Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Punjabi is the fourth most spoken language in Canada after English, French and Chinese, according to an official census.

While English and French are official languages, Chinese, Punjabi, Spanish, Italian and Arabic are the most five most widely-spoken non-official languages in the country. Punjabi is also the 4th most spoken language in the Canadian Parliament.

According to the census by Statistics Canada in 2006, the most widely-spoken non-official language is Chinese (2.6 per cent of Canadians). It is followed by Punjabi (0.8 per cent), Spanish (0.7 per cent), Italian (0.6 per cent) and Arabic (0.5 per cent).

Read more > Canada

You don’t speak Mandarin and you lose your wallet and your way in Shanghai. Pantomime and Pictionary isn’t getting you anywhere. So, what do you do?

IBM says it can rescue you.

Last year, the tech titan launched MASTOR, a software tested and produced in Florida that allows real-time, two-way communication between two people speaking different languages.

All you do is speak into a PDA or laptop in English and the gadgets talk or write back the sentences in another language.

MASTOR – which stands for “multilingual automatic speech translator” – is currently being used by U.S. troops and workers in Iraq. Last March, IBM donated 1,000 devices and 10,000 MASTOR software copies to the U.S. Department of Defense.

The gadgets and codes valued at $45-million were tested and produced in IBM’s Boca Raton office. IBM, which has 1,200 employees in the Tampa Bay area, says the English-to-Arabic software is more than 90 percent accurate.

“It’s a very advanced piece of technology, and we haven’t sold it to anyone yet,” said Yuqing Gao, manager for speech recognition and understanding at the T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Read more > IBM 

More than 85 percent of the world’s online population has used the Internet to make a purchase — increasing the market for online shopping by 40 percent in the past two years — according to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on Internet shopping habits. Globally, more than half of Internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month, according to Nielsen.

“The Internet is no longer a niche technology — it is mass media and an utterly integral part of modern life. Almost no aspect of life remains untouched by online media. As our lives become more fractured and cluttered, it isn’t surprising that consumers turn to the unrivalled convenience of the Internet when it comes to researching and buying products,” said Jonathan Carson, President, International, Nielsen Online.

“When The Nielsen Company conducted its first global survey into Internet shopping trends two years ago, approximately 10 percent of the world’s population (627 million) had shopped online,” said Bruce Paul, VP, Customized Research, Nielsen U.S. “Within two years, this number has increased by approximately 40 percent (to 875 million).”

Read more > Nielsen 

Less spitting, better queuing and cleaner streets show Beijing has become more “civilized,” but the city still has to fine-tune its etiquette to attain Olympic standards, Xinhua news agency said Friday, citing a new study.

China wants to leave nothing to chance when the eyes of the world turn its way for the Olympics in August and the Beijing government has waged a long campaign to hone manners.

Renmin University created an annual “civic index” three years ago to gauge progress, surveying thousands of residents and sending out teams of observers, Xinhua said.

The 2007 results all pointed in the right direction: 2.5 percent of people spat in public, down from 4.9 percent in 2006; instances of queue jumping dropped to 1.5 percent from 6 percent; and littering fell to 2.9 percent from 5.3 percent.

Read more > Beijing 

Saudi Arabia’s religious police have banned red roses ahead of Valentine’s Day, forcing couples in the conservative Muslim nation to think of new ways to show their love.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shop owners in the capital Riyadh to remove any items colored scarlet, which is widely seen as symbolizing love, newspapers said.

“They visited us last night,” the Saudi Gazette quoted an unidentified florist as saying.

It is not unusual for the Saudi vice squad to clamp down ahead of Valentine’s Day, which it sees as encouraging relations between men and women outside of wedlock, the newspaper said.

Read more > Saudi Arabia 

Negotiation tactics differ from country to country. Some cultures expect clients to negotiate over things that would be totally unacceptable in other countries. People simply have different approaches to when it comes to negotiation.

Imagine a line of people waiting for a taxi at an airport. Imagine the taxi drivers reaction if his client started haggling over the price of his ride before he got inside the taxi. In the New York airport and even in the Paris airport, the customer would have no chance of getting in the taxi cab. In other countries this is expected. And not only expected, if you do not bargain the locals will laugh at you.

It is very important to know what is culturally expected of you when it comes to negotiation. If you are just starting out in developing your international markets, it is wise to do some homework and identify the standard expected negotiating habits in your target country.

Read more > Negotiation 

Georgia Perimeter College presents Lynn Gregory who is a national expert on communication and media from the University of Vermont. She discusses how intercultural perceptions affect the media and how the media affect perceptions.

Read more > Lynn Gregory 

In a global melting pot, how we relate to one another’s culture is an issue of the greatest importance. It involves a level of understanding of different cultures, languages and faiths. This year is the European Year of intercultural dialogue and the European Parliament and its President are determined to draw attention to the need for a bridge between different cultures. As the elected home to representatives from 27 nations the Parliament is a place where languages and cultures meet.

This focus draws attention to some of the people who have visited the Parliament to talk about intercultural dialogue as well as President Pöttering’s thoughts on the subject.

Read more > EU

Hanyu Pinyin, the phonetic system that uses Roman characters to support the learning of Chinese language. The Communist Party leadership now wants to use the coming Olympic Games as a launching pad for spreading the knowledge of Chinese language among sports lovers across the world.

Pinyin has been extensively used by both Chinese and non-Chinese to learn the language since the first edition of the phonetic system was published in 1958 after being adopted by the National People’s Congress, the Chinese parliament, that year.

Pinyin also played a part in national integration as the government used it to establish Latin forms for the language of 12 minority groups including Zhuang, Buyi, and Hani.

“This year our nation will stage the 29th Olympic Games. This offers an excellent opportunity to put Chinese civilization on display and to expand the influence of Chinese linguistic culture,” the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party said in an editorial.

Read more > Chinese 

Hip-hop mogul Jay-Z is spreading his wings — some more — with his latest business venture. Jay-Z is teaming up with Steve “the Commissioner” Stoute — known for linking celebrities with high-powered brands, for example, Jay-Z’s sneaker deal with Reebok and Justin Timberlake’s partnership with McDonald’s — to launch Translation Advertising. The New York-based ad agency will “help marketers reach multicultural consumers,” according to the New York Times.

“There are people who don’t understand the culture,” Jay-Z told the Times, citing as an example a commercial for a wireless carrier “that shows guys break-dancing in the phone store.” The rap star, whose real name is Shawn Carter, definitely understands the culture and has capitalized on this understanding with his successful 40/40 Club and Rocawear clothing line.

Read more > Jay-Z