Beyond Language: The Global Problem of Water Access and Sanitation
Since 2007, bloggers from around the globe have come together one day a year to post about the same issue in the hopes of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers, and the event’s aim is to raise […]
Endangered Language Watch: Salish
Salish As a recently arrived transplant to Kalispell, Montana, I couldn’t help noticing that several of the road signs on Highway 93 are written in English and an interesting looking language that I later learned was called ‘Salish.’ Salish consists of consonant clusters (sometimes as many as 13 in a row) with few vowels. It […]
The Pros and Cons of Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing — the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people — has been a hot topic across the web, stirring up controversy as well as passionate support. Outside of the translation world, crowdsourced projects like Wikipedia continue to flourish with […]
Can Accent Reduction Training Increase a Speaker’s Credibility?
According to a new study just released by the University of Chicago, a foreign accent may undermine a person’s credibility. Participants who took part in the study were asked to rate the truthfulness of statements made by both native and non-native speakers of English. The researchers found that truthfulness ratings were lower for statements made […]
Why Use a Translation Agency?
The translation landscape is a minefield that must be carefully navigated. Obtaining a quality translation that will represent the source text of a document faithfully and eloquently in the target language is a difficult task to achieve for a project involving just one language. For each additional language, the probability of obtaining high quality across […]
Language Testing: How Test Validity Works
From a young age, our lives are filled with assessments: standardized tests, driving exams, placement tests, and, if a business or government agency tests the English or foreign language skills of potential hires and current staff, there is a good chance that they use ALTA language testing. Creating a valid assessment of an individual’s language […]
ALTA Completes Study of Court Interpreter Exams
ALTA has completed a comprehensive study of court interpreter exams for the Judicial Council of California. The published report, California's Assessment of the Consortium for Language Access in the Courts' Exams, appears on the California Court's website. In May of 2009, the Judicial Council of California contracted ALTA to assess the Consortium for Language Access […]
Fictional Languages in Film:The Linguists Behind Na’vi, Sindarin, Klingon and Ulam
Among the ten films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, one prompted a lot of discussion amongst language professionals: James Cameron’s Avatar, which features the fictional language, Na’vi. In honor of the linguistic work in Avatar, Beyond Words has compiled a shortlist of films that feature invented languages, and a brief discussion of the linguistic […]
Oh Thou, Where Art Thou?
The boundaries between formal and informal language are often blurry. Misunderstandings can arise when a language student or interpreter does not choose correctly when speaking a language that distinguishes between formal and informal personal pronouns. One runs a risk of being considered impolite on the one hand, or snobbish on the other. The formal singular […]
New Resource For Legal Translators
A new online resource for legal interpreters and translators has recently become available thanks to Vancouver Community College. A team of language professionals collaborated to compile an online legal dictionary consisting of 5000 Canadian legal and court-related terms in English, as well as six other languages: Chinese, Farsi, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. This multilingual […]