Translation industry news

Non-English-speaking World Cup tourists calling the police’s 10111 hotline for assistance may find themselves being left on hold while local police try to find an interpreter. Officers at the local 10111 centre in Pinelands (Cape Town) said the police could not afford interpreters.

The revelation comes three months after provincial police announced that the emergency response centre would be manned by translators able to listen to a complaint and take down a statement in the home language of the complainant.

See: Independent Online

Fletcher Allen Health care hospital is laying off 23 people, their jobs in dictation transcription rendered obsolete because of speech-recognition software and electronic record-keeping. The jobs — which were full- and part-time — are no longer needed because speech-recognition software means providers don’t have to dictate their notes to be typed and edited anymore.

The layoffs, which were announced Tuesday, take effect June 25. Three other jobs were vacated through attrition and four per-diem positions were eliminated, bringing the total to 30 positions that were cut.

See: CNBC

The U.S. military and businesses expanding overseas are two of the translation and interpretation industry’s best customers. Overall, the market grew some 18 percent last year. According to AnythingResearch.com, the translation and interpretation services industry is a $2.7 billion market that has grown an average of 22 percent a year since 2004. The healthcare industry is another area in need of language, due in part to the growing U.S. immigrant population. Many opportunities exist in the business-to-business space as well, which includes website translation and creation of multi-language marketing materials. There are also related tech opportunities in the burgeoning market for mobile on-demand translation via SMS.

See: Inc

Linguists and intellectuals from all over the country on Tuesday unanimously decided that English could not be designated as a symbol of national solidarity and there was a need to pursue local languages in this regard. They were speaking at a seminar “Qaumi Yakjehti Mein Zubano Ka Kirdaar” (Role of languages in national unity), organised by National Language Authority (NLA) on its premises.

Speakers approved five points recommendations including ‘In the Constitution of 1973 Urdu language is defined as National Language and after the approval of 18th amendment bill due status of Urdu language as mentioned in the Constitution should be restored’. Secondly, steps should be taken for the promotion of regional languages. Thirdly, the terms used in modern information technology should be translated into Urdu so that the knowledge should be understandable for locals. Fourthly, Seminars in universities and educational institution on “The role of National Language in Nation’s prosperity’ should be initiated in all provinces of the country to make masses aware of the issue. And finally, ‘Darul-Tarjuma’ should be established for translation of contemporary classical literature of foreign languages into Urdu and regional languages.

See: Daily Times Pakistan

More than a year after Ottawa promised to fast-track immigration applications for Afghan translators a narrow list of applicants who meet the criteria to come to Canada has been compiled. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney originally announced the program for Afghans who face “extraordinary personal risk” in support of Canada’s mission to Kandahar.

But out of 114 applications only 25, or roughly 21 per cent, have been approved to come to Canada by the joint committee made up of officials from the departments of National Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development and Immigration and Citizenship. The committee works in conjunction with the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency.

See: CTV News

Thanks to an initiative by Singapore’s top Chinese linguist Chew Cheng Hai, a global Chinese dictionary listing words and phrases used differently in different places was published about a week ago. The 1,112-page tome contains some 10,000 entries.

More than 35 linguists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Malaysia had spent the last five years putting the dictionary together. They were supported by a research fund from China’s Education Ministry and its publisher, Commercial Press in Beijing.

The dictionary has three aims: 1- to promote better understanding among Chinese communities in different parts of the world where the same language is used, 2- to promote standard modern Chinese usage to all users of the language through the explanations to the words and phrases given in good standard Chinese, 3-  by showing the different words and phrases used in different places, it enables users to compare and decide which ones to adopt or discard.

See: Asiaone

A Silver Spring man who worked as a linguist for the FBI was sentenced Monday to 20 months in prison for leaking secret documents to a blogger.  According to court records, the documents concerned “communication intelligence activities.”

Shamai K. Leibowitz worked for the U.S. State Department in 2006, teaching Hebrew and Israeli law and culture to American diplomats.Then was hired as a contractor by the U.S. Department of Defense at its Defense Language Institute.

Leibowitz said he accepted his mistake but said that, at the time he revealed the classified information, he believed the documents showed a “violation of the law.” He said he should have pursued other options within the government to report his concerns.

See:  The Washington Post

The Partnership receives $20K software donation from IBM to improve bi-lingual communication between parents and More at Four teachers. IBM software will enable Spanish-speaking families to engage in their young children’s education

Durham’s Partnership for Children, a Smart Start Initiative, announced Thursday that IBM has selected the organization to participate in its automatic translation program, iTraduceloAhora! (TM) (Translate Now). IBM provided a $20,000 grant donation to the Partnership and it’s More at Four pre-kindergarten providers to enable them to have enhanced ability to communicate with the Spanish-speaking families they serve.

See: Durham County MyNC

The case of  a Spanish-speaking patient in Riverside, Cali., who had the wrong kidney removed during surgery, once again gives the medical community reason to pause and consider the absolute necessity clear communication plays in avoiding catastrophic medical errors. While wrong-site surgery can happen without a language barrier, the fact that the patient was not provided a medical interpreter prior to major surgery is deeply concerning.
Statistics show that language is a major factor in cases of misdiagnosis and instances of poor treatment at hospitals, and delays in service or access to preventive care. Medical error in general is a troubling issue, but patients with limited English proficiency are almost twice as likely to suffer adverse events in U.S. hospitals, resulting in temporary harm or death, according to a pilot study by The Joint Commission.

