, by-divine-right monarchy still has a place in a world where kings and queens are mostly relics of the past. But that’s something that King Charles will need to prove to his citizens.
Falling Support
Because Queen Elizabeth II was a cornerstone of British culture for nearly three-quarters of a century and remained largely a blank slate upon which any citizen could paint his or her beliefs, popular support for the royal family remained high. As little as a decade ago, three-quarters of the British population polled believed that the institution should continue, although support fell to just 62% at the time of her platinum jubilee.
Charles, on the other hand, has been much more open about his personal views on certain controversial topics. This, among other things, has led to a continued decline in the support of the monarchy. While the majority of the country continues to support the royal family, at 58% of people polled, less than 30% believe it to be very important for the institution to continue.
This is all the more marked in the 18-24 demographic, where only a third believe the institution should continue and a mere 24% think that the monarchy is good for Britain. It appears that for the monarchy to continue into the future, Charles has a job to do to convince the population of its necessity.
A Controversial Ceremony
The ceremony itself has become embroiled in certain amount of controversy. While it has its opponents, it isn’t lacking for proponents either, who see the ceremony as an occasion to unify the population and create a spectacle befitting the nation.
An Oath to the King
As part of the ceremony, it has been revealed that the British will be invited to join in and swear an oath of allegiance to the king and his lawful heirs. However, the initial wording around this invitation seemed to make it appear as more of an obligation than an invitation.
While the intention was later clarified, many detractors claim that even requesting such an act is out of touch with current sentiments, further citing that asking for allegiance to certain members of the royal family, who have been involved in numerous scandals, is beyond the pale.
A Costly Affair
Another issue raised by detractors is the cost of the event. At around £250M, the event is sure to be an impressive spectacle. However, the British, not unlike their European or American counterparts, are facing a cost of living crisis that has affected a large portion of the populace.
To be sure, Covid has played its part in increasing inflation globally. Yet, the stress hasn’t eased with the end of the health crisis. While the US has seen a number of banks fold in recent months, the UK has been facing a fall in real disposable incomes since late 2021. In this tepid financial climate, this costly ceremony has been called callous to struggling citizens.
Bread and Circuses or Cultural Heritage
At the end of the day, it’s hard to imagine anything other than a spectacular show from a nation rooted in historical ceremony. From their guards garbed in brilliant red coats and black bearskin caps to the wigged solicitors, the United Kingdom has managed to maintain ties to its rich history, while being unafraid to look forward and embrace modernity.
So is the coronation a way to maintain its cultural heritage, its national identity, or is it bread and circuses to distract from growing national and global conflicts?
I personally love a lot of the culture that has been produced in this island nation. From Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Douglas Adams and J. K. Rowling, from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels to Shaun of the Dead, from the Beatles, to Pink Floyd, to the Arctic Monkeys… For years I’ve been moved and entertained by the creative minds formed by this unique and rich culture.
However, as an American who has been living in France for more than a decade, I don’t really have any opinion on those chosen, or elected, to rule in the UK or serve as its figurehead. I am interested, however, to see what impact this will have, if this mounting disinterest will lead to a new system, or if this changing of the guard will renew national pride and bring about a strengthening of the monarchy.
Looking to get some documents translated? It may behoove you to know a bit about fuzzy matches in order to ameliorate the process. Here, we’ll give you a quick and clear explanation so that you might better understand what goes on behind the scenes of a translation.
In a vast majority of cases, translators will use what are known as Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools, which are pieces of software that enable the translator to reuse translated content and improve overall consistency. This means saving time and, ultimately, money over the course of numerous requests.
During the analyses phase, the software compares each segment in the document to those within the same document and in the translation memory. The same phrase occurring in the selfsame document is simply listed as a “Repetition”. A 101% correspondence is an “in context” repetition, meaning that the segments before and after are also the same, whereas a 100% correspondence is a single-segment repetition. Anything below a 100% match rate is referred to as a “fuzzy match”.
