03/28/2007 - 03/29/2007

Transclick Connects Multilingual in the Wireless World

Transclick, the e-Tech 2007 award winner on March 28, 2007 at CTIA Wireless for 1st prize in the enterprise solutions category, announces the availability of a new translation service designed for BlackBerry(R) from Research In Motion (RIM). The Transclick Email Translation Tool for BlackBerry allows a BlackBerry user to communicate with people regardless of personal language background and without cumbersome manual or digital translation dictionaries. Whether your goal is to maximize global business productivity or enhance a personal travel experience, Transclick's translation service minimizes the frustration, confusion and complexity of communicating with people when you don't speak the same language.

Residents angry over wasted translation costs

The £2,440 spent every time council newspaper Redbridge Life is translated has been branded "criminal" by outraged residents.

News of the cost sparked anger amid fears that Redbridge Council's social services budget may be slashed. But a council spokesman defended the spending, saying: "Since its launch in 2005, there have been just two requests for translation."

Word of the Day: excursus

excursus \ik-SKUR-sus\, noun:
1. A dissertation that is appended to a work and that contains a more extended exposition of some important point or topic.
2. A digression.

And the eels not only have a role in the narrator's story . . . but receive a 12-page excursus on their genesis and (as it were) life style. -- William H. Pritchard, "The Body in the River Leem", New York Times, March 25, 1984

Sometimes, however, Mr. Honan's historical digressions wander far away from Jane Austen's concerns. An excursus on George III's insanity has precious little to do with "Pride and Prejudice," the subject nominally under discussion. -- Peter Conrad, "Beside Her Joyce Seems Innocent as Grass'", New York Times, February 28, 1988

The Journal of Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Archaeology

'The Journal of Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Archaeology' have a new website: http://www.jiia.it

A periodical archaeological publication “Journal of Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Archaeology' (JIIA) has been online since 2003.

US needs integrated approach to improve foreign language skills and cultural expertise

The 14 U.S. Department of Education programs designed to strengthen education in foreign languages and in international and area studies -- known collectively as Title VI and Fulbright-Hays -- have made some progress but lack the resources necessary to keep pace with their mission, says a new report from the National Research Council. And the Education Department does not appear to have a master plan for these efforts, which may not bode well for the nation’s security and competitiveness.

Spanish Language Conference Honors Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez delighted his language's guardians — as well as a king and eight current or former presidents — with a classic starving writer story: how he managed to finish what many consider the greatest novel in Spanish since "Don Quixote."

Baidu in Japan

Baidu.com has been able to conquer Google on its home turf of China, but now it has to battle Yahoo! in Japan. Just three months after announcing its intentions of entering the Japanese search engine space, Baidu has launched Baidu.jp.

No one expects it to beat market leader Yahoo! Japan. It doesn't have to. At $15 million, Baidu's initial investment is modest. Even though Baidu's portal in China includes message boards, blogs, and a clone of the popular Yahoo! Answers rewards-driven Q&A site, its first step in Japan is little more than a website search engine with image seeking functionality.

Google's visions of instant online translation

Whilst Google's current translation service is passable, it can give some bizarre results, such is the nature of automated translation tools.

Nevertheless, their vision of the future is to have documents instantly translatable into the world's major languages using simply machine logic. The visionary system is supposed to work by supplying it with documents already translated into two languages and then get the computers to discern patterns to use for future translations.

Word of the Day: presentiment

presentiment \prih-ZEN-tuh-muhnt\, noun:
A sense that something will or is about to happen; a premonition.

He'd had a presentiment of this. Yes, he had known that this was precisely what would be said. -- Nina Berberova, Cape of Storms (translated by Marian Schwartz)

High ranking North Korean officers had "only the barest presentiment" of hostilities until the final orders were issued for the attack. -- Nicholas Eberstadt, The End of North Korea