BeatBabel is not like one of those names that use "translation", "localization", "consulting", "network" or variations of "…lingual" to give the reader a hint at what they're doing. The story is simple at first. My daughter had the idea, and I snatched it away from her. I hope it doesn't happen too often that parents steal from their kids, but this one was just too good to let pass. And I know she doesn't mind.
But it got a little more tricky as the idea of "beating what Babel stands for" became more and more intriguing. So – why BeatBabel? Frankly, if it hadn't been for the Babylonian language mess, we all would be out of business. And you wouldn't read this, at least not in English, and most likely not at all.
The fact that we want to communicate to a broad audience makes it necessary that we not only do that in our native language but in as many other languages as well. We have all seen those "mis"-communications, where a translation lead to misunderstanding and possible damage - or to the joy of those who like to learn of others' mistakes. I will not add any of those here, but feel free to fill in if you have new ones that we have not yet seen.
The term "beat" has many meanings. Obviously, we are not interested in the "punishing" sense of the word, nor the competitive one in sports. The musical one already sounds better, but "beating the odds" is what we had in mind, and we are using it in one of our tag lines: "Beating the language odds".
Imagine what that tower in Babylon would look like if everyone involved in building it had spoken the same language. If they would have had good translators and interpreters, the result would have looked better. But that's still not enough.
To build that tower they needed lots of people, and since they did not have them locally they needed to "hire" them from elsewhere. And these "foreign" workers brought with them their own sets of cultural rules and parameters. Do you remember the Mars orbiter SNAFU? The one where one NASA team was using metric units while another one was using imperial measurements? The resulting crash cost about $125 million and embarrassed a whole lot of people. This took place only 10 years ago. They were using computers, spoke the same language, were well educated and trained, and still didn't get it right.
Now transfer this to Babylonian times. Imagine the "localization" necessary to get it right under their circumstances. That's why we used the name. My partners and I have been in the business of translation and localization for many years. As a matter of fact, I consider myself a dinosaur of localization, having been around and involved in Microsoft's first steps into fully localized products. And we share the same passion for communication across cultures, borders and languages.
Let's work on that and beat those Babylonian language odds.
BeatBabel is a translation and localization provider based in San Diego, California. We focus on software and web localization, multilingual content management and internationalization consulting.
If you want to know more about us, please visit BeatBabel.com
Why would anyone call their company "BeatBabel"?
