A recent multilingual translation project for a TV company saw SanTranslate working with some of the more unusual languages – and made us very glad we have such experienced translators in these less commonly required languages.

The project required us to work in Bahasa Malay, Vietnamese, Thai, and, as the client expressed it, Cambodian.  In fact, the official term for the language of Cambodia is Khmer and, you might be surprised to know, it is the second most widely spoken of the Austroasiatic languages after Vietnamese.

The Khmer language influences and has been influenced by those of nearby countries, including Thai, Lao, Vietnamese and Cham (spoken in Vietnam and Cambodia).  As a spoken language, it is different from others in the South East Asian region in that it is not tonal.

The translation work we carried out for this project was on the legal contracts that needed to be completed and signed before filming commenced.  It was important to the client, of course, that the translation was completely accurate to ensure that no legal complications could arise from this that would jeopardise the project.