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Language Lines, November 2009
 From the Editor
Welcome to our November edition of Language Lines.
This month's topics include the debate over using machine translation as a method of increasing translation capacity, the importance of using Court Certified Interpreters in legal matters, tips on choosing the right agency for your translation project, and 25 English Language Oddities.
Language Translation, Inc. is your translation service expert and we look forward to doing business with you. Please feel free to contact me anytime with any questions you may have.
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Adriana Nevin
Corporate Sales Manager
anevin@languagetranslation.com
FEATURED ARTICLES
White House pushes for increased translation capacity
In a White House paper, the Administration challenges the translation industry to innovate in the interest of economic competitiveness.
In a paper issued by the President’s National Economic Council, the Administration calls for sustainable innovation in many fields, including language translation. Entitled A Strategy for American Innovation: Driving towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs, the paper focuses on innovation in the research, education and technology that could make the USA more competitive in the 21st century economy.
In its final recommendation, to “Harness Science and Technology to Address the ‘Grand Challenges’ of the 21st Century,” translation gets a mention. More specifically, the Administration recommends the creation of “Automatic, highly accurate and real-time translation between the major languages of the world – greatly lowering the barriers to international commerce and collaboration.”
A great idea, of course – but is it much easier said than done? A recent article in Business Week analyzes this very question, pointing out that while machine translation has improved, allowing for more productive and efficient translation, the human factor remains necessary.
“Companies have combined the power of humans and computers to simultaneously double the speed of translation and nearly halve its cost,” explains journalist Damian Joseph. However, the sheer amount of material to be translated is increasing exponentially – ensuring that both human and machine-assisted translators will no doubt be kept busy for years to come.
Don’t risk relying on machine translation alone -- it’s still essential to turn to a professional language service provider for your language translation needs. Language Translation, Inc. in San Diego is ready to help your business reach out to foreign clients through quality document translation. “Let us show you how good translation should be.
Betty Carlson
blog.languagetranslation.com
Alabama to kick off certification program for court interpreters
With stakes extremely high in courtroom situations, states are taking a close look at the quality of their legal interpreters.
According to The Birmingham News, Alabama is set to launch a state certification program for courtroom interpreters:
“Alabama for the first time is offering certification for court interpreters. The program brings Alabama in line with 39 other states that have adopted similar certification steps, and it creates standards in state and municipal court that haven't existed.
The voluntary program could lead to more reliable court interpreting in a state with an increasing number of litigants and witnesses who are not fluent in English, lawyers and judges said…
Under the program, the state's Administrative Office of Courts will maintain a registry of people who have passed a written test and an oral test and have completed a training seminar, said David Sawyer, a lawyer with the office. The state agency recommends that judges appoint interpreters who make the list, but they would not be required to pull from it.”
(Extract from The Birmingham News, October 3, 2009)
While it is regrettable that using the certified interpreters is not yet mandatory, the state is at least getting off to a start on guaranteeing quality court language interpretation.
At Language Translation, Inc., our interpreters must be certified for court interpreting at the state level in order to work in the legal arena. We offer all types of language interpreting services, including telephonic interpreting. “Let us show you how good translation should be.”
Betty Carlson
blog.languagetranslation.com
TIPS & TIDBITS
Corporate Translation Services - Finding the Right Agency
Whether you are running a small business or a large, established one, if you have an offshore presence, you would in all likelihood have to deal with the effort of bilingual communication.
It becomes critical to your business success to locate and hire a reliable translation service provider if you are looking to stabilize and expand your business on foreign shores. There have been many instances in the world of business and politics where an ineffective translation service has put a spoke in the proceedings.
On one occasion, the negotiation process between U.S. and British counterparts came to a standstill when the American company suggested that they would proceed to "table" certain key points. To the Americans, the phrase "tabling a motion" signifies that no discussion is warranted, while the British use the same phrase: "bring it to the table for discussion" when they wish to specifically discuss the very points!
