11/10/2005 - 11/11/2005

islam awareness week

The 2005 National Launch of Islam Awareness Week will take place on 21 November in the Living Room at City Hall, London. This year's theme of 'Past and present: 1,000 years of Islam in Britain', highlights the contribution of present day British Muslims, as well as exploring the rich history of interaction between Islam and Britain that extends over a thousand years.

Meanwhile, 'Past and present: 1,000 years of Islam in Britain' is also the title of a specially commissioned exhibition at New Walk Museum & Art Gallery in Leicester from 19 November 2005 - 7 January 2006. Admission is free.

uk tv has diversity gap

Ethnic minorities are under-represented in some of the main genres of UK television, a survey has shown. Minorities account for 7.8% of the population but get only 6.6% of soap parts and 7.5% of factual roles, the Cultural Diversity Network poll found.

expat kids must be registered in china

A couple from the Netherlands missed their flight home yesterday because they hadn't registered the birth of their baby with the Shanghai Public Security Bureau. The bureau is reminding expat parents that they must register within one month of giving birth and apply for a residence permit or visa for the child. The Dutch couple didn't know about the rule until they tried to get on a plane at the Pudong International Airport.

word of the day: puissant

puissant \PWISS-uhnt; PYOO-uh-suhnt; pyoo-ISS-uhnt\, adjective:
Powerful; strong; mighty; as, a puissant prince or empire.

As an upcoming young corporate lawyer in San Francisco in the 1930's, Crum tended the interests of some of California's most puissant businesses, starting with William Randolph Hearst's newspaper empire. --Richard Lingeman, "The Last Party," New York Times, April 27, 1997

If we are to believe that country's literary pundits, "irreparable damage to a great British institution" may soon be done by an invading army more puissant than Hannibal's or Alexander's, an army marching out of the creative writing schools of American universities, leaving Will Shakespeare's sceptred isle "smothered amid a landslide of books from the US". --Jonathan Yardley, "Bring on the Yanks," The Guardian, June 5, 2002

kwintessential feature in bbc article

Kwintessential's Neil Payne today appeared in an article from the BBC regarding the demand for interpreting services in the UK......

Business is booming for UK firms supplying interpreters, but many public services - especially the police and courts - are struggling to find enough people willing to do what can be a stressful and demanding job.

In the last year there has been a massive increase in demand for languages spoken by those coming to work in Britain from the countries of the enlarged EU, with Polish especially popular.

english lessons for free

In many countries, students have learned how to read and write in English without being able to speak English. Steve Kim, a 31 year old computer software engineer created TalkEnglish.com to provide English lessons for everyone. Steve Kim majored in English Literature at the University of Washington and worked at Microsoft for nearly 5 years.

"I have always enjoyed the English language and I have a strong passion for computers. TalkEnglish.com was a way for me to utilize my two strengths", says Kim. The 'click, listen, and repeat' feature of TalkEnglish.com allow students to click on any of the 5,000 audio files, listen to a native English speaker, and repeat after the audio segment.

Multilingual Mobile Email Software iCJKMail launched

iCJKMail(TM) is an innovative multilingual mobile email solution that allows users to view messages containing English, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean (CJK) characters from a MIDP 2.0 enabled handset with internet access, without requiring CJK operating system (OS) or fonts residing on the device.

world will lose half of its langauges over next 100 years

Half of the existing 6,700 languages in the world will die away in a century and another 2,000 languages will be endangered if no efforts are made to save them, a top expert on social science said here Wednesday.

Li Shenming, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said at the on-going Globalization Forum on World Cultural Diversity that it is a pity that no genuine consensus has yet been reached on respecting and safeguarding linguistic diversity.

welsh push for eu status gets boost

A campaign for recognition of Welsh as an “official� EU language has been boosted by a new deal on the status of Spanish minority languages.

An agreement signed in Brussels by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and his Spanish counterpart means that for the first time three non-official EU languages – Catalan, Basque and Galician – can be used at official EU meetings and in official EU correspondence.

Diversity & Inclusion in Asia Conference

Diversity is good for business.

If understood and applied properly, we know from experience in North America and Europe that embracing diversity can benefit companies in terms of innovation, motivation and enhanced reputation as an employer of choice.

But does this apply in Asia - what does experience show us in terms of leveraging a diverse workforce to add to the bottom line?

Community Business is proud to present the Diversity & Inclusion in Asia Conference from 22-23 November at the Island Shangri-La Hotel in Hong Kong. This two day conference will explore two key themes:
· Women in the Workplace and
· Cross-Cultural Effectiveness

working in germany

Expats working in Germany may find themselves struggling to find their feet in the new workplace. German customs such as the mysterious lunchtime greeting 'Mahlzeit' can leave foreigners confused, and German companies, with their government-imposed regulations and all-powerful works councils, function by very different rules to their counterparts elsewhere. Sylvia Schroll-Machl gives some advice to help ease the transition into German business life.

outsourcing to india

According to The New York Times, workers in India's outsourcing industry are currently receiving pay rises which average 10% per annum, as demand for talent is at a record high.

