Posted by Alex on December 11, 2009 under Translation News | 
Are you in favor of having two official languages for Olympic Games? The next 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games are taking place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on February 12-28, 2010. Earlier this year there was a tension brewing over the language for the 2010 Olympic Games because the host country has two official languages.
All federal government institutions in Canada use both English and French as official languages. This means that the citizens of Canada have the option to communicate or receive information from government institutions in either language.
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Posted by Mike on November 23, 2009 under Translation News |
As immigration continues to increase throughout Europe–particularly in Britain–many institutions are finding themselves having to deal with a sudden influx of foreign-speakers in ways they’d never imagined before. In the United Kingdom alone, a third of all residents were born outside the British Isles.
London’s Metropolitan Police Service, for instance, has spent approximately £10.6 million (that’s nearly $17.6 million) on translation, setting a new record.
The London Daily News reports with the full figures, and cites an interesting list of languages that the Metropolitan Police have had to support over the past year, including…
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Posted by Mike on November 4, 2009 under Translation News |
A defense lawyer in Scotland is hiring his own interpreters rather than relying on the one supplied for him in the court room. The interpreters supplied for lawyers in the Scotland court system have been deemed inadequate to carry out the necessary information during court room proceedings. The interpreters hired by Mike Monro have questioned the translations done by the interpreters of the Scotland court and have stated there was a serious miscarriage of justice. A source has gone on record to say that expert interrupters are being pushed aside for unqualified translators due to cost. But justice must prevail despite the cost in order to carry out justice swiftly and fairly.
Read the full story by Joanna Skailes at The Press and Journal: Defence lawyer starts hiring his own translators
Posted by Mike on October 15, 2009 under Language Study, Translation News |
We’ve blogged before about the French Academie, a group that purports to preserve and protect the French language, particularly against encroaching Anglicisms.
This week, the Wall Street Journal reports on the Academie’s attempts to come up with French equivalents for English-language computing terms such as cloud computing (which, for those not in the know, consists of accessing remote data over a network, so as to preserve the resources of the computers on the receiving end). The suggested phrase was “informatique en nuage,” literally “computing in cloud,” a phrase which left the board of the Academie cold.
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Posted by Mike on October 14, 2009 under Translation News |
Our congratulations today to Dr. Rainer Schulte of UT Dallas who was recently awarded the Linda Gaboriau Translation Award for advancing the art of translation.
The award is given out annually to a North American who has made a significant impact in the field of translation. Dr. Schulte, who founded the Center for Translation Studies at UT Dallas in 1980, received the award for “methodologies derived from the art of translation to redirect the interpretation of literary works and nurture associative thinking and creativity through the use of translation tools and techniques.”
So congratulations once again to Dr. Schulte!
You can read more about his Center for Translation Studies at the UT Dallas department’s website, or you can read the full article detailing his award and achievements here: Prof Honored for Advancing the Art of Translation
Posted by Alex on October 7, 2009 under Translation News |
About a year and a half ago, Missouri was experiencing a sudden increase in immigrants and refugees that were not able to speak English efficiently. Not only was the line of communication blurred in everyday conversation, but also in doctors’ offices, where patients couldn’t describe their ailments to the staff.
Until recently, individuals were bringing in friends, family, and children to help them translate what their doctors where telling them and vice-versa. While this method worked for most patients, it was ultimately risky, as these individuals did not posses a broad enough vocabulary to translate the full breadth of medical terminology.
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Posted by Alex on October 6, 2009 under Translation News |
In Singapore there is a growing number of people who are picking up on Sign Language.
According to the Singapore Association for the Deaf, sign language classes have jumped to record highs. The number of participants in the past year have leaped from 1,067 individuals to 1,500.
The main reason for this peak in numbers is the fact that sign language is visual, and can work well in noisy environments. At this moment, leaning sign language has become something of a trend–it is the popular thing to do in Singapore!
Demand for these course are increasingly high, to the point that many institutes offering such courses have had to begin offering weekend sessions and move classes to public libraries.
Read the full story, as reported by Leow Si Wan, at Asia One: More signing up to learn sign language
Posted by Alex on October 2, 2009 under Translation News |
A new bid at the White House seeks to begin research into new translation technologies. This new idea, known as the “Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs,” was derived from Calvin Lee from Singapore, a specialist in translation and localization services.
In previous decades, machine translation had been the biggest breakthrough in technology for the translation industry. Companies and researchers have predicted the progress of this new technology proposed by Lee and the White House to be speedier, as well as more efficient and precise.
But most of these new technologies have not quite progressed as far as many individuals had hoped…
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Posted by Alex on October 1, 2009 under Translation News |
Facebook, one of the giants of social networking, has introduced a new service called Translations for Facebook Connect. The new service is a way to have its own users provide translations for its content into 65 other languages.
This application serves to provide translations of particular phrases used throughout the site. These phrases have been translated by the users, and then votes are collected on which translation is the most accurate. The highest-ranking translation is then utilized on the actual site…
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Posted by Alex on September 9, 2009 under Translation News |
As we all know, many countries, including the United States, are in the midst of a recession currently. Citizens watch as businesses plummet in the market and go bankrupt. Many translation businesses and freelance translators wonder if they, too, will suffer the same fate.
But with the need for foreign trade and immigration the need for translations will not stop. For many companies, translation services are just a minor part of their expenses when compared to the company’s total capital. Additionally, a threat to the translation industry is that some companies attempt to use their employees who already know a different language to complete a translation as opposed to going to an agency. But even so, companies with international contracts will need to have high-quality translation services to maintain their image and clientele…
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