Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Fewer than half of pupils took a modern European language at GCSE this year, it has been disclosed.

Numbers taking Spanish, French and German have plummeted to 48.3% – down from 83.3% in 2000.

According to the Liberal Democrats – who tabled questions in Parliament to obtain the figures – it is the first time fewer than half of students have studied a European language to GCSE level.

Education spokesman David Laws accused the Government of overseeing the destruction of language teaching in schools.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that one of the biggest mistakes had been changing the curriculum in 2003 so it was not compulsory to take a language at 16.

“What many schools are worried about is this dramatic change, really over a few years, is causing something of a precipitant decline in the scale of modern language teaching and staffing in many of our schools, which could prove in some parts of our country to be very difficult to reverse.”

Read more> GCSEs

Amazing, the internet. You can feed a phrase in one of the major world languages into a translation site like Babel Fish (babelfish.yahoo.com), and out it will come another. Type, for example, “internet translation sites like Babel Fish are more trouble than they’re worth”, click the “English-to-French” button, and you get “les emplacements de traduction d’internet comme des poissons de Babel sont plus d’ennui que la valeur de they’re”. Put back into English, that yields “the sites of d’internet translation as of fish of Babel are more d’ennui that the value of they’re”, which, you will agree, is about as close to the original as to make no meaningful difference.

So when indignant officials at the Dutch foreign ministry received an email from a group of Israeli journalists that began, “Helloh bud, enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian,” they might perhaps have guessed what had happened.

Read more> The Guardian

What are customers around the world saying about the new booming Middle Eastern brands? What are they reading in the brand names? Which ones are they loving and talking about? Which ones can they pronounce, type and remember easily? Are these new local brands leading the charge for global mindshare and creating a sense of greatness, or are they seriously lost in global translation?

Currently, 99 percent of mega-Middle Eastern projects are being branded under Arabic-based names — which are mostly foreign to international audiences — while some are projecting mixed messages due to translation. These stumbling blocks can seriously limit brand-name appreciation, prolonging the costly process of obtaining global mindshare.

To appreciate this dilemma, unless you are fluent in Japanese, try to make sense out of a fancy scripted Japanese name with some deeply rooted cultural message and a rich heritage.

For this reason, more than half a century ago, the global image-savvy corporate Japan developed all of its major brand names based on international rules of translations, taking into account unintended connotations and pronunciations. This was done with an eye toward global appeal, making the names easy to talk about, spell and remember. Contrary to popular belief, America really provided the most resistance to global branding E-Mail Marketing Software – Free Trial. Click Here.. It was the Japanese who truly laid the systematic foundation on what makes globally accepted and universal name identities fit enough to capture global attention.

Read more> Brands