Are Americans trashing the English language?

 Language In Use  Comments Off
Apr 272012
 
Portrait of John Algeo

Courtesy of www.jalgeo.com

For over 200 years people have complained that Americans trash the English language. But is it corruption — or simply normal change? John Algeo investigates how both American and British English have evolved.

Habla usted Americano? Sprechen Sie Amerikanischer?

We’ve all heard the following accusations at some point in our lives: Americans don’t know how to speak English properly or, Americans are ruining the English language. It’s as if we actually haven’t been speaking English at all. So perhaps we’ve been speaking “American”.

All kidding aside, if Americans are actually ruining the English language, in what does the ruination lie? Just how are Americans ruining English? These are the questions posed by John Algeo, Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia, in a 1999 essay. Continue reading…

Twitter Translation Center Will Support Right-to-Left Languages

 Language In Use, Language Resources, Translation  Comments Off
Jan 262012
 


The Twitter Translation Center, which takes a crowd-sourced approach to translating and localizing Twitter for people around the world, recently announced that Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu would be fully supported this spring. Twitter is currently available in 22 languages, allowing many users worldwide to be able to tweet in their language of choice. Over 425,000 people volunteer for this project, which started with Japanese being the first language translated back in 2008.

They are continuing to develop more languages, and are encouraging any potential translators to visit their translation center if they want to volunteer.

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Language Translation, Inc.
A leading language translation and interpretation service provider for more than 20 years.

Multiple Languages Are Easier To Learn For Young Children

 Language In Use, Learning Languages  Comments Off
Jan 232012
 


According to research done by the University of Calgary, children can acquire and switch between languages effortlessly as long as they start young and interact regularly in those languages. The best chance for children to pick up multiple languages starts to diminish by age four, and there are noticeable differences for those who start learning new languages at age seven or eight. Continue reading…

England Police Force Pays Up For Translators and Interpreters

 Language In Use, Translation  Comments Off
Jan 202012
 

Police chiefs have spent nearly three million dollars on translation costs to help officers communicate with crime victims, offenders and witnesses over the last six years, according to The Star. Since 2005, officers, detectives and police staff have dealt with people speaking 45 languages other than English. The list includes Albanian, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, Italian, Kurdish, Lithuanian, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Somali and Vietnamese.

Interpreters are paid on an hourly basis for face-to-face interviews and the taking of witness statements, and the force subscribes to a telephone interpreting service where interpreters for any language can be found instantly. Translation and interpretation arrangements are needed for these increased amount of languages to preserve the fairness in investigative procedures and gathering evidence.

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Language Translation, Inc.
A leading language translation and interpretation service provider for more than 20 years.

Official Languages Cost Canadian Taxpayers $2.4B

 Language In Use  Comments Off
Jan 182012
 

Although rates of bilingualism in Canada have been climbing over the past 20 years, Canadian taxpayers are spending $2.4 billion to provide bilingual services each year, according to a report from the Fraser Institute.

The federal government used $1.5 billion, and Canadian provinces chipped in $900 million to ensure Canadians could access services in either French or English. That breaks down to about $85 per Canadian to uphold the country’s language laws.

Until the entire population can speak both French and English, governments must continue to provide services in both languages. Canada’s Official Languages Act protects the right of all Canadians to receive services from the federal government in both official languages.

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Language Translation, Inc.
A leading language translation and interpretation service provider for more than 20 years.

Youth Word of the Year Causes Controversy in Germany

 Language In Use, Learning Languages  Comments Off
Jan 172012
 

In America, the word “swag” has several positive connotations. The official meaning is having “enviable, casual-cool appeal” and a “charismatic positive aura”. Additionally, the term can refer to the way in which you carry yourself – your overall confidence, style, and demeanor.

Based on the popularity of the word in young people, German dictionary-maker Langenscheidt has chosen the word “swag” for it’s 2011 Youth Word of the Year. The Verein Deutsche Sprache, which is dedicated to preserving the purity of the German language, is not pleased with this choice. The group said the dictionary’s choice is contributing to the language being diluted by foreign influence.

As we’ve seen with other recent articles that we’ve posted, it’s important for many of these groups to preserve their native languages as much as possible. When our company does any translation, interpretation, or localization work, we strive to preserve all aspects of the source language.

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Language Translation, Inc.
A leading language translation and interpretation service provider for more than 20 years.

A Celebration of Over 58 Years of Machine Translation

 Language and Technology, Language In Use  Comments Off
Jan 132012
 

On January 7, 1954, IBM announced that they had teamed up with Georgetown University to run what they claimed was the first English-to-Russian language computer translation program.

Although it was hailed as a major breakthrough, that sort of programming translation proved to be difficult and expensive. In 1964, a group of scientists known as the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC), evaluated language translation computing technology and largely halted the process with a report issued in 1966. Part of the report stated that the systems were no faster than human translations, and as a result of supply and demand issues, human translation was relatively inexpensive.

This report led to a substantial amount of funding being cut from machine translation research in the United States until the late eighties. It also sent a message to the public that machine translation was mostly illegitimate.  However, with the recent improvement in technology, machine translation has proven to be a viable option for professional translation work when it has been post-edited by a human.

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More about machine translation
learn more about machine translation and its role today.

How Much Has Chinese Language Proficiency Deteriorated?

 Language In Use, Learning Languages  Comments Off
Jan 102012
 

According to a recent survey conducted by the China Youth Daily, more than 80% of Chinese people think that the level of Chinese proficiency has been deteriorating.

One major factor cited by this survey suggests that the information age and internet technology are driving people away from practicing their handwriting and character creation. Another factor is said to be the emphasis placed on learning foreign languages as opposed to continuing to hone their Chinese proficiency.

One interesting point about this poll is that China has taken steps to preserve their native languages. Just recently they developed language translation software to help standardize the use of minority languages.

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Language Translation, Inc.
A leading language translation and interpretation service provider for more than 20 years.

What is a Hyperpolyglot?

 Language In Use, Learning Languages  Comments Off
Jan 052012
 

The term “hyperpolyglot” refers to someone that can speak six or more languages fluently. This is derived from the word “polyglot”, meaning one who can speak multiple languages. Continue reading…

Language Specialists Aim to Preserve Cherokee Language

 Language In Use, Learning Languages  Comments Off
Jan 022012
 

The Universities of Kansas and Oklahoma are working with members of the Cherokee Nation in an attempt to preserve the Cherokee language.

The goal of the project, known as “Documenting Cherokee Tone,” is to improve Cherokee language proficiency and increase understanding of tonal languages. Some aspects of the project involve audio transcription and fluent speakers working with second language learners to do the documentation work.

You can read more information about this project here.

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Language Translation, Inc.
A leading language translation and interpretation service provider for more than 20 years.

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