Each segment is placed under the microscope!
The software will go through and find any partial correspondence between segments in the new document, full sentences or partial alike. Just like with complete repetitions, partial repetitions allow translators to save time when translating certain recurring expressions in the same way. Thus, your documents are better harmonized and translated, all the while requiring less turnover time.
Fuzzy matches appear differently within memoQ. First, let’s take a look at how they appear when the analysis is carried out. The table lists the total number of words, repetitions, and partial correspondence.
Example analysis table
What impact will this have in terms of pricing? Well, if you notice the number in parentheses in the table (in the source word column), this shows the weighted word count applied after verification of percentage of correspondence with the translation memory. Still not completely clear? No worries! At the end of the day, it just means the more similar the translation is to past translations, the less you pay! Our article on weighted word counts will help shine a bit of light on our calculation methods of the various prices.
Outside of the price, what application do fuzzy matches have during the translation? As you can see in the image below, for each segment, usually a sentence, the program will display the most similar results it finds. The translator will thus be able to see how previous segments were translated and thus find a similar way to translate the new sentence to improve overall consistency between documents.
Fuzzy match analysis in memoQ
Now that you know a bit more about what happens behind the scenes, why not ask for quote for your project? You can follow this link and rest assured that one of our project managers will get back to you with a precise estimate according to your needs!
Thanksgiving in America has just concluded, and since most French people don’t really have any experience with the holiday, we asked Shane to talk to us about it. Shane is an American and has been our inhouse proofreader for the last 5 years.
Q: As I’m sure you’re aware, France doesn’t celebrate any form of Thanksgiving. Can you give us a bit of a history lesson? What is Thanksgiving? Where does it originate?
Thanksgiving in America has historical ties dating back to the early 17th century. When I was in elementary (primary) school, American children were taught of the First Thanksgiving where pilgrims and a tribe of natives feasted together to celebrate the first bountiful harvest in the New World and seal a binding accord for the protection of the newly arrived immigrants from other tribes.
Even before this “First Thanksgiving”, however, the holiday itself was old hat. Certainly, pagan harvest festivals occurred throughout recorded history, in honour of Demeter or Dionysus, Ceres or Saturn. Thanksgiving specifically had strong ties to Christianity in England, but remained, in its essence, a celebration and a means of giving thanks for a successful harvest and thus the ability to sustain the long, dark winter.
There is a bit more to this story. As America started as a union of separate and individual States with very little federal oversight, many of the States celebrated Thanksgiving at various dates throughout the harvest season. The story goes that one woman, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, had written to various members of congress for some 40 years. In the midst of the American Civil War, in 1863, President Lincoln finally proclaimed a national holiday alongside a proclamation that he hoped it would help to heal the nation. The reason it is the last Thursday in November even though harvest season is generally much earlier, is because it was set to coincide with “Evacuation Day” an American holiday I didn’t even know existed. It celebrated the exodus of the British after the Revolutionary War.
Our Changing Relationship with Food
Q: It seems like a harvest festival is not really attuned to the modern world. How has the holiday managed to last?
Well, let’s just say it’s hard to take away a paid holiday from overworked employees, especially when all you’re expected to do is eat!
However, it is true that our relationship with food and annual harvests isn’t the same as it was in the 1600s. I think this is based on 3 main points:
Society has moved from (mostly) self-sustaining homesteads to sprawling cityscapes.
Globalization, improved transportation, and improved methods make fresh fruits and vegetables available year around.
Industrialization has seen our food shift largely from raw ingredients to processed and manufactured goods
Aside from a few urban gardens, cities would be an impossible problem if not for the farmers who struggle through long hours with intemperate weather, mass production, and living on a razor’s edge in terms of profitability. And let’s be honest, as gratifying as it is to pick your own tomatoes or zucchini, those urban gardens aren’t meeting anyone’s annual calorie intake.
