Gelukkig nieuwjaar! We have used the quiet days after Christmas to launch our Dutch Salftrans website.

Merry Christmas! We are winding down at the end of a very busy year, and our offices will be closed between Christmas and New Year. Our team of translators, DTP experts and project managers have worked extremely hard this year, and everyone deserves a few days off to recharge their batteries. In the meantime, we have posted a Christmas scene of snow in the hills above Manchester for you to enjoy, gentle reader.

Christmas is coming. I know this not because the goose is getting fat, but because I popped into town today to the Manchester Christmas markets. There are actually three Christmas markets in Manchester this year, but the one in St Ann's Square is my favourite, mainly because they are selling hot roasted chestnuts there! And for a translator like me, it is nice to have a chance to chat to the stallholders in German or Dutch.

More translation mishaps from the wonderful book: Aeroflot can always be relied on, and they don't disappoint with this sign:

"Introducing wide boiled aircraft for your comfort"

And still on an airlines theme, there was the unfortunate Danish airline that advised passengers:

"We take your bags and send them in all directions"

Ho hum. Maybe it really is worth spending a couple of bucks more to have customer-facing literature professionally translated?

As translators, we love language, and words. So a rainy afternoon in Manchester saw some of our translators sat round a table chuckling over more not-quite-right signs in English. Today's gem is the following, from a hairdresser's in Beijing:

Haircuts half price today.
Only one per customer.

Hmmm. The concept that anyone might want more than one haircut today is ... interesting!

I work for a translation company in the UK. A couple of weeks back, I was talking with some clients about "best practice" when localizing their software, and they kindly commented that the overview we gave them would make a wonderful white paper that would help companies who are new to localizing their software and documentation into other languages. So this week, we published a white paper on software localization. I hope you find it helpful.