Translation and Non-Profit Organizations
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 ambiguous. There is, in fact, an interesting dichotomy: on the one hand, non-profit institutions promote […]
Translation and the Financial Crisis
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 demand in the future. In this economic environment, translators are left to ponder: will my […]
How to Translate a Joke
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 was no easy task — especially since he liked to tell a lot of jokes. […]
Are you Fluent in Body Language?
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 familiar with some basic local body language. If not, you could embarrass yourself, ruin a […]
4 Ways Website Translation Will Help Improve Your Business
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 ago. If you do not have your web site translated into other languages, you are […]
Free Translation: A Good Place to Start
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 translation application, complete with widgets for translating entire web pages. Machine translation works well for […]
The Modes of Court Interpreting
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, attorneys, witnesses, litigants, and experts in specific subject fields, such as medicine or forensics. To […]
Written Chinese: A Brief Overview
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 to cover them all would be a truly exhaustive task. Some are so distinctly different […]
10 Most Influential Languages in the World
Back in the ’90s, the magazine Language Today published an article by George Weber that analyzed the world’s most influential languages. It was an interesting analysis because it accounted for the “influence” of a language in a number of ways. For example, Chinese has the most speakers in the world, but it ranks 6 on […]
Norm-Referenced vs. Criterion-Referenced Testing
You may have had an experience where you took a test for a class, and the instructor showed you the class’s results afterward. The results probably mapped out into the infamous “bell-shaped curve”, with a few people scoring on the low end of the curve, the majority clustering in the middle, and a few people […]