Translation industry news  May 17  by  Lea Lozancic A new set of Welsh language standards will impose duties on the Welsh government, councils and national parks, ministers have announced.
Education Minister Leighton Andrews dropped earlier plans from the language commissioner for being too complicated.
Plaid Cymru expressed disappointment that the measures would not extend to a wider range of organisations.
The standards are due to be in place by November next year, with more to follow “as soon as possible”, ministers said.
Announcing the timetable for the regulations to establish the standards, Mr Andrews said: “The consultation document for the first set of standards will focus on enabling the Welsh language commissioner to impose duties on local authorities, national park authorities and the Welsh ministers.”
The standards are at the heart of legislation passed in 2011 to promote the Welsh language.
They place binding duties on organisations to allow people to use services through the medium of Welsh.
See: BBC
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 Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 17 Source: BBC Story flagged by Lea Lozancic A leading South African university says it will make Zulu language classes compulsory for all first-year students from next year.
Zulu is among the most widely spoken of South Africa’s 11 official languages.
It is the mother tongue for about 23% of the population and is also used as a lingua franca by many others.
However, few people from minority racial groups speak it.
This is the first time a South African university has made it compulsory for students to learn an indigenous African language, the local Mercury newspaper reports.
University of KwaZulu-Natal Deputy Vice-Chancellor Renuka Vithal told the BBC the decision would help students obtain a vital communication skill for their professional and personal lives.
See: BBC
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 16 Story flagged by Lea Lozancic A translation into English of a book of verses considered to be the first example of written work in Basque language was presented on Monday in the headquarters of the regional council of Bizkaia.
Published in Bordeaux in 1545, the book contains a modest collection of poems, some religious, others love poetry, one autobiographical, and two extolling the virtues of Basque and its worthiness through publication to be included with the other languages of the world.
Written in the Lower Navarrese dialect of Basque, the poems have found enduring fame among the Basques for their celebration of the Basque language. Included alongside the seminal translation by Mikel Morris Pagoeta is a comparative rendition of the original Basque. The book also includes a foreword by Pello Salaburu, the preface to the 1995 edition by Patxi Altuna, and an introduction by Beñat Oyharçabal.
The translation falls within the classic series collection of the Center of Basque studies of the University of Reno, Nevada. The Basque Classics Series seeks to provide English translations of key texts and authors in the cultural development of the Basque Country.
See: eitb
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 15 Story flagged by Lea Lozancic A newly elected UKIP county councillor has announced plans to safeguard frontline services by cutting ‘wasteful’ expenditure on translators for Lincolnshire’s foreign speaking residents.
Coun Chris Pain, who took the seat for Burgh and Wainfleet at last Thursday’s Lincolnshire County Council election, believes immigrants should pay for the service themselves or learn English rather than burden the taxpayer.
“There are certain services you can’t cut but we don’t need to be spending thousands on translation services,” he said.
“We’ve got to be very studious across the whole range of council services and see if we are getting value for taxpayers’ money.”
With savings of £125 million to make, Coun Pain believes this could be one nonessential service to be cut towards that total.
Coun Pain had not been able to check the cost of such services before raising his suggestion.
But the Standard has since learnt that last financial year Lincolnshire County Council spent £49,500 on translation services, down from £55,000 over the previous 12 months. More.
See: Skegness Standard
Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 15 Story flagged by Lea Lozancic The Best Translated Book Awards for poetry and fiction were announced on Friday, May 3, with Nichita Stănescu’s Wheel with Single Spoke, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter (Archipelago Books) and László Krasznahorkai’s Satantango, translated from the Hungarian by Georges Szirtes (New Directions) taking home top honors. Organized by Three Percent at the University of Rochester, the Best Translated Book Award (BTBA) is the only prize of its kind to honor the best original works of international literature and poetry published in the United States over the previous year.
This year’s event was part of “Literary Mews,” a new component of the PEN World Voices Festival organized by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and designed to bring more attention to independent publishers. That sentiment was in keeping with the general vibe of the award; nominees of the sixteen shortlisted titles (six for poetry, 10 for fiction), only one title—Herta Müller’s The Hunger Angel—was published by a corporate press. More.
See: Rochester
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 14 Source: Mission Local Story flagged by Lea Lozancic Have you ever heard the Maya language spoken in San Francisco? If not, listen to our audio story to the right. It will open your ears to a little-known language spoken by thousands of people in the city – but rarely discussed outside its cultural community.
