In honor of National Ice Cream Month, celebrated in the US every year in July, we decided to look at the different names for ice cream in Spanish. "Helado" is used in many Spanish-speaking countries, but Mexicans call it "nieve", which can also mean "snow" in English. You'll hear people order "mantecados" on a hot day in Puerto Rico.

If you want your ice cream served in a cone, ask for a "barquillo" or "cono" in Mexico City. The word Spaniards use to order one, "cucurucho", is a fun word to say.

What, you ask, does this have to do with the business of translation? Word usage varies from country to country so a one- size-fits-all approach doesn't always work. We ask our clients where the translation will be used to make sure that the translator for that project is a native speaker of that country. Because if you look for a "mantecado" in Barcelona, you'll find a sweet similar to a shortbread cookie.

Do you know the top five languages spoken at home in the US excluding English? Numbers one and two make sense to me, but I was surprised to learn that more than 1.3 million people speak French at home.

1. Spanish

2. Chinese

3. Tagalog

4. French

5. Vietnamese

For more fun facts about bilingualism in the US, check out this infographic.

You can save 17.76% on English to Spanish translations from P & L Translations this week. Any translation requested by 12.00 noon (CDT)on July 6th is eligible for the discount.

Happy Independence Day!

If you are planning on launching a new product in more than one country, test the name in each market first to avoid insulting local consumers. Ikea tested 9,000 translated product names in Thailand to make sure that none of them were offensive. Kraft should have followed Ikea's lead. Instead, the company recently renamed its global snack foods brand Mondelez International, a name that is racy in Russian.

You can read more on the good and the bad in global names at the Wall Street Journal.

Despite a slow start, Facebook is growing fast in Japan. eMarketer estimates that the site reached 7.6 million users in the country during 2011, a jump of 61.6% over 2010. User growth is forecast to remain strong through 2012, at 51.5%, for a total of 11.5 million users by year’s end.

Still Facebook penetration remains low in Japan—the site is forecast to reach 12% of internet users and only 9% of the total population by the end of 2012. However, new survey data shows that users of the site are hooked.

Read more:  eMarketer