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

As China swiftly expands its reach across Latin America, a pilot program in Aguascalientes aims to introduce students to the Mandarin language and make them more competitive in the job market.

State authorities launched the pilot language program in Aguascalientes, a working-class city, in hopes of jumping on the Chinese bandwagon. As China swiftly expands its reach across Latin America, Mexico is experiencing a flurry of new Chinese investments in traditional targets like nickel mines and in newer areas like car-part factories and electronics.

Chinese was introduced this school year for fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders, a total of 126 students, and will be continued every year.

Since 2001, students at Pedro Garcia have been immersed in English from first grade. In hopes of maintaining the English, the students are taught Mandarin in English. In other words, the translation goes from English to Chinese, not Spanish to Chinese.

They take five hours a week of Mandarin, four hours a week of English.

 

You can read the complete article in the LA Times.

What do you do when you are tired of using the same word over and over, or when you just can't find the right word?

I just found a fabulous free tool that gives you more than a traditional dictionary or thesaurus.  Visuwords™ shows you how words are connected in a diagram that looks like a neural net (great for visual learners).  The information is delivered in a series of nodes; if you hover over the node you'll see synonyms for that word and its definition.

Some of the results may surprise you.  When I typed in "translation", "pony" and "crib" came up as associated words.  At first, that made no sense to me, but when I followed the path back to my original query, I saw the connection.   Have fun!