Intercultural & Cross Cultural News

Communications 'Professionals' a Disgrace to Our Language

There's a website I visit on occasion called www.engrish.com. It's a collection of photos of signs, packaging, t-shirts and other things that all have in common the mangling of the English language. Most of the examples come from Asia (hence the less-than-politically correct domain name) -- like a send-off letter from a hotel, wishing the guest "A bong voyage" or a welcome sign outside a public garden that says "Trees and flowers await your love."

New Book on Doing Business in China

In his new book, author and business consultant Ernie Tadla gives tips on conducting proper business etiquette in China. In “How to Live and Do Business in China: Eight Lessons I Learned from the Communists�, Tadla gives rare insight into China’s business culture, providing readers expert insight about participating in the Chinese business environment.

Test your international business etiquette

You may consider yourself quite the sophisticate when it comes to business etiquette, but how are your international business manners?

Would you know how to make the best impression on your French host, your Chinese client, your Saudi Arabian business associate? Etiquette experts say too many Americans go abroad without doing any homework on the country, culture or customs of the people they're visiting. "They assume that everybody speaks English and that the whole world is like the United States," said Cindy Hazelton, a freelance French translator and interpreter.

New Mobile Global Translation Application Released

British company Echo Translatorâ„¢ has developed the first application of its kind to deliver an instant native voice output from a convenient on screen menu, which includes 25 languages.

The Echo Translatorâ„¢ is an indispensable travel tool that will enhance both the business and leisure travel experience. Using Echo Phraselogicâ„¢ technology phone customers can speak, learn and instantly interact with people of different cultures and tongues, without any prior knowledge of the foreign language.

Let your mobile phone speak a foreign language for you

Mobile-content producer, Steape launched their talking phrase books for mobile phones in the UK and the USA today. At the push of a button, travellers can easily communicate in a foreign language using an application on their mobile phone. The translators are already popular in the Netherlands, and are now also available in the UK and USA via the website: www.steape.com.

Talking phrase books on your mobile

Talking phrase books that can be downloaded onto your mobile have been launched by a leading travel website.

Lastminute.com has teamed up with software developers CoolGorilla to create six talking phrase books for French, Spanish, German, Greek, Italian and Portuguese. The applications can be used to search for a phrase in English, which can then be listened to on the phone in the foreign language, with additional text translation also provided on screen.

Beijing's 'pubic toilets' a no-go

Watch out "deformed men" and "liquor heads" - your days in Beijing are numbered.

A campaign to correct the notoriously goofy English translations on city signs in time for next year's Olympics could mean the end for the misnomers that have confused and amused visitors for years. Officials are taking aim at menu items such as "Fried Crap" and "Acid Food", and slippery-when-wet signs that read, "To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty".

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.

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.

The Population & People of Hungary

Are you going on holiday to Hungary? Are you interested in learning about the background of the people & population of Hungary? Our guide to the population of Hungary gives you the facts & information you’ll want to know.

Population of Hungary

Hungary is an average sized country located in central Europe with a population of between 10 and 11 million people. The population of Hungary is composed of several different ethnic peoples, which are mentioned below.

Etiquette Guide to Czech Republic

The Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has issued a 96-page booklet of advice for foreigners on how to behave when living in the country, the international service of Radio Prague reported last week. The document is dominated by mundane but essential information on how to use the education, healthcare, and social security systems. However, it is the section on personal behaviour that suggests perhaps rather too many of the roughly 310,000 foreigners living there are not familiar enough with the rules of polite Czech society.

Languages in Switzerland

Switzerland is locked in the heart of Europe and surrounded by major European countries on all sides. Each country exerts cultural influence on the areas of Switzerland that are close to its borders and nowhere is this more visible than with language in Switzerland. There are four main languages spoken in Switzerland. These languages are German, French, Italian and Romanish.

Improve your language skills on Air France flights

Travellers on selected Air France flights will soon be able to polish up their language skills whilst jetting around the world.