Outsourcing companies in the country, however, are currently seeing attrition rates of between 15 - 30%, compared to 10% attrition in outsourcing companies in Eastern European countries 10%, and between 7.5 - 15% in China. The newspaper quotes Diana Farrell, director of the McKinsey Global Institute, an economics research firm, who said that 'high turnover, rising wages and a shortage of suitable talent in India's most popular offshoring destinations are proving to be bottlenecks'.

cps consults bme groups

David Archer, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Avon and Somerset, met with representatives of faith based and BME communities on 28th September 2005 to give an overview of the CPS and where we fit into the Criminal Justice System. He outlined recent developments to attendees including representatives from the British Muslim for young Afro-Caribbean males and Bristol City Council Race forum, regarding issues such as the Charging initiative, Witness Care Units, the policy on prosecution of Hate Crime and summarised the CPS Equality & Diversity practice, employment policy and diversity awareness training.

word of the day: laudable

laudable \LAW-duh-bul\, adjective:
Worthy of praise; commendable.

Her first answer was laudable - she wrote that yes, she would remain engaged to a man who fell seriously ill subsequent to the engagement. -Enid Nemy, "Metropolitan Diary," New York Times, January 11, 1999

The second sense in which we are feminist researchers comes from our belief that equity between boys and girls, men and women, is a laudable goal. -Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (editors), From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games

Top 500 Diversity Owned Businesses in the USA

DiversityBusiness.com, the US's leading multicultural B2B online portal, today announced the Div500, the 6th annual listing of the nation’s top 500 diversity-owned businesses. Ranging in revenue size from $20 million to over $2 billion, the companies listed on the Div500 represent the nation’s top multicultural earners and challenge the long-held notion that diversity-owned businesses are small or insignificant.

lloyd's make inroads into china

Lloyd's of London spear-headed a major push into China by some of the UK's biggest companies yesterday after the insurer was given the go-ahead to start selling reinsurance in China.

Other British deals with Chinese companies were signed yesterday by Rolls-Royce, Arup and Collins Stewart Tullett, while BP and Shell said that they were wanted to expand their operations there.

is cultural stereotyping bad for business?

We are surrounded by cultural stereotypes – every time we hear a racist or sexist joke, or read - largely negative - news reports that identify criminals, victims, or others as belonging to a particular group, we are being exposed to cultural stereotyping. The message can also be largely subliminal. Women's advocacy groups have argued for years that the absence of successful women role models, particularly in public life and education, perpetuates stereotypes of women's unsuitability for leadership positions.

us-bound expats

An increase in the numbers of US-bound skilled foreign workers means that benefits managers need to ensure their global benefits packages are competitive in order to attract and retain the best talent, shows new research.

A survey of benefits/HR managers in the US working for companies employing skilled expatriates, revealed that over 40 percent of benefits decision-makers expected their companies to employ more skilled foreign workers over the next 3 years, citing company growth as the main reason for this increase.

globalisation demands language skills

Language learning has become a crucial part of a child’s basic education, more so because of the growing demands of globalisation. At a time when language learning in the country still faces difficulties, the National Centre for Languages (CILT) has welcomed the Department for Education and Skills (DfES)’s publication of its Framework for Languages in Key Stage 2 document.

brussels needs bulgarian translators

Brussels is seeking Bulgarian translators. Applicants should be fluent speakers of Bulgarian and at least one of the other EU official languages. They must also have good general knowledge of the EU institutions, be fine team workers, and adapt quickly to new and exceptional circumstances, the paper adds.

The European Personal Selection Office (EPSO) has opened two competitions - the one starting November 4 and the other to be opened November 15 - for conference and linguist translators from Bulgaria and Romania.

Currently some 20 Bulgarians work at various administrative units of EU institutions in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg.

go back to language!

Droves of 14-year-olds are abandoning the study of modern languages. Copies of Encore Tricolore are festering sous la table, and big sweaty earphones hang redundant on the wall of the listening lab. This is unsurprising. When something slightly boring becomes optional, teenagers will tend to jump ship. And who can blame them, when the sexier shores of GCSE Drama and Media Studies beckon?

yahoo invests in chinese searches

Yahoo China, which has been acquired by Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba.com, is refocusing on the search engine business to tap into a fast-growing and lucrative market.

Ma Yun, chairman and chief executive officer of Alibaba, said the top priority for Yahoo in China is to build the best search engine for the Chinese community instead of an Internet portal like NASDAQ-listed Sina Corp and Sohu.com.

Yahoo has moved more than 2,000 computer servers from the United States to Beijing as part of its localization efforts in the search engine market in China. Ma expects another 5,000 servers to be moved to China next year. Yahoo can now search 1 billion Chinese-language web pages, compared to 250 million before the acquisition, Ma added.

japanese firm sells cars to africa over net

A Japanese car trading company has introduced a groundbreaking system where by Ugandans can buy used vehicles from Japan over the Internet.

"internet to the masses"

The "Internet to Masses" programme in India conceived by the Kerala state government which plans to take the information highway to common people will be launched in Malappuram, the country's first computer-literate district, tomorrow.

The venture is aimed at providing comprehensive training to use the internet. Initially 100,00 selected people would be given the training through the Akshaya e-centres.

word of the day: oneiric

oneiric \oh-NY-rik\, adjective:
Of, pertaining to, or suggestive of dreams; dreamy.

On this score, the novel might easily drift off into an oneiric never-never land, but Mr. Welch doesn't let this happen. --Peter Wild, "Visions of Blackfoot," New York Times, November 2, 1986

Her large images, which are cloaked in an elegant oneiric mist, transport the viewer to an ideal world where bodies seem to have become weightless ghosts of themselves. --Simona Vendrame, "Nature and the solitary self," translated by Jacqueline Smith, Temaceleste