01/22/2007 - 01/23/2007

Councillors given Cultural Awareness Training after 'offensive remark'

Senior councillors in Cambridgeshire were given cultural awareness training after an "offensive remark" about travellers was made at a meeting, a local authority has said.

South Cambridgeshire District Council said it had "strengthened its Race Equality Scheme" as a result of the "incident" in December 2004. The council said it had made "considerable progress in promoting race equality" A spokesman said councillors had attended workshops on "traveller issues" and the council had supported local productions by a Romany theatre company.

Etiquette training for Thai immigration officers

Some 1,200 immigration officers at Bangkok's Suvanarbhumi International Airport will take a training course on personality development following complaints from foreign visitors to the Immigration Bureau that they were always frowning and unfriendly, according to a senior Immigration Bureau official.

Polish-ing up on language skills

Police officers are being taught Polish in a bid to communicate with the thousands of Polish workers who have come to East Lancashire.

Bosses have made cash available for officers to learn foreign languages and one of the most popular choices are lessons in Polish.

Body Language Key in Understanding People

If you want to be a mind reader, you need to learn the vocabulary of the body first.

It's not psychic ability that lets people read others. Rather, it's a kind of physical literacy that allows us to decipher nose twitches, ear grabs, crossed arms, raised eyebrows and other gestures.

"A lot - about 93 percent - of human communication is nonverbal," says William Morrissette, a forensic psychophysiologist. "If you look at the human face, there are about 20,000 different expressions that can be generated."

160,000 Foreign Language Professionals Needed in Indian Offshoring Industry

According to a study conducted by Evalueserve, there will be a potential demand for over 160,000 foreign language professionals in the Indian offshoring (IT, BPO and KPO) industry by 2010. These professionals are required to address the demand for language-sensitive work that can potentially be offshored from Continental Europe and the Far East. The Evalueserve study estimates that the total addressable market for language-sensitive work will be worth USD 14.4 billion by 2010. While the IT industry will account for nearly 50 percent of this demand, the BPO and KPO segment are expected to account for the remaining 50 percent. Further, this growing demand for language-sensitive work will have a positive impact on the Indian economy, as it is expected to create a multiplier effect on the job market for Indians. According to the report, for every one job created for a foreign language professional, two new jobs will be created for Indian English-speaking professionals.

Word of the Day: supine

supine \soo-PYN; SOO-pyn\, adjective:
1. Lying on the back, or with the face upward.
2. Indolent; listless; inactive; mentally or morally lethargic.

On the edge of sleep, I urged my thoughts backward, back to my own back yard, where I lay supine, looking at the stars on a summer night, looking back in time as far as starlight could take me--and a drop of water fell on my forehead. -- Eric Kraft, Leaving Small's Hotel

Days are spent lying supine, crouching or kneeling in that small space, chiseling away at the matrix rock and picking out the nuggets of fossilized resin that are exposed. -- George Poinar Jr. and Roberta Poinar, The Amber Forest

Podcast Translations

As more people around the world are discovering the power of watching and listening to what they want, when they want and where they want it, thanks to podcasting technology, Language123 is opening new opportunities for translators and podcasters alike to expand their range and make podcasts available to a wider audience in different countries.

Podcasting is a relatively new method of distributing multimedia files (audio and video) over the Internet, and it is based on the principle of creating custom content for a particular audience in various digital formats, which can be viewed at any time, anywhere over the Internet or by downloading them to any mp3 or digital media player.

Mondial changes name to Foreign Translations Inc.

Sometimes the answer to a complex business challenge is staring you right in the face. Mondial Translations & Interpreting, Inc., the Greenville, SC-based full service foreign language translation company, recently changed its name to Foreign Translations, Inc. after realizing it was missing an opportunity.

“We outgrew our frequently mispronounced and misunderstood name Mondial, which is a derivative of the Italian word for ‘worldwide’,� says the 45-year-old former Fortune 500 strategic analyst, Ken Zwerdling, CEO of Foreign Translations.

Word of the Day: censure

censure \SEN-shur\, noun:
1. The act of blaming or finding fault with and condemning as wrong; reprehension; blame.
2. An official reprimand or expression of disapproval.
transitive verb:
1. To find fault with and condemn as wrong; to blame; to criticize severely.
2. To express official disapproval of.

She was tired of their disapproval, the silent censure, their eagerness always to assume the worst. -- Mary McGarry Morris, Fiona Range

But it was the dread news of death from scurvy that dominated headlines. A naval court of inquiry censured Nares for failing to provide his sledge crew with fresh lime juice. -- Leonard F. Guttridge, Ghosts of Cape Sabine