In the above example, the same phrase used in the same language, viz., English, conveys the exact opposite meaning, because the cultural usages of the same phrase are at variance. When such is the case, imagine the high possibility of errors arising when sentences or phrases are translated to a different language! This is where the right choice of translator or translation services agency plays its part. It is imperative that you select a company that offers the expertise of a well trained team of professional translators who have industry exposure in addition to language skills and certification. The time and money spent in the exercise are well spent, when you consider the possible tribulations that you may have to contend with if there were to be one or more mis-translations in an important official document or contract.
The following are some useful tips that can help you identify a reliable professional translation service provider for translating your documents, manuals, website, advertisement content or other important written communications.
Most service providers/firms in the translation business have membership of a recognized professional translation association such as American Translation Association (ATA).
The translator/team must be qualified, certified professionals and should ideally be native speakers of the target language.
The team of translators must be qualified and experienced in rendering translation services in the target language/s, but must also possess subject matter expertise if they are to be really effective.
The translation agency must accept responsibility for proof reading the final translated document before it is delivered. In many cases, reliable translation service firms have a second, and sometimes even a third translator, all of whom are fully competent to proof-read the translated text and perhaps perform a back translation wherever it is warranted.
If your document runs into a number of pages and where the deadlines are close, reliable translation service firms will press into action more than one professional translator to complete your work to your complete satisfaction.
If you happen to directly hire a translator to do the job for you, it would be advisable to check for any references he can provide in respect of past projects completed to the satisfaction of clients.
Meeting deadlines is a very important aspect of the service, but this may become known only when the agency delivers its first completed project.
It may be worthwhile to compare prices of different translation service firms to get an idea of the current pricing structure. While cheap is not necessarily the best, price may sometimes be a deciding factor when all other things are equal.
Streetdirectory.com
JUST FOR FUN (Humor)
25 Language Oddities
Many cultures find that English might possibly be one of the most difficult languages to learn. Not, in fact, for its words, but for the fact that it has so many unusual and contradictory rules. Just looking over an English study book will tell you that so many odd ifs and buts apply to so many words that it is enough to drive one crazy. Here are 25 examples of the oddities in the English language.
25. “Rhythms” is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, or u.
24. Excluding derivatives, there are only two words in English that end -shion and (though many words end in this sound). These are cushion and fashion.
23. “THEREIN” is a seven-letter word that contains thirteen words spelled using consecutive letters: the, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, therein, and herein.
22. There is only one common word in English that has five vowels in a row: queueing.
21. Soupspoons is the longest word that consists entirely of letters from the second half of alphabet.
20. “Almost” is the longest commonly used word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
19. The longest uncommon word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter Aegilops (a grass genus).
18. The longest common single-word palindromes are deified, racecar, repaper, reviver, and rotator.
17. “One thousand” contains the letter A, but none of the words from one to nine hundred ninety-nine has an A.
16. “The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is said to be the toughest tongue twister in English.
15. Cwm (pronounced “koom”, defined as a steep-walled hollow on a hillside) is a rare case of a word used in English in which w is the nucleus vowel, as is crwth (pronounced “krooth”, a type of stringed instrument). Despite their origins in Welsh, they are accepted English words.
14. “Asthma” and “isthmi” are the only six-letter words that begin and end with a vowel and have no other vowels between.
13. The nine-word sequence I, in, sin, sing, sting, string, staring, starting (or starling), startling can be formed by successively adding one letter to the previous word.
12. “Underground” and “underfund” are the only words in the English language that begin and end with the letters “und.”
11. “Stewardesses” is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.
10. Antidisestablishmentarianism listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, was considered the longest English word for quite a long time, but today the medical term pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is usually considered to have the title, despite the fact that it was coined to provide an answer to the question ‘What is the longest English word?’.
9. “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.
8. There are many words that feature all five regular vowels in alphabetical order, the commonest being abstemious, adventitious, facetious.
7. The superlatively long word honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters) alternates consonants and vowels.
6. “Fickleheaded” and “fiddledeedee” are the longest words consisting only of letters in the first half of the alphabet.
5. The two longest words with only one of the six vowels including y are the 15-letter defenselessness and respectlessness.
4. “Forty” is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order. “One” is the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.
3. Bookkeeper is the only word that has three consecutive doubled letters.
2. Despite the assertions of a well-known puzzle, modern English does not have three common words ending in -gry. Angry and hungry are the only ones.
1. “Ough” can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.
Listverse
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