A friend once asked me if I believed that my career was in danger of being outsourced to translation technology. In other words, he wondered if I felt that my profession was threatened by advances in machine translation, whereby potential clients can simply enter their text in a computer and  – voila! – an instant translation appears before them.

I told him that while technology certainly has its merits, true quality in translations can only be achieved through human attention to detail, human patience, and human passion. After all, how can a computer possibly convey the subtleties and feeling contained in a text produced by a human being, whose very essence is manifested in the words that he or she has written?

So no, I am not worried that my profession – and moreover my passion – is in danger of being made obsolete. On the contrary, I believe that every time a client of mine receives one of my translations, he or she will understand that my work, like that of an artisan whose livelihood could never be replicated in a factory, exudes the quality that can only come from the hands of a human being.

These thoughts on quality brought to you by our translator Mac Layne.

The Indo-European language family includes languages such as German, French, Spanish, Russian, and of course, English. Although there are slight similarities between certain cognates (words with common origin) such as the English ‘mother,’ the German ‘mutter,’ and the Spanish ‘Madre,’ these researchers went above and beyond by modeling how hundreds of words evolved through time. After following the “migration” of the languages back to the source, the scientists discovered all of these languages descend from Anatolia, the westernmost part of Asia and the western two-thirds of arguably one of the most historical and cultural countries in the world; Turkey.

Although the research is still underway, this discovery is a big one in terms of what scientists can undertake next. This opens up new doors and opportunities to dive even deeper into the history of modern day languages.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2192729/English-language-descended-ancient-Turkey-experts-claim.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Antonina W. Bouis is one of the best in this business, a renowned translator of around 50 books from Russian into English. She says many readers don’t fully appreciate the art of translation; “When you translate a book, you basically “write” a book. Of course, there’s an outline you’re supposed to stick to – to be forced to remain within the confines of the given project. Also, every author has to sound different; they can’t all sound like Boius.”

So which books on your bookshelf have been translated from another language into English and vice versa?

Some examples are the epic-fantasy novels in which the popular Game of Thrones TV series was inspired by; A Song of Ice and Fire, which have been published into over 20 languages, including Japanese, German and Swedish.

Article: http://rbth.ru/articles/2012/07/23/telling_russian_stories_in_english_16573.html

To put this into perspective we can look at a hypothetical situation. Let’s say a business established in the United States is opening a branch in German. In order to sell their product they will need to transform their whole website from English to German. Instead of making a whole new website for the German branch the smart thing to do would be to invest in a website localization service. Technical and translating experts work hand in hand to ensure that the web pages, hyperlinks, navigation bars, animations, and audio/video are all at a perfect translation from the original English version.

At Monterey Language Services we can help you with all of your localization needs, as it is one of our specialties. In fact, we are currently working on an interesting project which involves localizing 14 very different languages including German, Chinese, Tagalog, Finnish, Canadian French, Turkish, and Indonesian.

How do translators deal with these terms? How do they communicate the newest information on the issue in terms that everyone can understand? How do you build a “green building” in Thailand without the building being painted green?

Freya Williams, a columnist from the Guardian Professional, noticed the miscommunication when she visited multiple business conferences.

“…the lack of alignment on a common [sustainable business] language can lead to meetings in which some participants are left wondering what exactly they are discussing, while others are talking at cross purposes, and some are trying express ideas for which a name may not yet exist.”

In a conference as such, interpreters/translators have to convey the same level of vagueness or specificity or pragmatism, as the situation may be. Translators have to recognize the term coined in the target language, which might tend to be a literal translation of the English term. Hence, translations to these concepts may be just as vague as expressed in the original language.

New words are made to keep up with the changing times, but not everyone is on the same page with these changes. Perhaps it’s time for the world community to work together on the definition of the new vocabulary, so everyone can truly understand and communicate in an environmental conference.

Info: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/articulating-sustainability-language-green-business

Image: http://sustainablebusinessincubator.com/

First, it’s probably safe to say that our language will continue to not only evolve, but also continue to mix and meld with other languages. We’ve all heard the term “Spanglish” which is the slang word for the end product of someone attempting to speak one or the other, but then certain terms are replaced when the correct word is not known. Naturally, this is most commonly spoken in high school classrooms.

We think of this informal process of mixing languages as fun and games even though, realistically, other languages being smelt together with English is very likely. There are over 80 countries which have English listed as one of if not the only official language. Like most, English is not set in stone. New dialects and slang will continue to sprout and eventually “bridge the gap” between our English and other languages it comes in contact with.

Of course, no drastic changes are bound to appear for a while. Still, we will be able to see slight changes among the English language in our lifetimes. Each generation brings new words (Or old words with different meanings) to the table, which keeps us on our toes. One example of this we have all experienced can be found when taking a look at one of our most common forms of communication here in the states: text messaging. “LOL” is no longer an awkward sounding nonsense word; instead we see this is “Laughing Out Loud.” Others such as “BRB” for Be Right Back, “SMH” for Shaking My Head, and “OMW” which stands for On My Way, are all commonly used in texts between virtually anybody.

An example of the evolution of English can be seen in the spellings of words in Anglo-Saxon, also called Old English.  The following passage from the epic poem Beowulf is an example:

Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in ġeār-dagum,
þēod-cyninga, þrym ġefrūnon

The words hwæt, dagum and cyninga translate to the Modern English words what, day and king, except that certain letters of course changed.  In fact, there are letters that disappeared entirely from English.  Two such letters in the passage above are æ (ash) and þ (thorn), but others include ð (eth) and ƿ (wynn).  Over time, these letters were replaced with other letters.  For example, “th” represents all interdental sounds in English.

Another notable change in English occurred in verb conjugations.  Until the 1600s, the second-person singular pronoun was thou, with the verb conjugation –(e)st, as in thou knowest.  Then, the pronoun and its conjugation were dropped from English and replaced by you, although it still appears in religious texts and in the works of Shakespeare.

English has evolved since it first arose.  It is classified as a Germanic language, and of course maintains a number of Germanic root words, like gold.  But the language also acquired words like happy from Norse, words like nation from Latin, words like hyperbole from Greek, and words like algebra from Arabic.  During the 20th century, the language added Bolshevik from Russian and mahatma from Sanskrit, in addition to the names of numerous kinds of foods from different cultures.

Explore the fun between human and animal communication in different languages!

Unless you were lucky enough to grow up speaking multiple languages, learning a whole new one can be an extremely difficult task. Still, people are willing to put in hundreds of dollars and hours in order to officially call themselves bilingual.

However, we aren’t the only ones capable of achieving this feat… animals are too, and it’s quite a bit simpler.

Avid Scooby-Doo fans know that our animal companions will do practically anything for a tasty snack, and that includes learning new and already-known commands in a different language. By assigning hand gestures with a command in the desired language, your dog will eventually be able to respond to the word or sentence in both languages simultaneously without the need for hand signs or body language.

If you want to see a bilingual dog in action watch this video of a man who taught his dog multiple commands in both English AND Japanese: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdDMvXCeaN8