10/11/2006 - 10/12/2006

Languages & Business 2007 - 6th conference on foreign languages and international business communication

The sixth conference on foreign languages and international business communication takes place in Duesseldorf from April 16 - 18, 2007. Proposals for presentations can be submitted until December 1, 2006.

In the last few years, foreign languages and intercultural competence have proven to be vital components in the education and training of employees and managers alike. Languages & Business offers both trainers and training professionals from corporations and organizations the latest information and trends from the field as well as a platform for the exchange of ideas and experience.

israel sees new kind of horse racing

Want to bet who will win the races in Israel's first official horse-racing stadium? You can't.

Most forms of gambling are illegal in the Jewish state, with Jewish religious law forbidding most types of betting and any activity that may suggest cruel treatment of animals. Only government-sponsored betting and gambling is allowed.

However, this has not stopped Israel from opening its first authorized horse-racing track in a hippodrome seating several thousand people. Spectators will just have to settle for watching the races without trying to make a profit from them.

"global engagement": how businesses are going global

“The word ‘globalisation’ conjures up images of international brands such as Coca-Cola and BMW, but these days you are a global brand if you have a website,� says Clive Lewis of the ICAEW. The ability to attract customers from Bilbao or Baton Rouge is just one part of it, he says: “Companies are sourcing their own supplies in places they would never have considered 15 years ago.�

Mr Lewis cites the example of British monumental masons who are importing cheap custom-carved headstones from China. Football shirts cut from solid granite have accordingly begun to mark the resting places of chav cadavers destined to lower the tone of their neighbourhoods in death as in life.

More females sent on expatriate assignment than ever

More females are being sent on international assignments than ever before, but they are far less likely to be accompanied by a partner than male assignees, according to a new survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. The global survey covers over 100 multinational companies with nearly 17,000 male and female international assignees.

Companies in Asia-Pacific said they have 16 times more females on assignment this year than they did in 2001. Companies in North America have nearly four times as many while those in Europe have over twice as many.

google's next stop - south korea

Google will set up a research and development centre in South Korea, under an agreement announced yesterday with the country's government.

The search giant, which has had a minimal official presence in Korea to date despite the popularity of its search engine, will spend at least $10m on the facility over the next two years. Google's Korean lab will employ more than 130 researchers.

Pope to ease rules on Latin Mass

Pope Benedict XVI plans to relax restrictions on the celebration of the old Latin Mass, abandoned 40 years ago, Vatican officials say.

The so-called Tridentine Mass, in which the priest spoke in Latin and faced away from the congregation, was said around the world for 400 years. But it was replaced, by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, with a Mass said in local languages.

Review of UK school language lessons

The government has announced a review of its strategy on teaching modern foreign languages in England's schools.

There has been widespread concern since language learning was made optional past the age of 14 - triggering a rapid drop in the numbers taking GCSEs.

Education Secretary Alan Johnson said during education questions in the Commons that he shared the concern.

u.s. military to test ibm's translation software

The U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) will deploy IBM’s speech-to-speech translation software to help U.S. forces serving in Iraq better communicate with local security forces and Iraqi citizens.

The USJFCOM acts as the "transformation laboratory" of the U.S. military, developing and testing out new capabilities and then recommending their use to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. The unit is turning to IBM and other companies for technology to translate natural speech in real-time to make up for a lack of military linguists proficient in Iraqi Arabic.

tourism and web globalization

Delegates at a major eMarketing conference held in Dublin on Thursday were told that by 2010, over 75 percent of holidaymakers to the island of Ireland would be using the internet to plan or book their vacations.

However, Mark Henry, director of central marketing with Tourism Ireland warned that the tourism industry must adapt in order to meet the needs of overseas visitors.

"As little as seven years ago, Google, blogs, 3G meant nothing to the ordinary consumer. Today, they are common currency for our potential customers across the globe. The tourism industry here must move fast to keep up with changed ways of doing business, or it could lose market share."

word of the day: concinnity

concinnity \kuhn-SIN-uh-tee\, noun:
1. Internal harmony or fitness in the adaptation of parts to a whole or to each other.
2. Studied elegance of design or arrangement -- used chiefly of literary style.
3. An instance of concinnity.

He has what one character calls "the gifts of concinnity and concision," that deft swipe with a phrase that can be so devastating in children. -- Elizabeth Ward

Denis Donoghue is a primary critic of our time, catholic in scope, unique in literary apprehension, crucially gratifying in the clear concinnity of his prose. -- Ihab Hassan

FBI Agents Still Lacking Arabic Skills

Five years after Arab terrorists attacked the United States, only 33 FBI agents have even a limited proficiency in Arabic, and none of them work in the sections of the bureau that coordinate investigations of international terrorism, according to new FBI statistics.

Counting agents who know only a handful of Arabic words -- including those who scored zero on a standard proficiency test -- just 1 percent of the FBI's 12,000 agents have any familiarity with the language, the statistics show.

The numbers reflect the FBI's continued struggle to attract employees who speak Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and other languages of the Middle East and South Asia, even as the bureau leads a fight against terrorist groups primarily centered in those parts of the world.

JOB OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE TRAILING EXPAT SPOUSE

There’s a joke one of my husband’s expat friends likes to tell with a beer in hand and an audience full of wives. He proudly declares that when he dies, he wants to come back as an expat wife.

I can hardly blame him. We really do have it good—what with the manicure parties, the teas and the day outings. Some of us also have nanas who make our lives infinitely easier than our previous ones back home as Jills of all trades. But much as we appreciate the help and enjoy the fun, there is more to us trailing expat spouses than first meets the eye. We have histories of our own—and training, talent, and aspirations.

MIRREN LEADS CALL FOR MORE ETHNIC MINORITIES ON TV

British actress DAME HELEN MIRREN is calling for more ethnic minorities to be given roles on TV, insisting they're poorly represented at the moment. Mirren is desperate to see an Anglo-Asian woman take over where she leaves off in hit crime series PRIME SUSPECT. She says, "I think there's plenty of room for another hard-edged, determined female police officer on our screens, but I think television should create a new character, rather than re-create an old one. "A feisty, determined, good-at-her job Anglo-Asian police officer would be my wish for the future."

Language barrier fears at citizens advice bureaux

Language problems are putting a strain on Citizens Advice Bureaux in Mildenhall and Brandon as an increasing number of immigrants seek advice.

Both centres have seen a steady increase in the number of Portuguese and Polish- speaking people seeking help over the last two years.But a recent surge has meant managers fear confused and scared immigrants could be walking away without understanding the advice they have been given. This is because there are no advisers who can speak those languages at the centres.

Translation industry has vast potential in India

The translation industry has the potential to generate more than 500,000 jobs in India, and necessary recommendations would be made to exploit the potential, said Knowledge Commission Chairman Sam Pitroda Wednesday.

"We are working towards strengthening the translation industry by opening state-run training institutions and then open it for the private sector," Pitroda said at a discussion organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here.

"The translation industry in India has been neglected so far. India is a diverse country and we don't understand each other's culture or languages. Why can't a Bengali work be translated into a Gujarati work?" he queried.

Japan's concept of free love lost in translation

One of the more preferred adoptions of Western culture among Japanese men, Weekly Playboy (10/23) opines, has been sexual liberation, which the men's weekly notes started flourishing around 1966, the year it began publishing.

Nonetheless, in an article marking its 40th anniversary, it seems Japanese guys' ideas of "Free sex" may have been a little, well, lost in translation as a look at the Foreign Ministry's advisory on Sweden shows.

"There may have been travelers prompted by the misunderstanding that it was a country that advocates 'free sex,' but sexual attitudes in Sweden emphasize fundamental gender equality, and basic wholesomeness and what may be termed the 'sex business' is virtually unseen in Sweden," the magazine quotes the government's website as saying.

word of the day: hypnagogic

hypnagogic \hip-nuh-GOJ-ik; -GOH-jik\, adjective:
Of, pertaining to, or occurring in the state of drowsiness preceding sleep.

It is of course precisely in such episodes of mental traveling that writers are known to do good work, sometimes even their best, solving formal problems, getting advice from Beyond, having hypnagogic adventures that with luck can be recovered later on. -- Thomas Pynchon, "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee", New York Times, June 6, 1993

. . .the phenomenon of hypnagogichallucinations, or what Mr. Alvarez describes as "the flickering images and voices that well up just before sleep takes over." -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "The Faces of Night, Many of Them Scary", New York Times, January 9, 1995