FAQs

Rosetta is a town in Egypt where the Nile River enters the Mediterranean Sea and a meeting place of civilizations. It was here that the Rosetta Stone was discovered, an inscription in three written languages: Ancient Greek and the Ancient Egyptian Demotic and Hieroglyphic scripts. The polyglot Jean-Jacques Champollion used his knowledge of many languages, including Greek and Coptic, a language descended from Ancient Egyptian, to decode the Ancient Egyptian scripts, allowing us access to more than 3,000 years of written history that had been forgotten.

Through interpretation and translation, our team of language masters allows you to decipher meaning- from whatever language it is encoded in.

When we use the word translation, we are referring to written text. When we say interpretation, we are referring to spoken language

While this is entirely subjective and depends on your goals and audience, here are some that stand out both in terms of numbers of speakers and number of countries where they are spoken. English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, and Arabic are the official languages of the United Nations, each with hundreds of millions of native speakers and serve as second languages for hundreds of millions more across wide swaths of the globe. English and Mandarin both have over a billion speakers. Hindi/Urdu is a lingua franca across the Indian subcontinent where it is spoken by close to a billion people. Portuguese has several hundred million speakers and is spoken in four continents. Other languages with a ton of speakers are Bengali, Indonesian, and Japanese.

The most widely spoken non-English languages in Boston proper are Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Somali, and French. The demographics of the surrounding towns varies- Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole have large communities throughout the greater Boston area. Mandarin and Cantonese are widely spoken in Malden and Quincy, Nepali in Somerville, Arabic and Khmer in Revere, Amharic in Cambridge.

Chinese is one written language, but multiple spoken languages. How is that possible? While the different regional languages of China differ greatly from each other (think like as different as French from Spanish!), they share similar basic structures and word order. And since the Chinese writing system is not alphabetic but instead made up of characters that represent words or parts of words, a text can be written by a speaker of one language and understood by speakers of the other languages.

When requesting a Chinese interpreter, you will need to consider whether you need Mandarin, or another language such as Cantonese.

When getting written material translated into Chinese, you can have it translated into either Simplified Chinese, which is used throughout mainland China, or Traditional Chinese, which is used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Both writing systems are very similar but some of the characters look different.

The situation of Hindi/Urdu is sort of the opposite of Chinese. At the everyday spoken level, Hindi and Urdu are almost identical- and are really two variants of the same language. Urdu is written in a fancy version of the Arabic alphabet with a few additional letters added for sounds that are in Urdu and Persian, but not in Arabic, and a lot of its formal vocabulary is borrowed from these languages. Hindi is written in the Devanagari script that originated with Sanskrit, and its formal vocabulary is also derived from Sanskrit sources.

Yes, we use it all the time for quick lookup of words and to entertain ourselves when we're bored! Machine translation has made huge leaps and bounds. Like any useful tool, it works best when you know its strengths and limitations.

If your goal is basic communication and you don't care about style and perfection- machines can do the job. For example if you need to ask if a shop has something you want to buy, or for a text message or email conversation about something straightforward (Can you come to the meeting on Tuesday?) Occasional mistakes here won't be a problem, and might be hilarious.

If you want to translate something that's for reaching hearts and minds, going to be widely visible, or has to look good, you want the language to be on point. That's when you need a human translator.

At Rosetta Languages we pride ourselves in being Always Responsive, Always Awesome, Always Human, and Always Accessible. Since we are committed to a high quality product and fair and competitive pay for our team members, we're not the cheapest out there, but it will be worth your while.

Language Access, in the US context, is having translation and interpretation available for folks who don't speak English. An example would be a meeting that is held in English with interpretation into Spanish for those who need it.

Language Justice is creating a space where different languages interact on an equal footing. An example would be having a meeting where the speakers and presenters include both English and Spanish speakers, and interpretation is provided for everyone who doesn't understand both languages. Language justice is a more effective strategy for creating real community engagement!

At Rosetta Languages, we value and take pride in all languages and dialects as legitimate and beautiful tools of human expression. We challenge the norms that favor English over other languages, and encourage everyone who works with us to use their non-English languages in professional settings, including, when possible, in communication with our team. We work with our clients to hold events in non-English languages, with simultaneous interpretation provided into English.

1. Do lots of outreach! Make sure the flyer and topic are engaging to the audience. Before you translate materials, consider changing the messaging. Instead of "join us on zoom to learn about how you can get involved in a community steering committee to reduce CO2 emissions and achieve net zero", how about "Saving the Earth for our kids- free food and a gift card raffle".

2. Talk to people in the communities you want to reach. Find leaders who can invite others and take on leadership roles in the event, including speaking roles.

3. Connect with the other organizations in your neighborhood and invite them to participate and bring their people.

4. Hire awesome interpreters!

Need help? Rosetta Languages has got your back! Give us a call now.