STAR TS Translation Services Blog

Who will speak Irish during Irish Language Week?

Dáil Business to be conducted in Irish for Irish Week.

This year during Irish Language Week on March 7th the main business of the Dáil will be conducted in Irish. The Irish Times reported this weekend that Dáil Éireann will conduct business through Irish during the event to mark the occasion. It will be very interesting to see who will be able to converse correctly and if any real business will be done.

For the Taoiseach Enda Kenny it should be an easy enough day for him. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív will comfortably take the opportunity to talk about issues other than Gaeilge. But the pressing question is : “Who will answer for the technical group ?”. How many deputies can speak and discuss the tougher political agenda of the day in Irish?

The Irish Times bet on Joe Higgins. Who would you bet on?

If they need help maybe they could call us here at  STAR. We provide Irish Translation Services and over 40 other languages.

Barack Obama, Ollie Hayes and Damian Scattergood discuss the benefits of Presidents Obama's visit to Moneygall and Ireland.

Holiday World 2012

Organised by Business Exhibitions Ltd., Holiday World Show Dublin 2012 gave me the opportunity to meet a large numbers of exhibitors operating in the tourism sector such as tour operators, vehicles companies and airlines companies. All the companies are doing global business and helping the Irish economy grow. It was a very busy show and it was great to see so many exhibitors attending. We had fun meeting Ollie Hayes of Barack Obama fame and discussing the great benefits the presidents visit brought to the town of Moneygall. You have to visit, its a lovely town and the people are great. I was there last year on my Holidays.

Darina Nakagawa MD Unique Japan Tours and Damian Scattergood discuss the beauty of Japan.

We also met Darina Nakagawa Managing Director of Unique Japan Tours who provide tours of Japan. They can arrange special guided tours for travellers and will make your holiday to Japan really special.  Japan is a beautiful place and well worth exploring.

60 countries were represented and over 1,000 travel and tourism professionals were there to give face-to-face advice and useful information which is not available anywhere else in Ireland. Areas included travelling to the Middle East such as Abu Dhabi on business or pleasure.

Angela Bates discussing business travel to Abu Dhabi with Damian Scattergood

Michael Ring Junior Minister for Tourism visits Holiday World Show

The structure of the show enabled us to explore the globe under one roof – from Africa to Asia and from America to Europe. Many exhibitors offered special “Show only” discount holiday deals. I had numerous opportunities to enjoy some great entertainment along the exhibition and as we were walking through the paths we even had the chance to encounter Michael Ring, Junior Minister for tourism. Business and pleasure combined we had a great time!

STAR  works with many travel companies, government agencies and design companies developing and translating marketing material for the travel, hotel and leisure business.   We translate into over 40 languages covering Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

CES SHOW, Las Vegas

The International CES show took place in Las Vegas from 10 to 13^th January 2012. This event is the largest technology event in the world and gathers each year manufacturers, developers and suppliers of consumer technology hardware, content, and technology delivery systems.

On the Irish front, one exhibitor in particular who caught our eye is WorldDesk Ltd. This Northern-Irish start-up specializes in the cloud computing and virtualisation software space. So impressive is their technology that they have reached an acquisition agreement with DeskStream Inc. a leading Californian and Indian company providing desktop virtualisation software.

They announced on 12^th January the acquisition of WorldDesk. Employees of WorldDesk, including co-founders Jonathan Chesney and Claire Moore, will join DeskStream. The 2-years-old Irish company, will still be located in Belfast. So we wish all the best for them! Job Well Done!

At STAR we love to see Irish success stories, we’d love to hear and share your stories with our visitors. Drop us a line and let us know about your success stories. STAR supports Irish companies helping them grow their global business. STAR translates software and e-commerce websites for clients in over 40 languages. We provide website translation services and e-commerce services.

The Young Scientist Exhibition opens today in the RDS. For those interested in languages there are 4 specific projects we recommend you visit.

Young Scientist Language Projects:

1. From Coláiste Eoin in Dublin “GAERLA” Language transfer and interference, a study of bilingual teenagers.
A topic worth discussing in light of the decline of the Irish Language.

2. Again from Dublin, Loreto College – St Stephens Green, Cryptography; a study of the Irish language.
This certainly looks like an interesting topic for us, original and of value.

