Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Broadcasting Standards Authority in New Zealand is supporting better training in intercultural understanding for journalistsThe Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) is recommending better training in intercultural understanding for journalists, one of the recommendations presented at the recent Interfaith Dialogue in Waitangi, a forum to increase understanding and tolerance between nations of different cultures and religions.

“All cultures have a right to be treated fairly by the media,” says Dominic Sheehan, the BSA’s Chief Executive. “Better journalistic training in other cultures would be a solution to inadvertently offending people’s customs and protocols as a result of a lack of knowledge.”

Read more: BSA 

VietNamNet Bridge reports that eBay launched its website in Vietnamese in Hanoi on June 27. The Vietnamese site has not been added to the list of countries in which it operates that is found at the footer on the bottom of eBay’s pages.

The Vietnamese-language site ncludes a link to toggle between Vietnamese and English-language versions.

Read more: eBay 

The InterActive Terminology for Europe database, a one-stop shop for EU-related terminology was today  opened to the general public.

IATE, combines the terminology databases of the individual EU institutions and bodies in a single database containing 8.7 million terms and covering all 23 official EU languages. IATE ,which has been in use by the translation services of the EU institutions since 2005, already plays a major role in ensuring the quality of the written communication of the EU institutions and bodies. Offering easy access to validated EU-related terminology, it ensures the consistency and reliability of terminology which is indispensable for producing the clear and unambiguous texts necessary for guaranteeing both the validity and transparency of the legislative process and effective communication with the citizens of the Union.

Read more: IATE 

The TUC has published an employers’ guide to help ensure the safety of migrant workers.

The document, Safety and Migrant Workers, warns employers that many migrant staff are more vulnerable than UK employees to illness, injuries or death at work due to a lack of safety training, non-existent or inadequate safety clothing and equipment, and poor English skills.

Problems with language and a poor understanding of the culture in British workplaces means that some ‘rogue employers’ are likely to be cutting corners and risking the health of their migrant workforce.

Read more: Safety and Migrant Workers 

“Workplace diversity is now seen as an essential part of business because of its demonstrable connection to an organization’s success,” says Lynn D. Lieber, a seasoned employment law attorney and nationally recognized spokeswoman on workplace ethics and discrimination. “It is more important than ever to educate your organization on emerging issues, trends and the ways that diversity benefits everyone — your employees, your customers and your bottom line.”

Read more: Diversity 

Monster®, the leading global online careers and recruitment resource and flagship brand of Monster Worldwide, Inc.  today announced the Monster Top Companies for Diversity ^TM – a comprehensive, employee-focused quantitative assessment methodology for evaluating a company’s diversity and inclusion performance against a national standard. Monster’s Top Companies for Diversity measures the perceptions of a company’s employees regarding the employer’s performance on specific diversity factors across three broad categories: organizational commitment to diversity, fairness in compensation and culture of inclusion; results are then compared against an established national benchmark for analysis.

Read more: Monster 

English and New Zealanders still make up the largest groups of overseas-born residents – but the new focus, especially in Sydney, is among people with Arabic-speaking and Chinese backgrounds.

In Sydney, the most common language spoken at home, after English, is now Arabic (3.9 per cent) followed by Cantonese (3 per cent) and Mandarin (2.3 per cent). Only then do Greek (1.9 per cent) and Italian (1.7 per cent) feature.

Read more: Sydney 

From the Google blog:

“Google’s automatic translation is handy for getting translations of complete sentences, paragraphs, and documents. But when you need to translate a single word, a bilingual dictionary can be very useful because it gives you translations for the many possible meanings a word might have. With that in mind, we’ve added dictionary translations to Google Translate. Now, for example, if you want to know how to say “play” in Spanish, you can use our dictionary translation and learn that depending on the context it can be “jugar”, “tocar”, or “obra”, among others.”

Read more: Google 

An Asian man was turned down for a job at a top engineering firm, but then offered an interview when he re-applied posing as a British man with a double-barrelled name, a tribunal heard last week.

Qamar Malik said he was rejected by Amec Utilities only to be offered an interview two days later under the name of Mr R Lloyd-Hilbert. An employment tribunal in Cardiff was told the fictitious second candidate was a year older and was less qualified for the £30,000-a-year job than Malik.

Read more: Discrimination