Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Prompted by technology in the 21 st century, economic pressures are shrinking space, time, the variety of life styles, and cultural variation into a networked global society. Demands of globalization today continue to increase pressure on educators and educational leaders to change curriculum and learning in order to educate our children to become global citizens who preserve the variety and vitality of life. Leaders of educational multimedia design and applications have a special role in the shared leadership necessary for this change in education as emphasized by recent calls for cultural studies in instructional design (Rose, 2005).

There are many aspects of becoming a global citizen, and one of the most important areas of becoming a global citizen is an awareness and understanding of the variety and relevance of all cultures. In addition, there is an increasing need for intercultural competence to be able to survive in a networked global society. The issue of teaching and acquiring intercultural competence is becoming a major concern in schools, in teacher education (Leeman & Ledoux, 2003), and therefore in the preparation of future faculty and designers of multimedia enhanced curricula.

Interculturalized education requires critical understanding of connections among the each educator’s self, school, home, and culture, and it has to deal with sociopolitical realities about ethnic and cultural diversity within society and schools (Nieto, 2000). Thus, in order to prepare the next generation to be confident in diverse cultures, educators need to gain intercultural competencies that will allow them to be actively involved in preparation of interculturalized curricula and teaching. Moreover, the design and application of technology to support and model intercultural education becomes a critical issue in the increasingly digitized society of the 21st century.

Download: PDF Ebook Intercultural Competence for Future Leaders of Educational Technology And Its Evaluation

Assuming things about other cultures before knowing the information is one way to develop misunderstanding. Learn how to improve intercultural sensitivity from a professional speaker and communications instructor in this free education video.

By: Tracy Goodwin

Allo’ Expat Sdn Bhd, a Malaysia headquartered online publisher and most visited expatriate social portal worldwide (www.AlloExpat.com). Launched eight years ago, with now more than 40,000 visitors daily, AlloExpat.com is becoming the preferred online media for advertisers in the “expat industry” around the world.

AlloExpat.com is addressing a permanently increasing expatriate community worldwide. With communities throughout the five continents, over 170 users’ nationalities, 145 countries covered, AlloExpat.com has not only become the leading expatriate one-stop information centre, but it also succeeds in becoming the meeting point between the expat communities audience and professional expatriate service providers in various fields such as relocation services, real-estate, insurance and financial planning, leisure, lifestyle, etc…

Through an efficient and very affordable online advertising space offer and a number of dedicated advertisement packages under its “Expat Best” recommended section, AlloExpat.com provides its advertisers with the right expatriate exposure. Advertisers can also direct their ad campaign nationally, regionally and even globally under one unique website.

“Targeting a permanently moving customer target is a challenge by itself. Expat families and individuals are very hard to spot and understand for most media specialists, mostly due to the diversity of the expatriate audience itself: Where are they? What is their favourite hangout, magazine, spending habits? Furthermore, at the difference of the usual more expensive expatriate’s printing media, AlloExpat.com enables advertisers to interact directly with their audience and get the necessary instant feedback and market feel they really need. With the growing numbers of AlloExpat.com advertisers and the everyday feedback we receive from all of them we are able to continuously develop and improve our advertising platform to serve them better,” said co-founder and Public Relations Director Theresa Giovagnoli.

Read more > Press Release

For those sites that uses Google Friend Connect and its comment widget, Google has just rolled out a novel new feature called: comment translation. With the gadget, users can now unify the language of any comment thread, translating any and all comments easily into their native language.

Once the comment widget plugged into Google Translate, enables readers to translate comments left in foreign languages. This means that if you have one post in Mandarin, another in Spanish, and yet another in Russian, you can click an option to read them all in the same language.

Within the gadget, there is a translate button in the lower left-hand corner. The way it functions is the comment widget has a “Translate” link which then pops up a menu of languages to choose from. Once you have selected your language, all comments that are not in this language will be translated and highlighted in yellow.

However, there is a safe side as well if ever anything goes wrong, you always have the option to revert back to the original text if you wish to do so. Simply select “No Translation” from the same menu.

Read more > Google

TED — a collection of events and media properties owned the nonprofit Sapling Foundation — has gone to the trouble of translating its archive of thought-leader talks in various languages.

Sponsored by Nokia, the TED Open Translation Project bolsters so-called TED Talks with subtitles, time-coded transcripts, and the ability for volunteers to translate any talk into any language.

The project was also designed to enhance the accessibility of the talks for both the hearing-impaired, and search engines, which can now index the full transcript of a talk.

For example, searching on Google for “green roof” will ultimately lead you to the moment in architect William McDonough’s talk when he discusses his green roof project for Ford’s River Rouge plant, and also the moment in Majora Carter”s talk when she speaks of her green roof   project in the South Bronx. Transcripts will index in all available languages.

Founded as a conference in 1984, TED — which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design — was acquired by Chris Anderson’s Sapling Foundation in 2001, and has since expanded to include an international conference, and various media initiatives, including TED.com.

More than 200 volunteer translators have already contributed, allowing the site to launch with 300 translations in 40 languages.