During Ramadan Muslims around the world will be observing fasting from dawn to sunset. Find out how this may impact any planned translations, and how you can make the most of opportunities that it presents. If you haven’t factored Ramadan into your plan don’t worry - your friendly translation and cultural experts at Acuity Translations are on hand to help.

Linguists have always been intrigued by pictorial and symbolic languages. Consider the Egyptians and their hieroglyphs, the Mexicans and their Aztec language or we can even go as far back to a time when spoken language hadn’t fully evolved and humans would communicate with cave paintings. And now, the dawn of the digital age - with its plethora of revolutionary technologies - has brought with it a new pictorial language: Emoji. 

China is home to a multitude of languages and dialects, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Simply referring to the “Chinese language” is too vague but, helpfully, geography plays a major role in identifying the differences. To narrow things down, official languages are Standard Mandarin (Mainland China and Taiwan), Cantonese (Hong Kong and Macau), English (Hong Kong) and Portuguese (Macau). Chinese language is spoken in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore and other areas with historic immigration from China.

China (officially the People's Republic of China, PRC) is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia, governed by the Communist Party of China. With a population of over 1.381 billion, it is the world’s most populous country and counts for nearly 20% of the world’s entire population. China’s economy is reported as growing 6.7% in 2016, which shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. The capital of China is Beijing, with major urban areas also including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong (it also claims sovereignty over Taiwan).

Acuity Translations operates as the specialist arm of RP Translate, who have been lending their support as a proud Silver Sponsor of Translators without Borders (TWB) since 2014. Volunteers connect humanitarian organizations with a professional community of volunteer translators to communicate critical information across a network of countries and cultures. Translators without Borders contributes to humanitarian efforts through translating a range of materials such as crisis response and health information, as well as through raising awareness of the costly impact of ignoring language barriers.

We are delighted to share great news about a milestone that TWB has just reached….

Ah Finland, a smallish nation but the home of many exciting things, and perhaps, most importantly at this festive time of the year – Finland is best known for having the most famous resident of all – Santa Claus himself! Ho ho ho!

Finland is the closest Nordic nation to the former USSR, making it ideally located to conduct business with Russia and the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. If you include Scandinavia into the Northwestern Russia and other Baltic States mix, then there are more than 80 million prospective customers surrounding Finland, pretty much on their doorstep (so to speak).

Bated breath. Nervous toe-tapping. A candle on the dinner table flickers dangerously, before giving up its glowing ghost.

It can only mean one thing… the nerve-wracking, final sprint towards the finish line at the Association of Translation Companies’ Awards Dinner.

10 Tips for getting into the Greek Groove 

As someone who is half Greek, I can confirm (and am allowed to say) that Greek social stereotypes tend to be accurate. Those of you with Cypriot or Greek friends, or who have escaped to one of the breathtakingly beautiful islands with their traditional blue-doored and white-walled villages, will know that Greek people are usually the life and soul of the taverna: enjoying ‘ouzo’ until the early hours of the morning, smashing plates and dancing on tables…