And yet, in modern western civilization, a bad harvest isn’t necessarily a death sentence. Where there may be flooding or drought in some regions in some years, we also have the ability to import food from other regions, to improve yield and to make our grains and vegetables more resilient to harsh whether through genetic engineering and cross pollination.
It’s hard to expect a population to give thanks for a harvest few understand, when, for decades now, food, in any form, has been taken for granted. Whatever nature throws at us, we almost never have to question where we’ll find out next meal or snack.
Thanksgiving in modern America
Q: Before moving to France in 2011, what was Thanksgiving like for you and your family?
Thanksgiving officially launches the holiday season for us in the U.S.: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s all within just a few short weeks. It carries with it a level of excitement knowing that the end of the year is only stone’s throw away, plus, let’s be honest, there is something great about a holiday where all you’re expected to do is eat!
But in a lot of ways, Thanksgiving came to represent more of a marketing ploy for Christmas than a holiday in its own right. Every Thanksgiving for nearly a century now, the Macy’s department store has sponsored a massive parade that runs through New York City and is broadcasted to televisions all across America. With Santa Claus and the biggest characters of the year floating along the streets like giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Men, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is as much a staple of the holiday as turkey and mashed potatoes.
And obviously, no discussion of the holiday is complete without acknowledging Black Friday. The year’s biggest sales event where mobs of human’s used to descend on stores across the nation en masse for an extra big price drop on those latest electronic gadgets. All of this as part of a lead up to Christmas season. In fact, when I was a kid you could mark your calendar by the holiday and know when you fired up the radio the day after Thanksgiving, the 24/7 Christmas music marathon would begin.
So, in short, a typical Thanksgiving celebration has little to do with the original meaning of the holiday. It remains an occasion to feast with family or friends, but even when I was a kid the television had taken pride of place in most households, whether to watch the annual Detroit Lions or Greenback Packers football games or the Macy’s parade.
Thanksgiving from Abroad
Q: Now that you live in France, how do you keep the holiday alive in your family?
Since I left my home country back in 2011, I have maintained the habit of having a small Thanksgiving celebration the 4th Thursday of every November. Since it started as a harvest festival, a lot of Thanksgiving revolves around food. Green bean casseroles, turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin, pecan or apple pie… In France, however, there is no national holiday and thus no opportunity to while away hours cooking entirely too much food.
We try to prepare a bit ahead of time so we aren’t eating too late at night, whether that means steaming and cutting some potatoes or prepping the stuffing or deserts a few days earlier. This year, for example, the menu contained a turkey roast, stuffing, cheesy potatoes, green beans and a pecan pie.
When it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, I try to find a balance between nostalgia and eating locally. Whether it’s ordering a turkey from my local butcher’s shop or vegetables from the local market, I do try to ensure that I help drive commerce in my town and support farmers in my region. But there are certain memories from my childhood that are inexorably tied to the food and Thanksgiving experience that I do want to pass down to my children as well, and that’s something I feel strongly about, even if it does tie me into more global food markets, such as pecans which are often harvested in North America.
But above and beyond the food, Thanksgiving has taken on much more of its original meaning in my household. It is an occasion to spend time as a family and share and pass on values.
Q: You talked about passing on values. What values do you try to pass on to your children through the holiday?
I think it’s threefold my takeaway for the holiday and what I try to pass on. One, we have a beautiful, bountiful planet. I appreciate being able to enjoy a mango from time to time, even though one would never grow naturally in the Pays de la Loire region, but I try to ensure the majority of my food is local, if not my region at least the country or one of our nearest neighbours, like Spain or Italy. That’s to help local commerce but also, and especially, to cut down on overseas shipping, not because I’m worried about some murky and vague threat of future impact on the climate, but because I think it’s just unnecessary pollution. We have a beautiful planet that provides for us, and I want to keep it that way as long as possible with whatever small gestures I can make.