San Francisco is a hub of Maya language and culture, and one of the most densely Maya-populated cities in the country. There are an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Yucatec Mayas — or Mayas from the Yucatan region in Mexico — living within its seven by seven-mile boundaries. The earliest Maya language dates back thousands of years, and modern variants of it survive in Mexico and Central America.
Beyond the Yucatan, over 25,000 Mayas from Guatemala and other regions in Mexico, like Chiapas, have also taken up residence in the greater Bay Area. In the Mission especially, Mayas have left their stamp. Walk around the neighborhood and you’re certain to see a Maya restaurant or two, hear the distinctive vowel-rich sounds of the language, or even catch a sound bite of Maya music, drifting out of half-open windows.
While the Maya language and culture is kept alive in the Mission and throughout San Francisco, the community’s self-contained nature has also given rise to a growing need for Maya language interpreters. A 2003 survey conducted by San Francisco City College students found that 85% of Yucatec Maya immigrants living in San Francisco speak Maya as their first language, and over 95% speak it very frequently at their jobs and in their homes.
See: Mission Local
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 14 Story flagged by Lea Lozancic At tonight’s Council Bluffs Community School District’s Board of Education meeting, four Abraham Lincoln High School students will present information on the importance of learning a foreign language. Megan Frush, a junior, Jessica Hipnar, a freshman, Daniel Cano-Pargas, a sophomore, and Thanh Nguyen, a junior, have been working together on a project for a sociology class on the importance of teaching a foreign language early in life because it improve a child’s future both culturally and academically, as well as having an effect on the community.
The data the students collected favor a greater focus on foreign language development, Hipnar said.
“We all feel strongly that a foreign language should be taught in every grade starting in elementary school and continuing all through high school,” Hipnar said. “Through some of our research, we found that in order for an individual to become fluent in a foreign language, they really need to start learning the language in their early years, which is a major reason behind starting it in the elementary schools.”
Together, the group selected several issues in the Council Bluffs Community School District they would like to change.
According to Hipnar, the district currently only offers a foreign language at College View Elementary School and the group will propose to the board that they would “like to eventually see a foreign language curriculum being taught in all of the elementary schools.”
Second, the group discovered that the foreign language class taught in the middle schools is only an introductory class – with students only receiving nine weeks of foreign language curriculum. Additionally, foreign language classes in middle schools have limited availability.
See: South Westiowa News
Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 13  by RominaZ
Children are again to be subject to a rigorous examination in grammar. But why does it make adults so cross when other adults break the rules?
A new grammar and spelling test arrives in primary schools in England this week. It is the first time in a while that such emphasis has been put on grammar.
Some of the questions will seem straightforward for many adults, such as where to place a comma or a colon in a sentence. But other aspects – identifying different types of adverbs or distinguishing between subordinating and co-ordinating connectives – might raise eyebrows.
Grammar is not just an educational issue. For some adults, it can sabotage friendships and even romantic relationships.
The research arm of dating site OKCupid looked at 500,000 first contacts and concluded that “netspeak, bad grammar and bad spelling are huge turn-offs”. The biggest passion killers were “ur”, “r”, “u”, “ya” and “cant”. Also damaging to online suitors were “luv” and “wat”.
On the other hand, correct use of apostrophes was appealing. Using “don’t” and “won’t” caused better than average response rates – 36% and 37% respectively, according to the research.
Twist Phelan, an American writer who went on 100 online dates in 100 days and later married someone she met online, says grammar is a vital “filter system”. It shows care has been taken when sentences are grammatically correct. “If you’re trying to date a woman, I don’t expect flowery Jane Austen prose. But aren’t you trying to put your best foot forward?” Continue reading the main story
Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 13 Story flagged by RominaZ A FURIOUS Crown Court judge had to adjourn a murder hearing because a Mandarin interpreter refused to turn up, claiming he would “not be making enough money”.
The judge hit out when he was forced to halt the case against Chinese businessman Anxiang Du, from Coventry, who is accused of killing four members of a family in Northampton in 2011.
The clerk at Nottingham Crown Court said he had been told it was “not worthwhile” for an interpreter to turn up.
Mr Justice Julian Flaux said: “It would be completely unfair on Mr Du to go ahead without an interpreter. To say I am annoyed is an understatement. I will be asking for a written explanation. It is a complete disgrace.”
