Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say “sat” rather than “sit.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change the verb to mark tense.

In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.

In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you’d use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you’d use a different form.

Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?

These questions touch on all the major controversies in the study of mind, with important implications for politics, law and religion. Yet very little empirical work had been done on these questions until recently. The idea that language might shape thought was for a long time considered untestable at best and more often simply crazy and wrong. Now, a flurry of new cognitive science research is showing that in fact, language does profoundly influence how we see the world.

Read more > Language

The New York Times covers a fascinating story on how Japanese companies are outsourcing calls centres abroad in order to save costs. However, the companies used have no other choice other than to hire Japanese staff in order to deal with the clients at the end of the phone. Why? Because they cannot do without Japanese workers for reasons of language and culture. Even foreign citizens with a good command of the Japanese language, they say, may not be equipped with a sufficiently nuanced understanding of the manners and politesse that Japanese customers often demand.

“If you used Japanese-speaking Chinese, for example, the service quality does not match up with the expectations of the end customers,” said Tatsuhito Muramatsu, managing director at Ms. Natori’s employer, Transcosmos Thailand, a unit of Transcosmos, which is based in Tokyo.

So why are the Japanese taking these jobs? Despite earning less than 50% what they would in Japan, their money stretches a lot further in cities such as Bangkok, Beijing and Dalian.

Read more > NYT

Google have set their sites on developing their translation software. Over the years the company has clocked onto the potential the world wide web holds especially in non-English speaking countries. The launch of many innovative translation tools has already seen it trailblazing ahead of the likes of Yahoo! and Microsoft in terms of engaging the world into using Google as the favoured search engine.

Google gave more insight some of its translation work in a presentation at the Wikimania conference in Poland recently. It is using Wiki material in a clever way. By using the articles and information up on the mammoth website it hopes to accomplish a couple of very important aims > a) to present content online in other languages in order to capture searches from non-English speaking countries and b) to further enhance the accuracy of their translation memory.

The two points in fact marry up to the sound of more money rolling into the Google accounts. A better translation memory means a more accurate translation of online content = higher numbers of people finding information via Google = positioning advertisements around this information = $$$.

So how does the translation memory (TM) work? Google’s translation technology begins with content in which the same text appears in multiple languages. The more examples of human translation it has, the better it works and the less often it has to fall back on machine translation. Wikipedia provides a diverse and growing body of subject matter that is ideal for the task. “In the last 16 months, Google has been working with the Wikimedia Foundation, students, professors, Google volunteers, paid translators, and members of the Wikipedia community to increase Wikipedia content in Arabic, Indic languages, and Swahili,” Google say. Tt has begun the work with Hindi, which despite having millions of speakers had only 21,000 Wikipedia articles in 2008 compared with 2.5 million in English.

Read more > Google Blog

The police in Portsmouth have taken an interesting approach to communicating with non-English speaking shoppers. As part of an initiative by Plymouth Against Retail Crime (Parc),  translation packs are being given to large stores, with some going to police patrol cars used around the city centre too.

The packs contain 13 cards, each carrying phrases in a foreign language and their English translation. Languages include Turkish, Spanish, Russian, Italian, French and Farsi. The cards can be used in situations where a foreigner needs help or is suspected of a crime in a store.

Although its a shame the cards are being used within the context of criminal activity it does demonstrate the understanding that simple actions such as phrases does make a difference. Wouldn’t it be nice if staff could also get translation cards with simple greetings instead though?

Read more > Translation packs

London, England, 20th July 2010: The translation and interpreting company Kwintessential has recently conducted a survey of the UK’s top 200 legal firms’ websites. With more and more clients coming from abroad plus a growing foreign language speaking community closer to home, the survey was conducted to glean the extent to which legal firms are capitalising on such opportunities. Results show that less than 10% have their website in a language other than English.
The UK’s legal market is worth billions. Despite the pressures of the recession and global economic slow-down, the industry has managed to not only to stay afloat but in many incidences post positive profit forecasts.  In a volatile market and through volatile times, legal firms must look towards alternative routes to market. Current strength is based upon a domestic consumer base as well as international exposure; both of which still hold potential for development and growth.

Read the Press Release > Monolingual Websites letting down UK Law firms

“Cemcho bhai, harisani, ano chokra kabar?”

That is Gujarati for: “Hello brother, how are you? Any news about your son?”

Not too unusual as the start of a conversation in the heart of the Asian community in Blackburn, apart from the fact that the words are being spoken by a 69-year-old white, English-born milkman.

John Mather, aka Jimmy, has been doing the rounds in this north-west town for the past 50 years. And as he has gone from door-to-door in the town’s large Asian community, he has become almost fluent in Gujarati.

“When I first started the rounds here there were only a handful of Asian families, about eight or 10, in the London Road, Whalley St and Altom St areas,” says Jimmy.

But as more arrived on the foreign shores from Kenya and Malawi, Jimmy’s ability to go beyond delivering just milk – and procure the sorts of foods they couldn’t pick up in the local supermarket – put him in greater demand.

“They wanted natural yoghurt, ghee, goats and chickens, the type of things they were used to back home. I’d gone to the dairies here and they said that there wasn’t the demand, but they couldn’t have been more wrong.”

Read more > BBC

Yahoo has announced that it has partnered with IBM to expand its customer service operations in the Middle East and Europe.