The second is the importance of family. Not everyone is lucky enough to have such a strong support group, but when we have that chance, we have to nurture it. Put down our phones and gadgets, turn off our screens, look each other in the face, and connect. I am a fan of tech and a bit of a geek, if I do say so myself! But whatever the next big thing in tech happens to be, I don’t think that there is anything that can replace real human connection.
And finally, I try to impart on my children that we have enough in our lives for which to be thankful. And that it’s worth taking the time and setting aside a specific occasion to think about those blessings, those things in our lives we too often take for granted, from health and happiness to togetherness and the people who enrich our lives, from a comfortable home to the things that fill it, and our souls, with warmth. That’s Thanksgiving to me, and that’s what I try to pass on to my kids!
While internationalization is still a growing market concern for many businesses, a well-developed website and/or online product catalogue is a must if you hope to reach the biggest possible audience. Founded in 2008, TradOnline is specialized in website, document, and video translation, offering bespoke accompaniment whatever your business sector. In order to develop your own website, a number of CMS’s are available with built-in multilingual functionality. We’ll describe the necessary steps to translate your Wix website, a free CMS known for its ease-of-use.
Translating your website with Wix Multilingual
WordPress or Wix?
One of the most crucial steps before creating your website is to decide which CMS is best adapted to your needs. Today, the market for web services stretches far and wide, and there are thus a number of CMS platforms that allow you to build a quality online storefront or website. According to recent market studies, WordPress remains the undisputed champion of the web, but today it is facing its fiercest competition yet. Among its most ardent competitors stands Wix, cracking the top 10 in a respectable fifth place and proving that the ease-of-use that differentiates this CMS has won over a loyal audience.
Translating with Wix Multilingual
Development of Wix began in 2006, and today it offers a number of interesting functionalities, including allowing the user to switch from one language to another with a single click of a button. In order to enable this feature, simply install the Wix Multilingual extension to your existing site.
You can thus add and translate any language you want to your online shop or storefront. Wix will generate specific domain names for each language added, a big advantage for online referencing and an important measure of quality when it comes to your users.
What you need to know to translate a Wix site
The most important question that needs to be answered when creating a multilingual website is how you are going to manage all of the content that needs to be translated. And of course, you’ll need to remember all of the little settings that might seem superfluous but can make or break your localization.
First things first, you’ll need to head over to your dashboard and select what will be your primary source language and which languages you’ll want to add to make your multilingual Wix site come to life.
Note: you can add languages to your page over time as needed, so if you don’t have the budget to translate your site to all of the languages you want, you can always start by your most important target audience and add less critical languages later.
To easily change from one language to another, Wix allows you to add a language icon to your main menu. You can either add a two-letter language code – like FR for French or EN for English – or you can add the full name of the language. You even have an option to use an icon of the country flag to represent a language.
How to go about translating your Wix site
When creating your multilingual site, obviously you’ll have to translate all of your pages and content, but it doesn’t stop there. There are, indeed, a number of elements that need to be translated to make your site totally coherent throughout. This includes menus, buttons, calls to action or images and alternative text, which is key to your SEO performance.
Wix offers two possibilities for translating your content: add your own translated content or use Google Translate for machine translations. Machine translation has its place for short, clear and direct sentences: these could be things like product descriptions, but do beware, it isn’t a replacement for professional translations. If there are any product names, they may end up being translated when they are meant to remain untranslated and any errors in the source are compounded and exacerbated. Of course, that’s outside of any eventual mistranslations or grammatical errors that may just occur in an imperfect system. But then, how do you go about getting a professional, quality translation of your content?
Who should you entrust with the translation of your content?
You have different possibilities that may interest you here
Specialized in web translation and expert in their target language, you can rest assured that your multilingual translated content will be professional and truly adapted to your sector and your business. With a professional agency, you will also benefit from a number of advantageous services:
solutions for the importation and exportation of your content. There’s nothing for you to do! The agency will manage the reintroduction of your translated contented to your CMS platform.
multilingual SEO optimization to ensure that each of your separate languages is optimized for the best natural referencing on search engines.