3. From Coláiste Bhríde in Wicklow, Is abbreviated texting having a negative impact on our English language?
Again one close to our hearts. We believe texting is having a negative effect on the English Language, as too is the use of Facebook and Twitter on communication skills.

4. From Donegal based Loreto Community School, their project investigates whether Irish TV can help improve childrens Irish.

What do you think? Share your opinion with us on these topics.

Hands Only CPR:

We have to support this great advertising campaign for “Hands only CPR” by the British heart campaign. Its the latest campaign to show how to save someone’s life using CPR.

What I really like is that it uses a number of systems to teach the system. Audio and Video, and hits you with toe tapping music and Vinny Jones from the celebrity site to get the message home.

Watch – Learn – Save a Life

Vinny Jones showing Hand Only CPR system.

Congratulations on a great system.

For more information visit the British Heart Foundation.

New Changes in Google Search

Google has started to roll out new personal search query results.

As part of its progress into the social media area it can now index your personal photos, data etc as posted and profile you for individual searchs.

It allows them to

a) know more about you and what you search for

b) allows them to personalise searchs for you as they know what you are interested in.

c) it gives them the ability to include personal (social) information in Google searches as required.

For more information see the full release from the yahoo press.

Interesting figures from Enterprise Ireland today highlights the strengths and success Irish Businesses are delivering to International markets. According to figures published today Ireland’s results are very strong in world rankings:

• The largest exporter of Infant formula in the world: 1 in 7 formula-fed babies drink infant formula produced in Ireland.
• 5th largest exporter of beef in the world and 2nd in Europe after the Netherlands
• 50% of the world’s aircraft on lease is managed in Ireland
• €1.9 trillion in funds are administered from Ireland
• Largest net exporter (exports – imports) of pharmaceuticals in the world
• 7th largest exporter in the world
• 8 of top 10 pharmaceutical companies have operations in Ireland
• 50% of the world’s leading financial services companies are based in Ireland
• The 10th largest investor in the US, with hundreds of companies employing more than 120,000 people across the US
• Investment from the US into Ireland is greater than US investment into China, India, Brazil and Russia combined
• 130 Irish companies employ more then 8,000 people in China

Source: Enterprise Ireland

STAR works with Irish companies to help drive export sales by providing translation services in over 45 languages.

On Friday we attended Enterprise Ireland’s Social Media club #eismclub in EI’s Headquarters.

Captain Pat O'Connor and Damien Mulley discussing Social media policy.

Two fantastic presentations from Captain Pat O’Connor, Spokesperson & Media Relations, Irish Defence Forces and Damien Mulley of Mulley Communications on how to create, roll out and manage your social media presence. As you can imagine for the defence forces this would be a tricky and sensitive area. How do you allow people to blog/tweet and socialise whilst protection national security interests and peoples public/private interests. Captain O’Connor spoke excellently about how they manage this balance. They defence forces have a very well thought out policy and process for publication of information. His presentation was open and he shared a great many valuable lessons with everyone in the room.

Damien spoke about how to manage your presence and policy -and the key elements you need to have in place for a successful social presence.

1. Very important to remember is that in today’s world a Tweet carries the same weight as a Press Release. Captain O’Connor spoke about how some of the defence forces tweets had reached the news before the officical press releases – so you need to be careful how and about what you tweet.

2. So you need to have a Social Media Policy in place. A great site for lots of examples/templates for free social media policies is http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php

3. You should assign people as social media commentators and train them accordingly.

4. You should register your social media profile on all the various systems even if you don’t plan to use them. It can be an expensive and long process to get them back if someone cybersquats them.

5. Have an emergency response policy for social media. This is important to ensure you respond accordingly to manage situation. One company who had their database of clients “hacked” immediately sent out press releases about their “data breach”. This was picked up quickly by the search engines so discussions where about the “data breach” and not the “Hack”. This was a much softer message and a great PR win for them.

6. Finally ensure you tie your business strategy in with your social media strategy. Know your audience/customers, where they are (on what platforms), how they communicate and publish appropriate messages for them. Just like any offline marketing strategy you need to know the who, what, where and when of your messages.

Enterprise Ireland – eMarketing Workshop

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Dublin 20 / October 2011

Today we attended an excellent event on international web design, marketing and communication run by Enterprise Ireland in the Crown Plaza in Blanchardstown.

The opening address was by Jennifer Condon, Divisional Manager of EI who spoke about the importance of the web in driving Irelands future success.

