03/05/2007 - 03/06/2007

Public service contracts should be awarded on basis of diversity says review

Multi-million pound contracts could soon be won or lost on the diversity of a company's workforce.

The government-commissioned Equalities Review last week recommended that diversity policy should be a key factor when awarding public sector contracts. It said the law should be changed to place greater responsibilities on public bodies, including "a specific requirement to use procurement as a tool for achieving greater equality".

The Buzz Box - Online Translation Tool

Buzz has announced the pending release of The Buzz Box. The Buzz Box will allow users to send and receive emails in 11 foreign languages, including English, Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Korean and Dutch.

Users will also be able to translate their other documents. By not stopping and 1 way Translation, The Buzz Box will also allow the user to Translate, Edit and respond in any of the languages. From the Buzz Browser you will be effectively able to communicate in all 11 languages in Email, IM, Office and other Applications including Blogs.

World Internet Use up 10%

It's all about 'eyeballs', web marketing pundits say and according to comScore Networks the number people using the world wide web has grown by more than 10 percent in January over the same period last year with the U.S. still No. 1 but China's web community is slowly edging up in the No. 2 spot.

ComScore reported that 747 million people, age 15+, used the Internet worldwide in January 2007, a 10-percent increase versus January 2006.

Word of the Day: indefatigable

indefatigable \in-dih-FAT-ih-guh-bul\, adjective:
Incapable of being fatigued; not readily exhausted; untiring; unwearying; not yielding to fatigue.

She was always seeking to add to her collection and was an indefatigable first-nighter at Broadway shows. -- Meryle Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: A Life

For the next thirteen years, with indefatigable zeal he rummages the libraries for charts and details of the spice trade and Pacific voyages. -- Alan Gurney, Below the Convergence

Delta Launches Spanish-Language Kiosks

Delta is expanding the convenience of its Spanish-language services to now include self-service kiosks available in U.S. airports and in Puerto Rico. The Spanish-capable kiosks have the same functionality as the English version, are touch screen driven, and provide customers a robust and efficient self-service check-in channel. The addition of multi-language kiosks is one of many self-service globalization efforts underway to benefit customers worldwide.

Free Online Spanish Language Courses

Loquella.com, a completely free and comprehensive online language-learning course has now officially launched and is available to anyone interested in learning Spanish.

The language course is based on a 30-year-old proven teaching method created by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). Loquella's presentation of the language course makes learning a foreign language free and easy for anyone who has an Internet connection.

Google seeks help to tweak translations

Google is hoping to iron out translation hiccups by throwing the weight of its massive userbase at the problem.

While many translation tools, such as Babelfish and Google's translate.google.com, make a decent enough go at translating a passage of text for the reader to extract the overall meaning, it is rare that any read as if written in the target language. Google is hoping to smooth the path to fluent translations by giving its users a tool to suggest a better translation where they happen upon a problem.

No More Lost in Translation when Abroad

Imagine a holiday where you speak the language perfectly, never get lost, can calculate currency conversions without any mental arithmetic, and have a friendly guide murmuring fascinating historical trivia in your ear. A distant dream? Not if technology has its way.

The tools are already partially in place: Sony's PlayStation Portable offers a series of interactive city guides produced with Lonely Planet, as well as TalkMan, a program that uses "super-advanced, ultra-futuristic voice-recognition technology" to turn your muttered English into word-perfect German, Spanish or what have you.

Translation: An Arab Perspective

Translation is a newly established science and a very old art. It is as old as the human history. However, we can not fix a definite date for the early start of translation and the same thing can be said in case of translation from and into Arabic.

Under the Abbasids Caliphate (750 – 1200), translation, like other sciences, witnessed a strong boost and it was made a systemic one. Translation progressed at that time as a result of the progress achieved in all aspects of life and due to the prevalence of stability. Caliphates were interested in all subjects and used to pay scientists and thinkers handsomely for their outcomes. It is even said that some Caliphates like Harun Al-Rasheed and Al-Mamun (813 – 833) used to give gold against the weight of the book written or translated.

Word of the Day: galumph

galumph \guh-LUHM(P)F\, intransitive verb:
To move in a clumsy manner or with a heavy tread.

Then he climbed up the little iron ladder that led to the wharf's cap, placed me once more upon his shoulders and galumphed off again. -- Alistair MacLeod, Island: The Complete Stories

Lizards patrol the . . . landscape, and giant tortoises galumph on the beaches. -- Peter M. Nichols, "Galápagos", New York Times, March 30, 2001