How saving money on translation can take its toll

That's right, dear CEOs, managers, marketing and PR professionals, I am talking to you right now. This post is going to be all about your greediness, your miserliness and you not wanting to spend much money on language-related services. This is something that me and my colleagues experience on a daily basis, especially since the great financial meltdown started. Companies were forced to cut spending by large amounts. That was about right - when things get rough, the most important thing to do is to avoid any unnecessary waste of money. However, saving too much money on liguistic services - whether it is translation, proof-reading or interpretation - always takes its toll. In one way or another, the company will pay the price for being cheap.

In order to understand this paradigm, one thing must be cleared out first: high quality is expensive. Period. Once you go to the store to buy something for dinner, you can either go with inexpensive choices and accept lower quality in return, or you can pay a much bigger price for something more delicious. This is just the way it works and it has always been like that. Once you think about puchasing a new car, you are well aware of what type of machine you can get in exchange for the amount of money you have. You won't complain about not getting an Audi A6 if you only have half the money of its actual price. You will be compromised with the one you can afford. Yet when a company wants to buy translation services from a professional, they are likely to pay averages prices and expect nothing less than ultimate quality. We have to make them understand once and for all: quality is something you only can ask for if you are willing to give a fair compensation.

Secondly, as many of my fellow translators would sure agree with that: I studied and worked very hard for decades to attain every skill and expertise I have today. I have spent money on tutors, language teachers and (unreasonably) expensive language books. I have spent weekends and summer holidays with learning German, with practicing English grammar or with living in Italy, improving my skill there. I truly have worked my heart out and made a lot of sacrifices. I think it is more than acceptable that I have become a little pretentious. I am determined to enjoy the fruits of my year-long labor and I won't give away my knowledge for pennies.

Thirdly, as I said, saving money on unnecessary business expenditures is more than reasonable. If your company needs cutting, go and get rid of business models than won't work, machines or tools you can do without or co-workers who are lazy, disloyal or incompetent. The one thing you should never spare on is language-related services. That is because for cheap money, you always get cheap quality - and lack of great quality is certainly not the way to go in today's economy. Improper and unprofessional translation will cost you more in the long run. It could cost a tender. It could cost your quarter year. Even worse, for small companies, it  could cost their reputation and eventually, their entire existence.

Last but not least, I would say to all companies to not look for cheap prices but for the best value for money options. Go and look for a professional who can provide great quality on reasonable prices. We are more than ready to help you out - in case you respect us enough to pay us our fair share!

Most difficult languages to learn - Hungarian ranks 4th

Long before we have become professional translators / interpreters or proofreaders, we all were language fanatics first.

We were the kind of students whose favourite school subject always happened to be the foreign langauge we studied. As much I had been a fan of literature or history, I would always pick English whenever I had to name my alltime favorite. I am sure this holds true for many translators. First, we fell in love with the beauty of words and phrases of another language and are eager to learn about them. Then, and only then, we start seeking pleasure from comparing the foreign language to our very own and beginning the process of translation.

I honestly believe that one cannot become a great language pro without having a wild passion and utmost respect for his or her own mother tongue. You can only appreciate the art of subtlety once you have experienced it. You have to become an expert in your mother tongue before mastering a foreign one.

The nature of your native language pretty much determines how easily you can learn foreign languages. I give you a good example; Neo-Latino languages have basically the same logics to follow and very similar grammar rules. A native speaker of Italian could learn Spanish without much trouble. Similarly, a Slovenian native would (may not speak, but) understand almost any other Slavic languages (except for Russian). For Dutch people, it is pretty simple to learn the basics of German.

Speaking of me, I have never had any of these similarities when I started learning foreign languages. My mother tongue is very unique and expectional in many ways. Hungarian is one of the Uralic languages and belongs to the branch of Finno-Ugric. In Europe, Hungarian is the most widely spoken language which does not belong to the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by cirka 15 million people around the globe.

Hungarian, or "magyar" as we call it, is the 4th hardest language to learn for foreigners. (According to the statistics of www.mylanguages.org) It is followed by Mandarin, Arabic and Tuyuca (one of the languages of the Amazon). How can it be that hard?

To give you a clue, let's just say a normal European language has like 4-5 cases and noun forms. Hungarian has 35. Our language is also full of idioms and suffixes. Unlike most languages, we do not use any prepositions - our language is agglutinative which means that we form words by joining morphemes together. To top all of that, we have a high amount of vowels and accents as well.

Despite the difficult grammar, it is truly worth a try to learn it because it is utterly beautiful. I know I am biased but I have heard this from many foreigners in my life. We have our most beautiful words (according to a famous Hungarian poet, Dezső Kosztolányi) completely different-sounding than in any other language I can recall.

These are láng (means flame); gyöngy (pearl); kard (sword); csók (kiss); vér (blood); szív (heart); sír (grave) and my favourite, édesanya (mother).

Which one seems nice to you? What is your opinion about Hungarian (if you ever got to hear it spoken)? How about your mother tongue?