Aileen O’Toole director of Amas spoke about the growth of the internet and ecommerce sales for Irish companies. Some facts included:

• 72% of households access the internet at home, a very high penetration.
• Your online presence will directly impact your offline sales.
• 90% of people surveyed in Europe prefer to browse websites in thier local language – so translation is important.
• Bad translation will lose you business and advised against using free tools like Google Translate.

Next up was Gareth Dunlop who gave an amazing presentation on how Content Is King!

Gareth Dunlop and Damian Scattergood discuss the advantages on good online content.

Gareth’s presentation style is very relaxed and direct to the point. Creating good content is important. He showed us an example of a stock photograph of a group of people used on 10 different websites. “Surely these people don’t work for all these companies” he said! Creating your own photo’s and content shows an honesty that comes across to your customers.

In the old days websites just had the basic’s – visitors to your site now demand content they can use – however as Gareth says…

Internet Simplicity if Very Difficult to achieve.

Ed Field CEO of Digino Marketing speaking to Damian Scattergood at Enterprise Irelands eMarketing Workshop.

Ed Field from Digino Marketing followed with the next step – communicating your message to your target audience. I found this very thought provoking. Ed had a slightly different spin on the classic USP. We all talk about Unique Selling Points and Elevator pitches, but at the end of the day Ed asks…

What are you brilliant at?

Its amazing how a simple question can show up answers. We all struggle to define what our USP’s are, but I can tell you instantly what we can brilliant at. “We are probably the best technical translators in the world.”  We are excellent at technical documents and technical marketing. Now how do I get that message across on our website and marketing material. Certainly its a lot easier than defining a USP statement.

When clients visit your website you have to get their attention in 6 seconds – and convince them in under 3 minutes. So there is no space on your website for fluffy text. People just want answers. When was the last time you visited an airline website to see what planes they have – never? You just want to buy a seat. Does this apply to your business?

Now – once you have all this sorted out on your website – can you now do it in 12 languages? That was John Coburns topic International Search Engine Marketing

Wow – it was an excellent morning, plenty of thought provoking ideas and work for us to do on our own export sales.

We wanted to wish a big congratulations to Ratoath mens tennis team on their victory in the Dublin Lawn Tennis Council Senior League victory last weekend.

The team was captained by our very own managing director Damian Scattergood. The leagues are played over a 3 month period and Ratoath successfully topped their group to reach the finals. It was a long summer with plenty of hard work from all involved. Plenty of summer teas, making sandwichs and hard tennis. The over 35′s team are delighted to win the tournament and rest their aching limbs again. Photographs courtesy of Simon McDermot.

The winning team are:

Mark Whitbread, Simon McDemot, Damian Scattergood (Captain), Stephen Foley, Dave Curley, Pat McDermot and Tommy White (The Super Sub).

Winning Team: Mark Whitbread, Simon McDermot, Damian Scattergood, Stephen Foley, Dave Curley

The finals where against Trim 1st, formidable opponents who had one the league a few years earlier. So it was going to be a tough battle from the start. Trim started strongly taking all the first sets in every match. Dave and Stephen where ahead in theirs but the Trim team proved too strong and edged ahead to win the first doubles in 2 sets.

Dave Curley and Stephen Foley playing for Ratoath 1st

Mark and Damian meanwhile where struggling in their match losing the first set 6-2. However pure grit and determination proved worthwhile as they fought back to deliver a tie break in the second. Meanwhile Simon and Pat stormed through their 2nd and 3rd sets to get victory. 1-1 in games so it was down to Mark and Damian.

You could feel the tension in the club. Trim stormed to a 5-1 lead in the tie break and it looked like all was lost. Winning 6 clear points in a row Ratoath turned the game on its head to win the tiebreak 7-5. The game was all to be played for again. Again trim pushed hard breaking Damian’s power serve to go 2 love up in the final set. Mark dug deep for his serve to get it to 2-1 and then with a flourish of excellent competitive tennis Ratoath won the next 5 games in a row winning 6-2. Phew – what an amazing win and hard days work. Well done Ratoath!

Ratoaths Number 2 team Mark Whitbread and STAR's managing director Damian Scattergood planning their next move in their tight 3 set victory. 3/6 7/6 6/2

Pat and Simon McDermot show the tension of a tight game.

Damian Scattergood hits a high smash at full stretch dead center of the racquet.