While promoting his latest film, Valkyrie, Tom Cruise recently startled both reporters and fans in Rio de Janeiro with his disoriented comprehension of Brazil’s language and culture. According to Brazilian gossip website Glamurama, Mr. Cruise reportedly addressed the press conference...
Salman Rushdie will offer a lecture at Emory University’s Glenn Memorial Auditorium on Sunday, February 22nd. The subject of the lecture will be Adaptation, or how art is translated from one form to another. Tickets are only 10 dollars (5...
Recently, a debate has surfaced that combines the efforts of Economists and Linguists. At the center of the discussion is the etymology, meaning, and translatability of the English word Fairness. The crux of the argument was presented by the American...
In her 1996 book, Lexical Changes in Present-day English, Roswitha Fischer details how Bell Laboratories first coined the term acronym in 1943, defining them as, “words made up of initial letters or syllables of other words.” The creation of acronyms...
They pepper our daily speech and thread themselves through most every conversation, but idiomatic expressions, sayings, and colloquialisms can be the most difficult part of any language to translate. Because idioms take root in a nation’s customs, history, religion, and...
Chinese websites removed references to communism and dissent from translations of U.S. President Barack Obama’s inauguration address, as state media urged him not to ignore progress made by the former administration in forging ties between the two countries. The official...
Many words have gone out of fashion because they have lost their utility and become inapplicable in the 21st century. We no longer make reference to our baldrics because it would be difficult to find someone who still carries a...
The word inauguration can be traced back to the early Roman Republic (510 BC – 27 BC). In the early Roman Republic, all major decisions, such as when to go to war, and who to appoint to positions of power...
The International Medical Interpreters Association (IMIA) was founded in 1986 and is the largest medical interpreting organization in the United States. The objective of the IMIA Guide on Medical Translation is to provide an easy to use set of translation...
The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States adds a historically resounding element to this year’s Martin Luther King Day celebration. King was born on January 15th, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia at a time when...
Founded in 1889, the American Dialect Society is dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it. ADS members are linguists, lexicographers, etymologists,...
In collaboration with Lauren, Jocelyn, Maria, and Tatyana. What we consider beautiful is subjective, but there are some English words that language lovers have reached a kind of consensus on regarding beauty. A unique combination of vowel and consonant sounds,...
California has set a precedent yet again in the world of interpreting by becoming the first state in the U.S. to pass a law requiring that health insurance organizations provide interpreting and translating services to patients with limited English proficiency...
How will 2008 be remembered? What enduring memories will be etched in the annals of history? Between the failing economy, the Beijing Olympics, and the rise of President-elect Obama during the longest political campaign in recent memory, translators had many...
This derivative of the Old Norse word jol made its way into Old English as geol, originally designating a two-month midwinter feast. Like many holidays, European conversion to Christianity rendered it a religious festival and the word geol – and...
According to poet and humorist Roy Blount Jr., “All language is, on some level, body language.” The body is often forgotten when linguists, writers, and translators consider language. The fact that our muscles, lips, breath, tongue, and teeth are the...
NOËL A term signifying the holiday season, Noël comes to us from the Latin verb nasci, meaning “to be born.” In the book of Ecclesiastes, the birth of Jesus is called natalis. A variation of this word, nael, made its...
Learning a foreign language can be tricky: Not only is there a completely new set of grammatical and syntactical rules to learn, but occasionally the vocabulary itself poses some unexpected difficulties. False cognates, or false friends, are one of these...
The mastery of foreign languages allows us to broaden national boundaries and blur international horizons. By learning a new language and the culture of a people, we gain the ability to move fluidly in the global marketplace. Now more than...
How many words are there in English? Well, according to The Economist magazine’s recent predictions issue, The World in 2009, a Texas language organization claims that English will reach one million words in April of 2009. How can they be...
Interested in our language services? Complete the form or call us during business hours (9 AM to 6:00 PM ET) at 800.895.8210.
Visit Seal of Biliteracy today to create an account!
Δ
View our test prep materials or FAQ’s for common questions about taking a test.
