The City of Marina, where Monterey Language Services is headquartered, is the 7th largest multilingual city in the United States.  On its 35th anniversary, we would like to wish the City a Happy Birthday in the following languages: Spanish, Hawaiian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Afrikaans, German, Tagalog, Hebrew, Samoan, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese, and Portuguese.  Thanks to […]

At Monterey Language Services, we are always searching for interesting tidbits to lift our spirits. Here is one good example.  Deborah Fallows has a Ph.D. in linguistics.  She decided to immerse herself into Chinese culture by learning Chinese.  In her new book, Dreaming in Chinese:  Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love and Language, Fallows provides intriguing […]

Why do we translate Deutschland into Germany in English? By Emily Frye While studying abroad in France my sister and I decided to take a trip to Munich, Germany. While crossing the border by train a policewoman asked what we were doing in Europe.  I said that we were students in France and were visiting […]

Monterey Language Services got huge attention from the most prestigious newspaper in Monterey County, and the most famous translation and interpretation school in the world.  Check us out.   The Monterey County Herald In the News [click on the image]      Monterey Institute of International Studies http://www.miis.edu/about/newsroom/stories/node/21128 [to view it in PDF, click here] […]

Monterey Language Services (MLS), situated in the rolling hills a few miles from the Pacific Ocean in Monterey County, California, is a jewel of Monterey County — artistic, creative, multicultural, and language-oriented in an inspiring environment. MLS team members are professional, dedicated and passionate about languages and foreign cultures. We are oriented towards finding the […]

Lee Eisenberg, one of our team members and Russian-to-English translators, shares a wonderful story about how he handles translation between two different cultures using the definition of “real estate” as an example, and how subject knowledge is important for a translator. The picture of him was taken in St. Petersburg, Russia, standing on the frozen […]

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations is officially translated by the French as the Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme.  If we translate this word for word back into English it is The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man.  Just men?  Are our French friends stuck in some male-chauvinist […]

There is nothing more frustrating for the linguistically-challenged than watching a film without subtitles.  At the same time, there is really nothing quite like hearing actors speak their parts in one’s native language. But one organization has come up a creative solution. Mozilla is sponsoring a new program, Universal Subtitles, which makes it easy for […]

This picture posted by one of our fans on Facebook caught our eye. The Chinese characters were displayed vertically, the way they traditionally are in Chinese. Is this a big deal? Indeed. Our Director of Translation, Mei-Ling Chen, once made a presentation on how to handle a translation project from English to Chinese involving marketing […]

Did you know that Norwegian has a smaller vocabulary compared to English, but is richer in words describing nature and weather?  A member of our staff turned on the radio  and this interesting discussion came right up on National Public Radio. http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-04-28/readers-review-out-stealing-horses-petterson Jeffry Frank, co-author of a translation of “The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen” […]