04/02/2007 - 04/03/2007

$75,000 for a Lucky Fish

A Chinese restaurant has paid $75,000 for a giant golden-coloured tiger fish, a symbol of wealth and good fortune, state media said on Tuesday.

The fish, weighing in at 48 kg (105 lb), was caught on Sunday off the coast of Zhanjiang in the booming southern province of Guangdong, the China News Service said. "The restaurant agreed to display the fish... It is about 1.75 metres long and its scales shine like gold," it said.

The Skills Group establishes PR center of competence 'Arab World'

Offering, with immediate effect, a dedicated PR and advice center for businesses operating in the fast-growing Arab market.

The new 'Skills Center Arab World' comprises a highly qualified Austrian-Arab team of advisors, offering strategic PR advice and coaching in intercultural communications and negotiation skills for decision-makers in politics and the economy.

With their center of competence, Skills is the first Austrian agency to bank on the booming Arab market, offering solutions for the specific communication needs of businesses and institutions operating in the Arab market.

Pediatricians rarely provide translation services for patients

Most pediatricians use untrained interpreters to communicate with families who are not proficient in English, according to the results of a nationwide survey of doctors led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Nearly two-thirds of the pediatricians surveyed said they relied on the patient’s bilingual family member to relay health information. Pediatricians in rural areas or in states with higher proportions of non-English proficient populations were the least likely to use professional translation services. The study is published in the April 2007 issue of Pediatrics.

IBM donates translation tech to United States government

IBM earned a golden halo today, when they announced that they are going to give $45 million worth of translation technology to the United States government, after one engineer’s story about his son made it all the way to IBM’s CEO Samuel Palmisano. The story from the IBM engineer as reported on several news wires is that his son while serving in Iraq was hurt and lost both his legs. Palmisano was moved by this story, so moved he wrote George W. Bush.

Internet & Business Conference in Russia

The 2nd Internet and Business conference will take place in Moscow on the 18th-20th of April. Some of the topics set to be covered include:

Exponential growth of internet in Russia
Contextual advertising/pay for placement systems and future developments
Electronic payments, problems and solutions

Applying the lessons of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The conference itself is free of charge, and hosted at the picturesque Bohr hotel-complex on the outskirts of Moscow (close to Domodedovo airport). The first day (18th) is taken up with training seminars, the conference proper starts on the morning of the 19th.

Word of the Day: errant

errant \AIR-uhnt\, adjective:
1. Wandering; roving, especially in search of adventure.
2. Deviating from an appointed course; straying.
3. Straying from the proper standards (as of truth or propriety).
4. Moving aimlessly or irregularly; as, an errant breeze.

The year 1565 finds him at Ferrara, the city where our errant poet will spend the most stable years of his life. -- Anthony M. Esolen, introduction to Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso

They called him, "Hey, mister!" and asked him to throw their errant baseballs back to them. -- Judith McNaught, Night Whispers

Intercultural Training and the Iceberg Model

Many people question what culture is. How can it be defined? What analogies can be used to describe it? In intercultural training one of the questions that is often asked of participants is to think what culture means to them. What picture can they draw to describe it? Whether they draw a tree, cauldron, plate of food or a tapestry they are all valid as culture means different things to different people. In essence what they are trying to describe is something that is made up of lots of things and is multifaceted.

Globe-trotting designers thrive on cultural challenges

Exciting global opportunities abound for North American designers who are prepared to meet the challenges of cultural barriers, distance and cross-cultural communication.

That was the theme of an International Interior Design Roundtable held recently in Vancouver. Roslyn Brandt, president of Brandt Resources of New York, moderated the panel which included Mark Gribbons, principal, IA Interior Architecture, Seattle, Washington and Joe Pettipas, principal HOK Toronto.

Never mind French and Spanish ...

It is half past three and a dozen little boys in long shorts, blue check shirts and ties are sitting around tables in a London schoolroom that is decked out with typical infant-class paraphernalia - alphabet charts, winter-themed paintings, posters of healthy foodstuffs. On the teacher's instruction, the four-year-olds close their eyes, then open them on command to describe a scene drawn on the back of a paper plate. The picture is unremarkable - a stick figure dancing around to a stereo - but the words cheerfully shouted by the pupils are something of a shock in the middle of Kensington: every one of the boys calls out "My mother is listening to music!" in perfect Chinese.

Mobile Phones as Holiday Translation Phrase-Books

The internet travel company, lastminute.com and developers CoolGorilla have developed a language phrase book - which speaks the phrases via a mobile phone speaker. The application is extremely intuitive - the user simply navigates to the appropriate phrase in English that they would like translated and presses 'select'.

The application then speaks the phrase in the foreign language through the consumer's phone, in real time and provides an additional text translation on screen.

Word of the Day: arriviste

arriviste \a-ree-VEEST\, noun:
A person who has recently attained success, wealth, or high status but not general acceptance or respect; an upstart.

Sherman, in his $1,800 imported suit and British hand-lasted shoes is . . . an arriviste and a poseur. -- Frank Conroy, "Urban Rats in Fashion's Maze", New York Times, November 1, 1987

He excavates enough dirt that, midway through the book, the reader loses sympathy with Bernays, who comes across as an insufferable egotist and insecure, name-dropping arriviste. -- Ron Chernow, "First Among Flacks", New York Times, August 16, 1998