The word quarantine — used in modern English to designate a period of time when a group of people or materials is isolated from its surroundings — has several cultural and semantic stories ascribed to it. With the French quarantaine...
The Angoff Method is a widely used standard-setting approach in test development. In plain English, it is a kind of study that test developers use to determine the passing percentage (cutscore) for a test. The passing grade of a test...
To translate a controversial text may very well mean putting one’s life on the line. Western history offers several examples of tortured and slain translators and interpreters, and as apt as we are to think that those barbaric times are...
In 1777, British explorer and navigator Captain James Cook brought a linguistic discovery back to England. The word taboo, Cook wrote in A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, encompassed an array of forbidden acts and behaviors in Tonga, a Polynesian...
We’ve all had the experience of taking a multiple choice test — one is given a question, and then has to choose the correct answer from a group of choices, usually “a,” “b,” “c,” and “d.” From a test-taker’s perspective,...
Before the word chocolate came into the English language from Spanish, Hernan Cortes learned of a potent Aztec beverage made with cacahuaquchtl powder (the origin of the word “cocoa”), chili, musk, and honey. In a 1519 expedition to the New...
Not surprisingly, non-profit organizations with a global outreach are among the largest employers of translators and interpreters. However, the impact of non-profits on the translation and interpretation service industry, which relies on the existence and protection of linguistic heterogeneity, is...
Beyond Words is happy to celebrate our first International Translation Day! September 30th — the feast-day of St. Jerome, patron saint of translators, was originally instituted as Translation Day by UNESCO, upon the request of the International Federation of Translators...
The history of words teaches us that food is the fuel of relationships. The word “companion”, from the Latin com “with” and panis “bread”, reminds us that food — and the brief respite allotted to people throughout history for sharing...
Talk of the financial crisis and political instability seems to lead to one question: is economic Armageddon coming? As job security hangs in the balance, economic commentators disagree on which occupations are likely to suffer the most and experience decreased...
Recently, ALTA received a fax from a law firm with a request to translate an attached document. Strangely, the lawyers had received this document enclosed in an envelope with no return address, and with no English indication as to what...
The best advice is simply: don’t! I remember the first time I brought my French boyfriend, Laurent, home for the holidays. Although he made efforts, his English was limited. I was responsible for interpreting much of the small talk. It...
How did Spanish become the second most-common language in the United States after English? The answer will lead us into our country’s past, examine America’s present, and speculate on what the coming years will bring. It wasn’t the English who...
So, you’ve taken the classes and feel confident speaking the language. You may be eager to put your skills to the test on your trip abroad, but before you try making some new foreign friends, you may need to get...
Sometimes even major corporations stumble into linguistic dilemmas with badly executed ad translations. Take, for example, the popular soda slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation.” A little miscommunication in Taiwanese resulted in the more macabre “Pepsi will bring your...
Is your business being held back from the global marketplace? Targeting your business to fit an international market is as much a necessity as it is an opportunity. America today is far more diverse than it was just twenty years...
If you want something translated, you may be tempted to do it on “the free.” Why not? Today’s technology makes word translation easy — sometimes. For years, Babblefish was the go-to translation site, and recently Google has introduced their free...
Every translator has to deal with the peculiarities of his native language. With every nuance, shade of meaning, and grammatical inclination, each language offers a reflection of the people who speak it. Where one language relies primarily on verbs to...
Court interpreters have a difficult and complex job. They are not only expected to know two languages completely, they must also know and use various forms of those languages. Court interpreters regularly work with a range of people, including judges,...
For most Westerners, the concept of a language with hundreds of different dialects and multiple written systems is a completely alien one. There are, in fact, so many different Chinese dialects, corresponding to areas throughout the various Chinese-speaking regions, that...
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