Are you about to relocate?  You can experience culture shock even if you just move to another state, not to mention another country.  The "Culture Shock Tool Kit" can help you manage the transition.  The book has activities that teach you how to adjust to your new home and is available in English, Spanish, and Russian.

Have you ever experienced culture shock? What advice would you give to someone who's about to move?

Image by karramorro under Creative Commons license.

Did you every wonder how actors learn the accents they need to use to be convincing in a role?  "Talk This Way: The Man Who Makes Hollywood Sound Right" is a fascinating profile of Tim Monich, a dialect coach who has worked with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Leonardo DiCaprio. 

What is a dialect?The New Yorker article has this to say: "The way a person talks is called his or her idiolect.  A collection of idiolects form a dialect, which is an agreement, common to a place, about grammar and vocabulary and certain expressions."  An accent is how we pronounce the words in our dialect.

Were you convinced by Pitt's accent?

Image by kevin h. under Creative Commons license.

Are you ready for Valentine's Day?  Do you know the secrets of body language? Can you "recognize when someone is attracted to you"?  Do you want to "generate sexual and romantic interest in someone you desire"?

Supposedly, you can learn all this and how to get your dream job from just 42 cards.   Let us know how it goes.

Order your set from www.bodylanguages.com.

We just received an email from a translator interested in working with us.  Unfortunately, his email fell short of the mark.  Every culture has its own way of doing business, but an email that says only  "Greetings! Are you interested in my cv for future needs?" wouldn't be a winner in most of them.

If Giovanni P. had read "Dos and Don'ts for Freelance Translators: How to Get More Work Through Email" before contacting us, we may have looked at his C.V.  Instead, we deleted his email.

Image by Mzelle Biscotte under Creative Commons license.

A survey conducted by Telemundo and Ipsos Public Afairs found that 8 out of 10 Hispanics plan on participating in the census this year.  57% of the respondents said they are confident that their personal information will not be shared with other government agencies.  I found it interesting that Hispanics who prefer Spanish-language television shows were more likely (42%) to believe their information will only be used for the census than viewers who prefer to watch in English (31%).

The Census Bureau is running a campaign in 28 languages to raise awareness of the census.  This effort is necessary: 18% of Latinos surveyed had never heard of the census vs. 11% of adults in the general population.