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Introduction to Japan

Carmical Translations March 2, 2020 Japan

Since I’ve been back in the United States, many people have asked me what it’s like to live in Japan. I really should have a…

Speeding up your WordPress site

Carmical Translations February 24, 2020 WordPress

Out of the box, WordPress sites can be slow-loading. This presents a problem, because Google penalizes slow sites in their search rankings. Even if someone…

Why you shouldn’t use machine translation for your business

Carmical Translations February 10, 2020 Translation

Machine translation has become very popular. There are even commercials on television that depict it being used for face-to-face communication. However, there are some good…

Homepage elements that your business website needs
A business website can be a valuable tool for success. If you do everything you can, your website can help you draw in new clients and give them something to view. You should include blog highlights, testimonials, and pictures in your website. Blog Highlights You should have a blog that talks all about your business and what inspires your products and services. Then you should include blog highlights or top posts on the homepage of your website. This will give the customers an idea of what they should be clicking on. If you put the top blog posts right on your home page, then your customers will immediately see them and read them. This can give them an idea of what your business is about and what you are offering them. You put a lot of work into those blog posts, you should put them where they will be read. Testimonials Reviews, both negative and positive, are something that will help your business. Over 90 percent of consumers are influenced by reviews they read online. If you put the positive reviews on the homepage of your website, then your customers will see the great things people have to say about your business right away. They will see that past customers have wonderful things to say about your business and they’ll take that into account as they shop. It’ll prove to them that you’re not a scam and you care about your customers. These positive reviews should be read by others because they will help your business to grow. Pictures People are driven by things that are aesthetically pleasing and pictures help do this. Your website homepage should include pictures to draw in potential clients. You can include pictures of your team, the products you’ve offered, or even where you work. People are interested in seeing what you do and how you do it. Most people are visual and using this to your advantage will help you indicate to your clients what you have to offer. You should use pictures that capture emotion and will cause action. Your clients should see your pictures and want to buy what you’re selling. Creating a business is a difficult task but it can be easier if you have a website. Your website should include blog highlights, testimonials, and pictures in order to be successful. If you include these elements then your website will help you draw in more customers. When working with international clients, it’s important to have your website translated correctly and up-to-date. Get in touch with me so I can help!
Another plugin suggestion
Today I’ve got another plugin suggestion for speeding up your WordPress site. This time it’s a plugin for loading the Google Analytics script locally. The script is called CAOS (Complete Analytics Optimization Suite). This, combined with loading reCaptcha only on contact pages has brought additional speed improvements. GTmetrix: [custom_frame_left shadow=”off”] [/custom_frame_left] Google PageSpeed Insights: [custom_frame_left shadow=”off”] [/custom_frame_left] Hope it helps!
Ten online resources for translators
It can be hard to find the right translation for certain words. Fortunately, there are many online resources for translators available free of charge. I’ve compiled this list of 10 useful online resources for translators working from Japanese into English and vice versa. Click on the screenshot to go to the resource. Here they are in no particular order: 1. Weblio Weblio is an online dictionary. It offers various example sentences as well. I probably use Weblio more than any other online dictionary. The results aren’t perfect, and there are occasionally cringeworthy example sentences, but for the most part, it’s very useful. It’s especially useful when looking up proper nouns. 2. Japanese Law Translation This is an excellent resource if you need to find the name of a Japanese law or need to quote sections of one. More often than not, you’ll find the entire law translated, and this can come in very handy for understanding the document you’re working on, even if you don’t need to translate the text of the law itself. 3. Eijiro (ALC) Eijiro is another useful dictionary. There is a mobile app, too. It used to be my go to dictionary, but in recent years I’ve found Weblio to be more useful. Can’t really put my finger on why. 4. Linguee Linguee is a collection of translations from websites. It works like a concordance. The quality of each result varies depending on the quality of the translation on the site that yields the hit. Sometimes it’ll give you a hint on how to approach a certain phrase. 5. Japan Post Ever wondered how to translate an address? Look it up on the Japan Post website, and it’ll give you the hiragana for the address. As an aside, I’ve never understood why some people insist on translating 県. I don’t live in Johnson City, Tennessee State. It’s just Johnson City, Tennessee. You never see Ontario Province (Canada) or New South Wales State (Australia), either. So Nagano City, Nagano Prefecture should just be Nagano City, Nagano if you ask me. 6. The Ultimate Sushi Glossary No explanation necessary for this one. It is what it says. 7. IT用語辞典 An IT dictionary. This one sometimes has IT terms that you won’t find in Weblio or Eijiro. 8. 坪・畳帖・平米㎡・自動換算計算変換 Converts Japanese measurements into the metric system and vice versa. 9. Thesaurus.com Thesaurus.com is a great tool for finding the right word once you know what a Japanese word means. 10. ProZ.com ProZ has a pretty large database of terms that people have asked about in the past. If you can’t seem to find a good translation for a certain word anywhere else, you can ask fellow translators, and they’ll give you some ideas. I use these online resources regularly, so I hope it helps. If you have any others you find useful, leave a comment below! And if you’re looking for a Japanese to English translator, contact me for a quote!
What is WordPress?
It occurs to me that those who are just starting their business and have never had a website may not know what WordPress is and how it can help them. WordPress is a content management system. What does that mean, though? When installed and set up, WordPress allows you to manage and add pages to your website with ease. It comes with a WYSIWYG editor like you find in Microsoft Word or other word processor that allows you to format your text the way you want it (“what you see is what you get”). The overall design is achieved with the use of a theme, of which there are literally thousands. All you have to do to add a page is click “Add New.” Here’s what the admin section looks like: And here’s what it looks like when you add a page (in this case this very post that you’re reading): WordPress powers 36.1% of all the websites on the Internet, so if you go with WordPress, you’ll be in good company. WordPress also allows you to create users with varying privileges. That means you can have a user that is allowed to post content, but not to edit it: WordPress has six pre-defined roles: Super Admin, Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber. Each role is allowed to perform a set of tasks called Capabilities. There are many capabilities including “publish_posts“, “moderate_comments“, and “edit_users“. The other advantage to using WordPress is that there are thousands of plugins available (the vast majority of them free). These plugins extend the functionality of your website. They include Google Analytics to allow you to analyze your website performance, caching plugins to make your site load faster, SEO plugins to help you make your site search engine-friendly, and multi-lingual plugins to allow you to add languages to your site. The WooCommerce plugin allows you to build an online store. The possibilities are almost limitless.

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Introduction to Japan

Speeding up your WordPress site

Why you shouldn’t use machine translation for your business

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