How well does your baby’s name translate?

I’ve long maintained that translation agencies need to get creative if they are to succeed in the age of machine translation.

London-based Today Translations is doing just that — offering a Name Audit Service for soon-to-be parents.

Do you think Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes would have chosen Suri for their daughter had they known it meant “pickpocket” in Japanese?

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

According to the agency’s web site:

Name changes later in life can be embarrassing, expensive and riddled with hassle. That’s why we offer a Name Translation Audit designed to help you consider the multilingual implications of giving your baby an unusual name.

For just £1,000, our brilliant team of 2600 linguists will check the meaning of baby names in 100 languages. Better safe than Suri.

Isn’t your baby worth it?

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2 thoughts on “How well does your baby’s name translate?”

  1. Unfortunately this is no help to the thousands of people who are born with unfortunately unglobalizable surnames like “de Cock” (Dutch).

    I have a theory that for any name in any language, there’s at last one other language in which it sounds funny.

  2. This is a very interesting post…I’m curious as to how “Midge” translates (well, it’s odd enough in English for most people), but not for £1,000!

    But it does make you think…

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