It is the latest row to hit the newly centralised interpreter service supplied by Capita Translation and Interpreting.
The deal has seen fees slashed, with interpreters no longer paid for time spent with defendants before they enter court, leading to an increasing number of hearings being abandoned.
Courts say they are now having to bypass the system “more than 50 per cent of the time” as interpreters either fail to turn up, or are not qualified to do the job if they do arrive.
Instead courts are having to raid emergency coffers and revert to the old system of directly sourcing translators.
The campaign group Professional Interpreters for Justice has revealed that Capita is providing only 48 per cent of the interpreters required by courts. More.
See: Express
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 10 Story flagged by RominaZ Rotana Middle East and Africa announced that guests in key markets will now be able to access information on the company’s official website rotana.com in five languages (in addition to English), in a move that is expected to greatly further Rotana’s international reach.
The group has invested AED2.5million (US $680,000) on the system, after witnessing 49% occupancy growth in the Middle East region in 2012. Arabic was said to be the natural choice, along with four other languages, Russian, Spanish, German and Chinese based on Rotana’s key source markets.
“The choice of languages that rotana.com is now offered in is driven by our existing clientele and key growth markets. An Arabic-enabled site allows us to better serve our home market in the GCC and the wider Arab region and is key to our growth strategy in GCC, where we have 35 properties in operation and another 22 in the pipeline,” said Omer Kaddouri, executive vice president and COO of Rotana.
See: Hotelier Middle East
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 10 Story flagged by RominaZ Last month, Haruki Murakami published a new novel in Japan. Before anyone could read it, the novel broke the country’s Internet pre-order sales record, its publisher announced an advance print run of half a million copies, and Tokyo bookstores opened at midnight to welcome lines of customers, some of whom read the book slumped in corners of nearby cafés straight after purchase. But this time, the mania was déjà vu in Japan—a near-replica of the reception that greeted Murakami’s last novel, “1Q84,” three years ago. The response was news to nearly no one. Except, maybe, Haruki Murakami.
“The fact that I have been able to become a professional working novelist is, even now, a great surprise to me,” Murakami wrote in an e-mail three days before the release of “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.” He added: “In fact, each and every thing that has happened over the past 34 years has been a sequence of utter surprise.” The real surprise, perhaps, is that Murakami’s novels now incite a similar degree of anticipation and hunger outside of Japan, even though they are written in a language spoken and read by a relatively small population on a distant and parochial archipelago in the North Pacific.
Murakami is a writer not only found in translation (in forty-plus languages, at the moment) but one who found himself in translation. He wrote the opening pages of his first novel, “Hear the Wind Sing,” in English, then translated those pages into Japanese, he said, “just to hear how they sounded.” And he has translated several other American writers into Japanese, most notably Raymond Carver, John Irving, J. D. Salinger, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose “The Great Gatsby” Murakami credits as the inspiration behind his entire career. More.
See: The New Yorker
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 10 Story flagged by Lea Lozancic Audrey Siegl waited 35 years to speak the words of her ancestors. Now the Musqueam First Nations member spends her days going through old texts and audio recordings to help preserve the language before it’s lost forever.
“We don’t have any elders left, there is no option,” said Siegl, 39, who studied the aboriginal language at UBC. “There’s this one little boy … I see him switching back and forth effortlessly between Musqueam and English. He, and the other boys, have the ability to make us completely fluent.”
B.C aboriginals like Siegl are twice as likely to learn their traditional language as a second language than the rest of Canada’s aboriginals, according to a 2011 voluntary national household survey. The survey found a two-per-cent drop in aboriginal languages in Canada between 2006 and 2011, which was mostly related to those who speak the language as their mother tongue.
On the other hand, the interest in aboriginal language is increasing as a second language.
In B.C., for instance, the number of aboriginals who can converse in an aboriginal language dropped by 20 per cent from 2006-2011, with only six per cent – or 15,000 people – able to speak the language in 2011. There was a 36 per cent decline, however, in the number of people who spoke aboriginal as their mother tongue. At the same time, the number of those learning it as a second language rose 10.5 per cent. Read more.
See: The Vancouver Sun
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 9 Story flagged by Lea Lozancic Less than two of every three Inuit in Canada — about 37,615 people — are able to conduct a conversation in the Inuit language, Statistics Canada reports.