Use of a translation API, such as Microsoft Translator API
This allows for an automatic integration of your translation, image text, buttons and calls to action. However, it should be noted that using these types of API’s sometimes require technical development that can prove to be quite complex.
Note: your web translation agency may be able to integrate an API into your site in order to download any of the source content that was updated. It can thus be automatically updated and reintegrated into your site.
Opt for Wix Multilingual equipped with the foreknowledge that your translation may be incomplete or worse, erroneous, which will negatively impact the image of your online store.
Atypical cases with Wix Multilingual translations
As the web can prove to be a particularly complex proving ground, you will of course run into atypical cases in your translation work, unless you decide to use machine translation across your Wix site.
You may run into such example when translating plugins – or extensions – or your image library or portfolios. Click on “Edit Translation” to modify the text within the extensions. While the modifications take place outside of the editor, you will be brought back to your Wix dashboard once they’ve been completed. Finally, you can even change the visuals depending on the language, such as displaying one image for your Spanish site and another for the French.
Wix offers a wide range of possibilities for users to build their own high-performance and pertinent multilingual website. The dashboard of the CMS will take you step-by-step through the process of making your site accessible to an international audience in just two clicks.
Influencer marketing is a way to create interest in a product or service by harnessing the appeal of a social media “influencer” (blogger, streamer, YouTuber), with their quantifiable number of followers, and paying this person to create a video or ad for their followers.
The budget spent on influencer marketing globally has skyrocketed to 20 times its level in 2015 as of 2021.
Why has this ballooned so much?
Today, 87% of the population prefers making purchases online and 94% are swayed towards purchasing by a positive review of a product.
On top of this, the majority of users pass upwards of 2.5 hours per day on their smartphone, so they have plenty of time to watch influencer’s videos.
And, the more international an influencer’s audience and appeal, the more your brand benefits internationally.
First step: localize your website
You would just be burning money if you targeted an international influencer if you haven’t translated your site. And, even beyond the potential loss of revenue, this could have a negative impact on your brand image.
You’ll need to prepare the customer pathway for orders and work on localizing your website and any landing pages used for the marketing campaign.
And of course, these means calling on a professional translator, not just utilizing the Google Translate plugin for automatic Machine Translation.
Numerous statistical analyses have shown that a lack of adaptation to your target market leads to reduced click throughs and fewer completed orders.
Build trust with your prospect: allow them to find testimonials or reviews from fellow countrymen (or at least ensure that they’re in the right language), ensure any order summaries or quotes are translated throughout, that you allow multiple and pertinent payment options (not just PayPal), etc.
Second step: choose the right message
Be aware that your choice of influencer needs to be weighed on more than just their reach.
Perhaps the most important factor is the influencer’s persona, and ensuring it is shared by their audience. You must also be ready to trust in the influencer’s ability to choose the best way to transmit your message; after all, no one knows their audience as well as the influencer themself.
Even then, it may be necessary to adapt your message for an international audience. Some brands – a bit overconfident in their messaging – have already tested the waters and proved the importance of adapting. For example, an American tea company, Teami, faced a $15M fine for falsely advertising the “thinning” effect of their product as well as not mentioning that their agreements with influencers were paid advertisements.
And, of course, when it comes to culture, it is just as important when spoken word is used as written. At TradOnline, we often evoke the importance of putting yourself in your clients’ shoes when adapting your marketing hooks internationally, and in order to do that right, you need native translators. They are the best placed to tell you if a certain turn of phrase works or if your play on words is possible or needs to be forgotten.
That lack of attention to detail landed Dolce & Gabbana in hot water with the Chinese audience after an ad shot with actress Zuo Ye came across with “insulting and racist” undertones.
In short, proper upstream preparation seems like the true key to success. As the French proverb goes, “There’s no sense in running, you just need to leave on time.”
Do you have a influencer marketing project you want to launch with an international audience? TradOnline is here to help guide you through the pitfalls of content and content localization. Contact us.
