Recent Posts

Morningside Attends 2011 LegalTech Conference

Morningside Translations was pleased to attend the LegalTech Conference (our second time!) held in New York City. We met with attorneys, paralegals, and litigation support specialists from law firms across the USA, and had a chance to learn more about their translation needs.

Join Us at LegalTech NY 2011

Join Morningside at the Legal Tech NY Conference January 31st – February 2nd @ the New York Hilton. If you are a current client, we would love to touch base in person and hear how we are doing. If you haven’t worked with us before and would like to learn more about our litigation support and language services, this is an excellent opportunity to connect. We’ll be giving away free stuff. Look for us in Booth 1516.

How Do You Say Mamihlapinatapei in English?

We all know there are plenty of words whose meaning is lost in translation, and have no English equivalent. Here are a few of our favorites:

* Kyoikumama – A Japanese word that literally means “education mother.” The kyoiku mama relentlessly drives her children to study, even to the detriment of their emotional well-being.
* Jayus – Indonesian slang for a joke so unfunny you can’t help laughing.

Quality vs. Price

The U.S. economy has yet to recover from the Great Recession, and understandably companies and law firms are still extremely cost-sensitive. Morningside always strives to reduce its clients’ translation costs, and knows the importance of offering the most competitive rates possible. But in trying to improve your and your client’s bottom line, one thing you should absolutely not do is compromise on quality. Translations are not a commodity. A bag of rice is more or less the same no matter where you get it. Not so with translations. If the quality of a translation was always the same, then Google Translate would be the ideal service, since its translations are free.

EU Patent & Patent Translations: UPDATE

In January, we reported on a big breakthrough in negotiations on adopting a European-wide patent that would have big ramifications for many of our clients and for the translation industry as a whole. Under the current patent system, after the EPO grants a patent, the holder is still required to translate the patent into the official languages of most EU member states where they want the patent validated. Several countries (including France and Germany) have waved this requirement and others (including Denmark and Sweden) only require a translation of the patent’s claims. Still, the European Commission estimates that validating a European patent in 13 EU countries costs about $26,000, of which $18,000 is spent on patent translations. Compare that to the far lower cost of $2,400 to file a patent in the United States.