By: Allie
Date: April 15, 2019
Who can forget the thrill of an Easter egg hunt when we were children? Colorful eggs filled with candy, toys, and confetti awaited our grabby hands as we searched for these hidden treasures.
Hollow chocolate bunnies filled our decorative Easter baskets, along with hand-dyed hardboiled eggs, and the day almost always included a big meal with a juicy Easter ham and hot crossed buns.
These are just a few of the traditions that many American families observe during this spring holiday.
But how do other cultures from around the world celebrate Easter? Here’s a quick tour…
1. Australia – The Easter Bilby
Yes, you read that right – the bilby.
In 1991, a campaign was launched to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby. Why? Because many Australians view wild rabbits (not native to the country) as pests that destroy farmers’ lands and crops. Plus, research has shown that rabbits negatively affect over 150 native species!
Bilbies, on the other hand, are a native Australian species that promote a healthy ecosystem. Several other native species benefit from the bilby’s digging skills – including birds, insects, and small mammals who use the bilby’s burrows for shelter and protection.
2. Florence, Italy – Explosions Galore
For over 350 years Florence has celebrated Easter with a cultural tradition known as Scoppio del Carro, or “Explosion of the Cart”.
This elaborate 2-3 story wagon filled with fireworks gets pulled through the streets of Florence by white oxen on Easter Sunday. It stops in front of the Duomo, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, and is set ablaze.
Every Easter hundreds of spectators watch in awe as the fireworks light up the streets of Florence in a beautiful celebration.
3. France – 15,000 Egg Omelet
In southwestern France, in the small village of Bessieres, a gigantic omelet fit to feed thousands of people is whipped up on Easter Monday. And yes, this omelet consists of 15,000 eggs!
The tradition is less than half a century old, but its origin goes back to the time of Napoleon Bonaparte.
As the story goes, Napoleon loved his first taste of an omelet in the village and ordered the locals to cook a massive one to feed his army.
4. Verges, Spain – Death Dance
On holy Thursday, the Catalan town of Verges chooses 5 residents to dress up in skeleton costumes and perform Dansa de La Mort or “Dance of Death”. As part of the tradition, the residents carry sickles while dancing to drums.
5. Sweden – Easter Witches
This tradition has a strong resemblance to the American tradition of trick-or-treating for Halloween.
The Thursday before Easter Sunday Swedish children dress up as adorable little witches, carry brooms, and go door-to-door to their neighbors collecting treats.
Understanding cultural nuances is essential when translating your content for other countries. Contact TLC today for a free quote for your certified translation needs.
By: Hana
Date: March 5, 2016
In this day and age, the workforce is more diverse than ever. Companies of all sizes and specialties are quickly using human resources strategies to tap into to the diverse talents, resources, and subsequent languages of the world economy. Then, they find themselves increasingly motivated to bridge cultural and linguistic gaps in order to recruit, keep, and develop their most valuable talent.
For multinational companies, one of the biggest challenges is to maintain brand and cultural unity across geographic borders. The same is true for domestic companies with a diverse workforce. Maintaining clear lines of communication is vitally important to performance, quality, safety, and the cultivation of an inclusive culture. And, for any company with a significant number of employees who primarily speak a language other than English, translation is vitally important for clear communication to occur.
Below are 5 major areas of Human Resources where translation can be of crucial importance:
1. Recruitment – multilingual and international staffing and recruitment necessitates the use of translated or bilingual ads, forms, applications, employment contracts and any related website content. A foreign language speaker with the skills and talents a potential employer needs will be more attracted to an open position if all details are presented in their mother tongue.
2. Training Materials – translating training guides, codes of conduct, handbooks, manuals, and any e-learning courses – as well as adding subtitles to training videos or localizing video content – will help avoid any ambiguity or “room for error” in employee onboarding & training.
3. Employment – offering review forms and communication, benefit plans and guides, insurance documents, and related website content (such as employee portals) in the languages employees speak will result in giving them control over finding and researching the information they need rather than needing one-on-one support from HR employees.
4. Policies & Procedures – documents like human resource policies and safety procedures are usually documents carefully crafted to comply with company policies and state and federal regulations. Where compliance is at play, translation is requisite for the elimination of legal risks.
5. Ongoing Communication – offering translation of newsletters, blogs, FAQs for employees, corporate notices, memos and announcements will help maintain clear, direct communication and, above all, foster the idea of a culture that is inclusive and supportive.
Translation of Human Resources documents requires high quality, a blend of precise legal and HR terminology, and the need for exact, unambiguous, and culturally accurate verbiage. There simply is no room for error. The good news is that human resources documents are, overall, a fantastic candidate for the use of Computer Assisted Translation tools. CAT tools aid in maintaining terminological consistency and accuracy and save companies a high percentage of translation dollars over time – updates to existing documents are quick and easy to implement, with charges only reflecting new or modified material.
Thanks to the increasing globalization of businesses, translation for Human Resources has developed into its own translation specialty – and the need is here to stay. For companies with either domestic and overseas employees or foreign language speakers in-house, utilizing professional, CAT assisted translation for HR documents offers many benefits. Easily accessible quality communication, improved recruiting and retention strategies, decreased cost, and the elimination of legal risks are all reasons to begin bridging the gaps through HR translation.
