Yesterday my company received a Request for Proposal (RFP) in French.
Now, I am a US citizen living and working in Germany. In our office in Munich, we have folks from a lot of different countries including Spain, Poland, UK and India. But no one from France. (Murphy’s Law)
This time, instead of sending the 40-plus pages out to a translator and paying around 15 Euro cents per word (more if you want it faster than in 4-5 working days), we decided to try out an automated translation program.
We went to a site called Linguatec, paid €240 with a credit card and expected …read more

If you ever had one or two years of Spanish, French or German in high school, you may recall that these languages have two ways to say “you” – one formal way for people you do not know well and one informal way for friends, family and children. While speaking English in Europe you may never realize that this distinction exists, but it is important to understand the concept nonetheless.
Indeed the general concept applies also to Asia where, for example, whole sentences in Japanese will be different, depending on what level of politeness you need to use. Remember that old …read more