From April passengers on the airline’s Boeing 777-300s will be able to improve their language skills by taking part in short lessons delivered on individual screens. People can learn more than 23 different languages through the in-flight entertainment system, so you can polish up your skills in Korean, Portuguese, Russian and many others.

Lost-in-translation signs to be cleansed for Olympics

For years, foreigners in China have delighted in the loopy English translations that appear on the nation's signs. They range from the offensive — "Deformed Man," outside toilets for the handicapped — to the sublime — "Show Mercy to the Slender Grass," on park lawns.

Last week, Beijing city officials unveiled a plan to stop the laughter. With hordes of foreign visitors expected in town for the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing wants to cleanse its signs of translation nonsense.

No Swearing Please! This is Shanghai

Mind your language, please.......... This is Shanghai. China's financial centre is mulling over a law against using swear words in public, reports said on Monday, in a sign of just how far the city has travelled from its famously profane 19th-century dockside origins.

Newspapers and a government spokesman said the ban could be included in a law targeting spitting, littering, smoking, jaywalking, and other behavior deemed disruptive or anti-social.

Why Learning A New Language May Make You Forget Your Old One

Traveling abroad presents an ideal opportunity to master a foreign language. While the immersion process facilitates communication in a diverse world, people are often surprised to find they have difficulty returning to their native language. This phenomenon is referred to as first-language attrition and has University of Oregon psychologist Benjamin Levy wondering how it is possible to forget, even momentarily, words used fluently throughout one's life.

In a study appearing in the January, 2007 issue of Psychological Science, Levy and his colleague Dr. Michael Anderson discovered that people do not forget their native language simply because of less use, but that such forgetfulness reflects active inhibition of native language words that distract us while we are speaking the new language. Therefore, this forgetfulness may actually be an adaptive strategy to better learn a second language.

Travel warning for Sri Lanka

The FCO has today released the following travel information for Sri Lanka:

We advise against all travel to the north or east of Sri Lanka. If you are in the north or east, you should leave. For the purpose of this travel advice we consider the north to be all areas north of the A12 road (which runs from Puttalam in the west to Trincomalee in the east) including the Jaffna peninsula; and we consider the east to be the districts of Trincomalee and Batticaloa, as well as coastal areas of Ampara district north of Pottuvil and east of the A25 and A27 roads.

Fancy a Visit to "Racist Park"?

Visitors to China's capital can stroll through "Racist Park," enjoy a plate of "Crap in the Grass" and stop by a Starbucks franchise for a cup for "Christmas Bland" coffee.

Now the Beijing government is trying to clean up such mistranslations and sloppy editing (including the inversion of 'a' and 'r' in carp on menus) before an expected 500,000 foreigners arrive for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

"Some of the translations in China aren't clear or even polite," said Liu Yang, director general of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages program. "The government realized that if they weren't changed, the city would lose face."

Forget French - Just Learn the Body Language

British travellers who have trouble speaking French are being invited by Paris tourist chiefs to learn Gallic gestures instead.

Ways of perfecting the Gallic shrug and understanding French-style handsignals are outlined on a new Paris Tourist Board website. A poll by the board found that two thirds of those visiting the French capital found communication with Parisians difficult. Many UK visitors rely on hand gestures and Franglais - a mixture of English and French - while 34 per cent make no attempt to speak French at all. The survey also found that being made more welcome by the locals was high up the wish-list for Britons visiting Paris.

A Plate of Five Sliced Things please Waiter

"Five sliced things'' and "pee soup'' will be off the menu under a plan to try to standardize the English names of dishes and drinks sold in Beijing restaurants before the 2008 Olympics, according to a report yesterday.

Although the quality of English on restaurant menus has improved greatly in recent years, spelling errors and simple descriptions of food instead of names are still common.

The Beijing Daily said the dishes and drinks served in the capital's restaurants will be given "standardized'' English names by the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program, a government-sponsored organization that promotes English.