That number is contained in a big release of data May 8 that Statistics Canada gathered during its 2011 household survey.
StatsCan number-crunchers estimate Canada’s Inuit population at 59,445 for 2011.
Of those, 43,460 Inuit, about 73 per cent of the total, live in Inuit Nunangat, defined as the Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, Nunavut and the Inuvialuit regions.
The other 27 per cent — 15,980 Inuit — live outside traditional Inuit homelands, StatsCan reported.
On language use, StatsCan found 63.3 per cent of the Inuit population is able to converse in an Inuit language. That’s down from 68.8 per cent in 2006.
And though the Inuit population in Canada grew 18.1 per cent between 2006 and 2011, the raw number of Inuit able to speak an Inuit language grew by only 8.6 per cent.
A small number of Inuit, about 250, report the ability to speak Cree or Innu-Montagnais languages.
StatsCan’s numbers suggest the Inuit language is healthiest in Nunavik, where 99.1 per cent of the region’s Inuit population of 10,755 report the ability to speak an Inuit language.
See: Nunatsiaqonline
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 9 Story flagged by Lea Lozancic Google has added support for Marathi language for its Google Translate service. With this, Google Translate now supports eight Indian languages including Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Globally, Google Translate supports a total of 70 languages at present.
Google however notes that this language is still in experimental stage and therefore the translations are expected to be less accurate as compared to other languages. It has also enabled a transliterated input method on the service, thereby skipping the need for Indic keyboards to type in Indic languages.
We tried to translate couple of sentences from Marathi to English but it failed to translate even basic sentences like ‘What’s the time?’. It appears that Google has started with couple of pre-defined sentences for translation. For example: What’s the time can be asked in couple of ways in Marathi – वेळ काय आहे? and किती वाजले आहेत? . Of course we believe this could improve over the time when people start giving suggestions to the service.
See: Medianama
Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 9 Story flagged by RominaZ The tender for the purchase of at least 10.6 million tablet PCs as part of Turkey’s Fatih project was postponed to May 27, as the Chinese company needed extra time to translate its tender documents from Chinese to Turkish.
The tender has been rescheduled to May 27. Apple, GM, Samsung and two Turkish companies, Arçelik and Vestel, are reported to have applied to attend the tender up to now. Chinese company Shangai Fezxun’s offer is expected following the completion of the translation of the tender documents.
The Turkish government plans to replace traditional blackboards and textbooks in schools with electronic boards and tablet PCs as a part of the Fatih project, in an attempt to merge education with innovative information technologies and radically transform the perception of education. Within the project, the government will purchase more than 10 million tablets for students, administrative employees and teachers in the first stage.
See: Hurriyet Daily News
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 9 Story flagged by Lea Lozancic
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has laid emphasis on worldwide translation of creative literary work from Bangladesh.
“This way, our diverse literary works would be introduced to the readers of different languages and cultures of the world.”
The Prime Minister was speaking at a national-level programme to celebrate literary genius Rabindranath Tagore’s 152nd birth anniversary and a century of his winning the Noble Prize for literature, at Osmani Memorial Auditorium in the capital.
Bengali has to be practised and spread worldwide, she said. “Bengali language and literature have found a prestigious place in the world at the immortal touch of Tagore’s hands.”
Hasina said the art by Tagore needed more exposure. “Rabindranath Tagore is an unforgettable name in the lives of Bengalis. His contribution to every area of arts, literature and culture has enriched us and our culture.”
Mentioning Tagore’s performances in the fields of novel, short story, play, essay, musical drama and travelogue, she said: “We take help of (the works of) Rabindranath to express our feelings and thoughts in every field.”
“Bangladesh is a country of six seasons. We find Rabindranath in all the seasons.”
The Prime Minister listed her government’s initiatives to promote practice of Tagore’s immense literary works and said a ‘Rabindra Chair’ was already there at Dhaka University.
“A Rabindra University will be established at Shahjadpur and an Academic Building in Shelaidaha. We’re constructing a ‘Bangladesh Bhaban’ at Shantiniketan.”
Hasina said Tagore had gone beyond the boundaries of his homeland to become ‘a true citizen of the world’.
Tagore was the first non-European to bag the Nobel Prize in 1913.
See: bdnews24
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 9 Source: DW Story flagged by Lea Lozancic “Latin is a latecomer” says Professor Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, “Today we think of Latin as an ancient language, a dead language, the language of antiquity, but that is a relative newcomer on the European language scene, it was used just 2,000-4,000 years ago.”
Using statistical models, the professor has traced back a common root of all Indo- European languages to a proto-language that was probably spoken about 15,000 years ago and has formed the common root for about 7 language families today; language families which include modern day Turkish, Uzbek and Mongolian in the Altaic family, Chukchi-Kamchatkan, spoken in northeastern Siberia, Dravidian, spoken in Southern India, Inuit-Yupik spoken in the Arctic, Kartvelian, which evolved into Georgian, and Uralic, which is the mother of Finnish and Hungarian, and of course, most other European languages, too.
They took a list of about 23 commonly used words in our language, words like “I”, “we”, “mother”, and “man”, but also more surprising ones like “bark”, from a tree, and the verb “to spit”. This all started with work Pagel and his team did about five years ago, which found that they were able to trace the ancestry of words by analyzing how often they appeared in speech today, and what type of word (be it adverb, verb or noun) it was.
Even today, across the European languages, the word for “I” for instance has a common root, I in English, Ich in German, Je in French, Io in Italian, Yo in Spanish. In the Proto-European language this was more what we would recognize as the word for “me” or the sound “meh” or “beh” says Pagel.
See: DW
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 8 Story flagged by RominaZ It is based on Dante’s Inferno, and the linguists who translated Dan Brown’s new blockbuster novel from English into other languages lived in distinctly underworld conditions, it has emerged.
For two months, 11 translators of different nationalities were tucked away in an underground “bunker” near Milan where they worked under the strictest security to translate Brown’s new book into French, German, Italian and other languages for its simultaneous release on May 14.
When they arrived in February 2012, they were put into “lockdown”, as one official put it. Their mobile phones were confiscated and they were placed under strict instructions to reveal nothing of the plot of the book.
To prevent leaks to the outside world, the translators had limited access to computers, were banned from taking any notebooks or papers out of the bunker and had to hand in the manuscripts they were working on each evening.
Minibuses transported them to and from the hotels they were staying in.
They were accompanied by security guards and ate in a staff canteen in the headquarters of Mondadori, the Italian publishing giant that is owned by Silvio Berlusconi.
Each was given an alibi and cover story, to offer to anyone who showed too much curiosity about what they were doing all day down in the bunker.
They worked such long hours, for seven days a week, that they saw almost nothing of Milan and could not wait to get home to their families.
The extraordinary security measures and the translators’ strange experience were revealed in interviews with an Italian magazine, TV Sorrisi e Canzoni, which is owned by Mondadori. More.
See: The Telegraph
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 8 Story flagged by RominaZ Loyola University said today it is launching a Spanish language interpreting and translation program this year to meet growing demand for professional interpreters and translators in the health care and legal fields.
The Spanish/English Translation and Interpreting Certificate Program courses will be offered to both the community and students starting this fall. The translation program will be the first at a Gulf Coast university, according to the school.
The program will be administered jointly from the Office of Professional & Continuing Studies, the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies, and the Department of Languages & Cultures at Loyola. More.
See: New Orleans City Business
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Follow ProZ.com on Twitter May 7 Story flagged by RominaZ Eurasiatic languages from Portugal to Siberia form ’superfamily’ with root in southern Europe 15,000 years ago, scientists claim
Languages spoken by billions of people across Europe and Asia are descended from an ancient tongue uttered in southern Europe at the end of the last ice age, according to research.
The claim, by scientists in Britain, points to a common origin for vocabularies as varied as English and Urdu, Japanese and Itelmen, a language spoken along the north-eastern edge of Russia.
The ancestral language, spoken at least 15,000 years ago, gave rise to seven more that formed an ancient Eurasiatic “superfamily”, the researchers say. These in turn split into languages now spoken all over Eurasia, from Portugal to Siberia.
“Everybody in Eurasia can trace their linguistic ancestry back to a group, or groups, of people living around 15,000 years ago, probably in southern Europe, as the ice sheets were retreating,” said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at Reading University.
Linguists have long debated the idea of an ancient Eurasiatic superfamily of languages. The idea is controversial because many words evolve too rapidly to preserve their ancestry. Most words have a 50% chance of being replaced by an unrelated term every 2,000-4,000 years. More.
See: The Guardian
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