IBM is to offer multilingual customer care services for Yahoo’s products from its Cairo-based service delivery centre.

The move comes after Yahoo acquired the Arabic web-based portal Maktoob in August last year.

The internet giant has invested in the new multilingual customer support team to reach its  customers in the Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Romania and Russia.

Jeff Russakow, Yahoo’s executive vice president of customer advocacy, said: “Yahoo has made a strong commitment to growth in the Middle East, and our new support for Arabic-speaking users around the world is a significant milestone toward our goals for the region.”

Read more > Yahoo!

Business generated by Europe’s translation providers and other language teaching services is estimated to have been worth $12bn in 2008, according to research published by the EU last month.

The report, commissioned by the EU’s translation service, said that the language industry is growing faster than any other sector in Europe, with expansion estimated to continue at 10%. But researchers warn that because the industry is so diverse, spread across activities ranging from in-company translation, software development and subtitling of films and television programmes, its impact is often overlooked.

One indication that this could change comes from evidence that investment companies are showing growing interest in the sector, the report’s writers say. They point to evidence from eastern Europe where a small number of players are dominating translating services.

The report also highlights a growing acceptance of machine translation tools. This is in response to a shortage of human translators and improved accuracy of computer-assisted translation.

The translation and interpreting sector dominates the language industry, with an estimated value of $8bn in 2008, while language teaching was the next biggest sector, estimated to be worth $2.3bn.

Read more > Guardian

The European Commission has published a draft regulation that would allow applications for the proposed EU patent to be submitted to the EPO in just one of the office’s official languages – English, French and German. The claims would have to be translated into the other two languages. Under the plans, which were revealed  by Margot Fröhlinger at the IP Business Congress in Munich last week, machine translations would be made available for purposes of research and dissemination. In case of litigation the patent owner would be obliged to provide a full translation of the patent into the language of the alleged infringer and also to the court hearing the case if so required.

Read more > EU

On a construction site near the future Olympic village in east London, more than half of the workforce is Asian, about a third Central and Eastern European (including a large contingent of Bulgarians) and about 10% British.

In the canteen Sikhs sit with Sikhs, Lithuanians with Lithuanians and Brits with Brits. Communication is severely limited and it’s not just language. Improving communication between communities at work is a major issue. Countries across the EU are experiencing the challenge of integrating migrant workers into their workplaces.

Now an EU iniative, the European Intercultural Workplace (EIW), addresses this challenge. Started by Dublin City University, the three-year project has a budget of $1.48m. It is one of the largest in the Leonardo da Vinci scheme, the EU mechanism for funding vocational education initiatives, and is part of the EU’s current Year of Intercultural Dialogue.

The EIW involves vocational training centres and universities in 10 countries: Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Britain. Each partner has produced a national situation report, drawing together migrant workers’ views on integration plus details of how employers and governments respond. There are also case studies looking at local sectors such as construction, retail and education.

A series of booklets explore intercultural issues on a transnational level with analysis of smaller-sized businesses, healthcare and education workplaces across Europe. A fourth booklet, Overview of Legislation, explains the legal situation in different countries. These reports are all available from the project website.

The data collected is impressive, but what will be of practical benefit to those working in intercultural communication – often starved of suitable teaching resources – are the EIW project’s workplace educational training materials. These are available as a DVD/print package called Europe at Work.

The materials have been written and produced by the UK project team, led by Professor Emeritus Jack Lonergan of the University of Westminster. They have followed a critical incident methodology which presents scenarios on DVD and follow-up materials that promote discussion of possible solutions rather than providing a single answer.

“The scenarios have been scripted to focus on one specific issue which allows easy transfer to many similar situations. They have been filmed nowhere but apply anywhere,” says Professor Lonergan.

One unit is called Appearance and reflects the issue of Muslim women wearing the veil at work. Seema, a Muslim accounts clerk, is selected for promotion by her human resources manager, Miss Tate. However, Miss Tate advises Seema that wearing a headscarf, or hijab, will not be appropriate in her more senior role. The scene plays out with Seema and Miss Tate’s discussion.

Fourteen units, with accompanying print materials, deal with many areas of miscommunication at work between migrant and host-country workers. Most deal with the relations between bosses and staff concerning gender, religion, authority, time, race, qualifications and relationships.

Others deal with language issues such as failure to communicate, or being at a disadvantage because of language difficulties. One scene deals with body language. A young man is from a culture where he does not look elders in the eye out of respect for authority; he is suspected of dishonesty by a policeman because of his body language – his “shifty” manner.

The DVD scenarios make no recommendations and indeed come to no conclusions. It is for the work group to identify the issues, discuss possible solutions and come to an agreement.

The training manual supports the DVD scenario by helping viewers identify and understand the issues at stake and by inviting them to form their own opinions and discuss them with colleagues. An important part of each unit is the “What if… ?” scenes where students are taken through a series of situations and asked how they would deal with them. The accompanying best practice section suggests possible solutions that might be employed to resolve each situation.

Britain has a long history of migrants in the workplace, and therefore has experiences and expertise to share, but the EIW materials seek a wider perspective. Solutions found in Britain are not necessarily exportable and some issues may be dealt with more successfully elsewhere.

There is another spin off. Because of the immediacy of the issues, the naturalistic language and the subtitles in eight languages, the materials can also be used in language schools and colleges wanting workplace-based materials.

Original article from The Guardian