Unfriend n. To remove a contact from your network on a social networking site, such as Facebook. The verdict is in: the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2009 Word of the Year is “unfriend.” This transitive verb – as social networking...
A picture may say a thousand words, but what about a flower? Last week in Singapore, while the world leaders convened to discuss politics, global climate change, and humanitarian efforts at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, volunteers took to...
What is a Psychometrician? A psychometrician is someone who practices the science of educational and psychological measurement, or in other words, testing. Psychometricians measure the validity, reliability, and fairness of an exam program, and are an integral part in the...
While my friend and I were driving through the mountains to a small Appalachian town in southwestern Virginia for their weekly bluegrass jamboree, we passed the turn-off to Green’s Garage. I explained to him that Green’s is a small food...
The last week of October and the beginning of November brings together some fairly disparate events, holidays, and emotions. For one, especially here in the U.S., October 31 is Halloween, that strange co-opted holiday where kids dress up in cute...
Since earning recognition for Innovation in Multicultural Health Care, Kaiser Permanente’s Clinician Cultural Linguistic Assessment language testing tool, which is administered by ALTA, has been receiving a lot of positive attention from people in the medical community. ALTA receives a...
Although not his most famous work, one of Dante Alighieri’s most important ones was a composition entitled De Vulgari Eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular or Concerning Vernacular Eloquence), in which the author discusses the development of the Romance languages....
As our nation’s policy makers and health care providers debate the future of health care reform, ALTA and Kaiser Permanente are working together to improve the quality of care for ethnic minorities and multilingual patients. Having recently been recognized with...
In honor of Blog Action Day 2009, here is an exploration of the language used in the climate debates: Today there exist an impressive number of environmental publications, blogs, and websites dedicated to tracking and, possibly helping solve, global climate...
There are few things that I love more than finding out that two seemingly very different words share the same root. Like the shared history of pomegranate and hand grenade, these connections between word origins sometimes surface in decidedly non-linguistic...
On October 8, Britain celebrated National Poetry Day. The theme was “Heroes and Heroines” and various newspapers, blogs, and websites celebrated the word mastery of thousands of popular and more obscure poets. Although I’m a few days late and perhaps...
It’s raining heavily again in Atlanta, and the soothing sound of heavy drops hitting against the roof and windows brings to mind the language of house and home. Both the words “house” and “home” found their way into modern English...
By now everyone has heard the announcement that the United States’ president Barack Obama is the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The announcement, which was made at 5 am Eastern Standard time, even surprised President Obama. Of course,...
Students from Longview High School in Texas recently contacted ALTA to ask for advice about a class project. Their project is part of an Engineering Design and Development course where the students try to fix an everyday problem. The problem...
The English names for the days of the week have their roots in astrology and ancient cultures. The practice of naming days after heavenly bodies began – at least for the Western world – with the Greeks, and was then...
Last night I had the pleasure of hearing Ronny Cox, the actor who played Drew Ballinger in Deliverance and Richard “Dick” Jones in RoboCop, perform his country western music at a small venue. While Cox has played hundreds of roles...
The field of animal cognition has been rapidly expanding since the mid-twentieth century. In the March 2008 issue of National Geographic, Virginia Morell explored the various animal cognition studies currently being run in labs and research centers around the world...
So you’ve decided to take that next big step, to apply to graduate schools for a Translation Studies degree. But the big questions are rolling around in your head — which of the U.S. schools that offer translation degrees are...
You may be surprised to learn how many of the words we use have unusual origins. Having spent centuries in our lexicons, these words have lost their original significations and now take on colloquial meanings. To get back to our...
For those not in Atlanta and who have not heard any news about what is going on right now, we are in the middle of the biggest flood on record. Although it has been raining for over a week now...
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