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18-century Code Cracked

by Richard Kazandjian December 14, 2011 Languages

Machine translation is probably not a good choice for your business. However, in the right hands it can be quite useful. A case in point: researchers from the University of Southern California and Uppsala University in Sweden just used a machine translation program described as being similar to Google Translate to crack an 18th-century cipher [...]

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Universal Translator

by Richard Kazandjian December 8, 2011 Interpreting

“Universal translators” have fuelled science fiction plots for decades, and building such a device has long been the Holy Grail for tech-oriented linguists. However, the prototypes that have appeared so far have used machine translation. Over the past few years, machine translation has  improved by leaps and bounds, but it’s still not precise enough to [...]

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A Bounty on Engrish

by Richard Kazandjian December 7, 2011 Education

Visitors to South Korea, take note. The Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) has set a bounty on the awkward, low-quality translations known as “Engrish.” These malapropisms are a prime source of amusement for tourists abroad in Asian countries (see The Top 10 Asian English Translation Failures for examples), but locals are generally somewhat embarrassed by their [...]

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Ojibwe Language Into Modern Day

by Richard Kazandjian December 2, 2011 Education

The Ojibwe language is the fourth most common Native American language spoken in North America, with a total of approximately 56.531 speakers in the US and Canada. Even so, like most native languages, it is in some danger of dying out as most of the speakers are elderly. However, steps are being taken to preserve [...]

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Zambian Farmers

by Richard Kazandjian December 1, 2011 Languages

One of the most important aspects of language preservation is the ability to record the language in writing. However, many endangered languages lack an orthography, or writing system. UNESCO notes that “it is extremely difficult to estimate how many written and unwritten languages there are in the world, and there is no established source of [...]

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Deaf Jail

by Richard Kazandjian November 30, 2011 Interpreting

Can you imagine being held prisoner by people you cannot communicate with, with no idea why you are there or when you will be released? That’s what happened to Timothy Siaki, an American man imprisoned in a Colorado jail for 25 days without an interpreter. That’s almost a month! How did this Kafkaesque situation come [...]

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Brand Name In China

by Richard Kazandjian November 29, 2011 Languages

Thinking of moving your business to China? A word to the wise: hire a skilled translator! As a recent article in the New York Times points out, translating a business name into Chinese requires much more than Google Translate; you also need a deep understanding of the nuances of Chinese culture to avoid utterly humiliating [...]

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New York Garbage Grant to Study Gaelic

by Richard Kazandjian November 1, 2011 Environment

It’s amazing how much learning another language has the potential to change your life. For example, check out this New York Times article on Ed Shevlin, a garbage collector born and bred in New York.  He’s perhaps one of the last people you’d expect to speak fluent Gaelic, but actually he’s been studying the language [...]

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Siri Doesn’t Understand Scottish Accents

by Richard Kazandjian October 31, 2011 Entertainment

At its last conference, Apple introduced Siri, a robotic virtual system that comes embedded in the new iPhone 4S.  Right after it was introduced, Apple caught a lot of flack for Siri’s name, which sounds vulgar in both Japanese and Georgian. Now that the product has been released to the general public, Apple is getting [...]

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Another Week, Another Tech Translation Fail

by Richard Kazandjian October 28, 2011 Entertainment

Last week, Apple was roundly mocked for using the name “Siri” for its new voice-controlled personal assistant.  Apparently, they didn’t bother to see if the name would have any negative connotations in other languages. In fact, it sounds very much like “buttocks” in Japanese and is a particuarly crude way of referring to one’s penis [...]

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