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Let's set the scene for today's article: it's summertime, the living is easy, and everyone is on vacation. Your trusted translator, with whom you have worked closely for years, is taking her summer vacation, and you urgently need a translation. What do you do?

This is a very common situation, that almost always ends the same way. You --the client--has trust in a specific translator for your translation needs, and when you need him or her the most, they aren't available. That is because that person is the business, and has no team of fellow professionals in the periphery giving support.

That is why it is important to always request translations from a professional certified translation company, such as Idiomatic Translations. Someone is always there, we don't go on vacation and you will always get translations done by native speakers, in whatever language you may need.

Looking for a translation company for your certified translations? Get in touch with us here for a free quote.

English is now the global language of communication. Most people learn English at school and continue to learn after their basic education to be able to be proficient in the language. It makes jobs a lot easier. As English is a mix of other languages, having a strong Latin influence, as well as Germanic languages and French, these come quite easy to the English learner.

Translations into English are in strong supply. All these languages use the same alphabet, so it's no great strain to learn a European language.

However, when it comes to translating into different languages that use different alphabets, things are not so easy. Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Thai and other Asiatic languages. There are no easy cues that allow interpretations. Nothing that resembles European languages; no alphabet, sounds that are completely different, and then there are the cultural differences and nuances to deal with.

Haitian Creole is a fascinating language spoken primarily in Haiti by approximately 8.5 million people, and another 3.5 people around the world as a result of Haitian immigration. Mixing grammar and vocabulary from French and myriad African tongues, what are the unique features of this language?

The language is hugely based on French with a strong West African influence, including the Wolof, Fon, and Ewe languages. African slaves were brought to modern-day Haiti by the French to work in the burgeoning sugarcane industry. In order for African slaves and the French to communicate, slaves took the French language and mixed it with the vernacular and structure of their native languages.

Haitian Creole is actually not difficult to learn. Given that it has no conjugation, and that it shares many cognates with English and French, it is considered a very easy language. Given the strong French influence, francophones would have an even easier time in learning it.

For a rather small island, Haiti boasts a wide array of ways to speak Creole, which can mainly be separated into Northern, Central and Southern dialects. Larger cities, like Port-de-Paix and Cap Haitien, speak a Creole more heavily based on French (still the language of the elite), while more rural communities speak a Creole more distanced from standard French.

Are you looking for Creole or Haitian Creole translations? If so, get in touch with Idiomatic here.

If you have ever tried to learn a foreign language, unless you learned as a young child, it can be a very frustrating experience. Gender, tenses, expressions that have no direct translation--language learning can feel like an uphill battle.

But what about a language that features clicks? One such language is !Xóõ, which is an African language spoken by just a few thousand, mostly in Botswana. !Xóõ has five basic clicks and 17 accompanying ones. Interestingly enough, the top academic studying !Xóõ, Tony Traill, developed a lump on his throat from learning to make their sounds. Further research showed that mature !Xóõ-speakers had the same lump.

Chinese vs. Japanese

On paper, Chinese and Japanese look equally foreign, both consisting of intricate symbols that look nearly impossible to draw, let alone guess on their pronunciation. But, just how similar are these two languages? Read more...

Do you have an interest in language? Are you a speaker of English? Here, we give you 6 fun facts about the language of Shakespeare.

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