Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Business travel is often a necessity whether you work for a Fortune 500 company or own a small home based business. Only so much business can be conducted by telephone, email, computer and fax. There will come a day when you need to travel for business and how you conduct yourself will make all the difference in determining your success in getting that new client or sealing the deal. These etiquette tips may help you seal that deal….

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Even movie stars can’t escape the odd cross-cultural blunder. Poor old Cameron Diaz had to apologise to Peru on Sunday for carrying a bag with a political slogan that evoked painful memories in Peru’s history.

The actress visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru’s Andes on Friday carrying an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words “Serve the People” printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong’s most famous political slogan. The bags are marketed as fashion accessories in some world capitals, but in Peru the slogan evokes memories of the Shining Path insurgency that fought the government in the 1980s and early 1990s in a bloody conflict that left nearly 70,000 people dead.

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Titled ‘Why Try Harder?’, RLN London’s Language and Cultural Skills Strategy for London was announced at an event hosted at the Foreign Press Association in March 2007 with the support of Lid King, the Government’s National Director for Languages, Isabella Moore, Director of CILT, the National Centre for Languages and Lord Dearing, author of the recent report on languages policy. It sets out the challenges and potential returns for our capital - and details actions which will enhance London’s position as a world-leading city for the benefit of its residents, businesses and visitors.

Read the report here: Why try harder? 

“Culture is an integrated system of beliefs, values, norms, mores traditions and artifacts transmitted from one generation to the next through learning.” by Mo, Sierra Leone

The Football Association of Ireland has recently launched what has been coined as an “Intercultural Football Plan” - the plan  is designed to examine how best, in the context of a more diverse society, the FAI can encourage increased participation in football among people from minority ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The plan also challenges and prevents the spread of ‘racism’ within the game and thus contributes towards a fully integrated and intercultural society.

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Tinbu, the world’s leading provider of multilingual interactive lottery and horoscope data for web and wireless use, is pleased to announce they have entered into an exclusive 5-year partnership with CustomWeather, to build a multilingual interactive global weather module.

The interactive weather module will allow visitors to media web sites to get real time updated weather information from virtually any location in the world. Tinbu plans on making the global weather module available in various languages, including English, Spanish, German, French, Russian, Chinese and Italian. Tinbu’s patent pending technology allows for seamless integration of interactive data modules into web sites. The interactive components of Tinbu’s technology have proved to drive substantial amounts of page views, user satisfaction, and revenue generation for web site operators.

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Ectaco, Inc. today announced the release of their new 2-way and 9-language communication system iTRAVL NTL-9C — the first hands free/eyes free speech recognition device with an incredibly comprehensive travel guide for 50 major destinations on 5 continents.Here to make the life of anyone who travels for business or pleasure not only more convenient but also more enjoyable, Ectaco has provided something that anyone who has ever tried to speak in a foreign language will instantly recognize as the ultimate solution to international communication.

The all-new iTRAVL NTL-9C now allows travelers to communicate thoroughly in a multitude of languages without the assistance of a human translator. The revolutionary iTRAVL series provides users with the ability to navigate the user-friendly interface without using their hands or taking their eyes off of their subjects. “English speaking people can now input anything they want to say into iTRAVL device and have it repeated back in the language of their choice,” said Ectaco CEO David Lubinitsky.

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Nominations and submissions are being accepted till the end of July for the King Abdul Aziz International Award for Translation.

The competition, which was introduced in October last year by the King Abdulaziz Public Library in Riyadh, is open to all nationalities and nominations can be made by the translators themselves or others. There are five categories, each eligible for a first prize of SR500,000. Two categories are in humanities (works translated to and from Arabic), two in natural science (in and from Arabic) and one for the best translation for institutions.

According to a statement posted on the website, the award was established to bridge the gap among cultures and nations through translation.

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McDonald’s have recently released an interesting intercultural case study centred on how icons (designed to represent nutritional information) were culturally evaluated for worldwide use. The junk food giant decided to take its “Nutritional Initiative” to all of its markets by visually representing nutritional information on food packaging globally. The main challenge was developing icons or images that would work, with or without language, in over 109 locales. Working with ENLASO’s linguistic iconographers they determined which images would work in all regions without offending local cultural sensitivities. McDonald’s is making the final nutritional icons freely available to the food and restaurant industries worldwide, hoping to help set a standard for visually conveying nutritional information.

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Language barriers, a lack of health insurance and cultural differences all are likely causes behind low mammogram rates among Hispanic women in Texas, state health experts say, the Austin American-Statesmen reports.

Thirty-eight percent of Hispanic women in Texas did not receive a routine mammogram last year, compared with 21% of blacks and 27% of whites, according to CDC data. Cultural factors are one way to explain the low mammogram rates. Patricia Chalela, a health care researcher in San Antonio who has examined the low rate of mammograms among Hispanic women, said, “Hispanics don’t see a doctor if they don’t feel sick.” She added that many Hispanic women “always think in terms of family first” and that women “are the ones that take care of the family. So any needs that they have are put last.” She added that many clinics providing mammograms do not offer services in Spanish.

Read more: Statesman