Given the growing number of LEP patients across the country, the US needs a federal call to action that includes a nationally recognized process for certifying medical interpreters, a requirement that only certified medical interpreters may be employed by health care organizations, as well as funding to help hospitals pay for these vital patient safety measures. The good news is that there is now a nationally available procedure in place that can help determine whether medical interpreters are adequately prepared. After years of research and development by different organizations, the independent National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters launched the Certified Medical Interpreter (CMI) program in October 2009.

See: The Huffington Post

“Foreign” fiction translated into English has never been so high-profile. Undeniably, this is thanks to the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (which began with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), currently standing at over 21 million copies sold worldwide. Roberto Bolano’s 2666 has also been a huge success. And prizes such as The IFFP and events like April’s Free The Word festival in London have thrust more and more books and authors from the non-English speaking world into the spotlight. As Hahn runs his finger down the shortlist, he mentions novels from Bengal, Germany, Congo, Italy and France.

Publishers realise that just because a book is a translation from another language doesn’t mean it’s completely unsellable. The perceptions of translations have also changed .

Literary translation, essentially, is to recreate the experience of reading the book, not the specific sentences of the original. One of the advantages of working with most of the authors is that you get the permission to do just that – they trust you. And it’s genuinely a lovely job: you’re getting your head completely inside a book, and if that’s a place it’s exciting to be, that’s a fantastic feeling. You’re getting to write a great book even if you’re not a great writer yourself.

See: The National

German site Macerkopf.de and Italian site iPadevice report that Apple’s iBookstore has begun to go live in a number of international countries. The news comes after iPad versions of those and other countries’ App Stores went live earlier today.

For the time being, international iBookstore offerings appear limited to free Project Gutenberg titles, although content continues to roll out on an almost minute-by-minute basis. Customers will likely be more interested to see Apple’s distribution and pricing arrangements for paid titles once those begin appearing in the international iBookstores. The iBookstore was originally announced as a U.S.-only launch, although it quickly became apparent that Apple was planning to extend it to other countries.

See: MacRumors.com

For parents who speak languages other than English, Hall County schools will offer phone and in-person translation services this fall.

Culture Connect offers 66 languages. Hall County families speak 29 different languages at home.

“I foresee us using it for situations if a French-speaking or Chinese-speaking family that needs assistance can use it during a conference,” said Sandra Perry, the county’s English-language learner coordinator.

See: Gainesville Times

The Canarian Language Academy has just brought out the first Basic Dictionary of Canarian. Some 40 specialists have participated over 7 years in the production of the book, which details over around 5,000 entries the peculiarities of Spanish as it is spoken in the islands.

See: Canarias7.es

The first hearing in an appeal against the death sentence to 17 Indians was adjourned to June 16 in the absence of a translator from Arabic to their mother tongue.

The Sharjah Court of Appeals asked the Indian Consulate in Dubai to arrange a Punjabi translator for the next hearing after the appellants appeared not to understand the proceedings translated from Arabic to Hindi.

See: KhaleejTimes

Entering a new market is a costly endeavour for individual inventors and SMEs.

In order to overcome the linguistic barriers and to facilitate the further building of the European Digital Information Space, the European Commission is co-funding a project that will facilitate cross-language retrieval of patent information. PLuTO (Patent Language Translations Online) is funded under the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) and has a duration of 3 years (April 2010 – March 2013). The project consortium comprises both academic and industrial partners across 5 European countries: the Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) of the Dublin City University, Ireland; the Information Retrieval Facility (IRF), Austria; ESTeam, Sweden; Cross Language, Belgium; and the Dutch Patent Information User Group (WON), The Netherlands.

PLuTO will provide an integrated, online search and translation tool where several human experts (technical, legal, consultants) can take advantage of existing web-content and state-of-the-art machine translation tools to collaboratively search for, select and translate patents

See: openPR

Bandar Seri Begawan – A Professor of foreign languages and literatures in Northern Illinois University (NIU) in the United States yesterday bared plans to produce a free online dictionary on standard Malay not only for citizens of Malay-speaking countries but also for new learners.

Professor Collins said he would welcome collaborations with other universities and institutions from regions all around the world, such as their recent collaboration with Frankfurt University of Germany intending to write a Malay-German dictionary.

See: Brudirect.com

The Man Asian Literary Prize today announced a new format, opening it to all novels by Asian writers published in English each year. The cash value of the prize will increase to USD 30,000.

The Man Asian Literary Prize will now be awarded to the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English, and published in the previous calendar year. In the past, the prize awarded USD 10,000 to the best Asian novel not yet published in English. With this new format, the prize will be the first of its kind to recognise the best English works each year by Asian authors and aims to significantly raise international awareness and appreciation of Asian literature.

See: booktrade.info

YouTube have jumped on board with Google TV, introducing YouTube Lean Back, a custom feed of streaming videos that can be set up from the desktop and then fed into a user profile viewed on your HDTV.

There’s also integration with Google’s language services, allowing for instantaneous subtitle creation translated from the broadcast language to whichever other language you’d prefer (and that Google support. )

See: Slashgear

Also see: I4Unews

North China — Over 1,700 middle school students have entered an English contest for translation service during the 2010 world middle-school volleyball championships to be held from June 27 to July 4 in China.

Forty students will be selected in the contest and undergo a training course before they start to work, organizers said.

See: xinhuanet

A Chinese translation of the Tirukkural might soon be in the offing with internationally renowned Taiwanese poet Yu Hsi agreeing to former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s suggestion on the same.

At a felicitation function for the poet at Anna University – Chennai on Wednesday, Mr. Kalam presented a copy of the Tirukkural to Yu Hsi and said the translation could be ready by December-end. He also read out a poem written by him in honour of Mr. Yu Hsi’s visit to the University organised as part of the Literary Club’s activities.

See: The Hindu