Both interpreters and translators fill necessary roles in today's global economy. They facilitate cross-cultural communication by transposing one language into another.

Quality translators and interpreters do more than just translate words, they convey meaning and concepts into another language and culture. As such, quality translators and interpreters are not only bilingual, they are also culturally literate when it comes to the languages/cultures they are translating between. To this end, many translators and interpreters have spent extended periods of time in other countries learning not only other languages, but also the cultures that correspond to them. Moreover, they are knowledgeable in a variety of subject matters and possess a wide and sometimes very specialized vocabulary in both languages depending on the type of translation or interpreting they do.

Read more of this article from jobmonkey.com (and see where Janine Libbey is quoted) here.

Source: NPR

Since its earliest days, the Internet filled us with the hope of uniting all of humanity. With information traveling at the speed of light, we thought, geographic location wouldn’t matter and anyone who shared our interests would be within reach.

But there’s an age-old problem working against our utopian dreams of the web uniting the world: the language barrier. After all, it doesn’t matter what you have access to if you can’t read it.

In the first couple decades of the Internet, we had a simple, if unsustainable, solution. Most people used English — even if it wasn’t their native language.

Click here to read more.

In honor of Spain's win at the World Cup, we are offering a 10% discount on Spanish translations between July 15 and July 30. 

¡Viva España!

Source: Business Wire

California is considering provisions that would require pharmacies to provide meaningful assistance to consumers with limited-English proficiency. Healthcare providers nationwide will be paying attention, because often what starts as a California legislative requirement ends up as a federal mandate.

According to California Senate Bill 1390, approximately 46% of American adults cannot understand the label on their prescription drugs. In June, the bill was amended in the Assembly to require that certain phrases on a prescription drug label be translated into non-English languages. The bill also would require a pharmacy to provide non-English patients with any other written information relevant to the prescription drug in the patient’s language.

Below some of the most common issues that make translations inaccurate, putting healthcare providers at risk of dangerous miscommunication are outlined:

• Representation of numbers and dates – commas and decimal points have different meanings for different language groups.

• A misleading use of color as shorthand – whereas red might immediately signify danger or caution to North American English speakers, for others it means celebration, good luck and happiness.
• Literary and education levels – often the source material being translated is written at a level that’s too high for the target audience.
• Cultural and religious sensitivities – using anatomical terms that are offensive to the target audience might diminish the ability of the consumer to understand the translated material.
• Poor source text – often, the source document contains typos or inaccurate punctuation that alter the meaning of a sentence.

The complete story is available at Business Wire

This is big news in the publishing world: Amazon has announced it is creating a new imprint, AmazonCrossing, to produce English translations of foreign language works.  This could be huge.

Only 3% of the books published in the US are translated into English from other languages.  Amazon's initiative opens the US market to authors whose works are rarely, if ever, available to readers who don't speak their language.  The books will be available on Amazon's site and on Kindle.  

What effect, if any, will the new imprint have? Will other publishers follow Amazon's lead? Will Americans finally embrace foreign literature? Will translators be fairly compensated for their work?