Microsoft Translation System Lets You Speak 26 Languages

by Alison Kroulek March 23, 2012 Machine Translation
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Attempts at creating a “universal translator” are getting ever-closer to the science fiction that inspired them, as Microsoft’s latest translation demonstration makes clear. Earlier this month, the tech giant took the opportunity provided by TechFest 2012 to show off its newest invention: translation software that lets you “speak” any one of 26 different languages, all [...]

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An Irish Translation of “The Hobbit”

by Alison Kroulek March 21, 2012 Literature
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Irish-speaking Tolkien fans, rejoice! A special edition of The Hobbit is due out this month — translated entirely into Irish! The Irish version of Tolkien’s classic tale is being published by Evertype Publishers, a small publishing company owned by Michael Everson which specializes in minority language translations, specialty fonts and typesetting. Here are some details of the [...]

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US Teen Speaks Over a Dozen Languages

by Alison Kroulek March 20, 2012 Learning Languages
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An American teenager has managed to accomplish what those of us who struggled through Spanish or French can only dream of. According to the New York Times, at only 16 years old, Timothy Doner is able to communicate in at least 12 languages, including Hebrew, Russian, Italian, Persian, Swahili, Indonesian, Hindi, Ojibwe, Pashto, Turkish, Hausa, [...]

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Irish Language on the Rise in America

by Alison Kroulek March 17, 2012 Languages
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It’s St. Patrick’s Day, the one day each year that people across the world “embrace Irish culture” by wearing green and consuming copious amounts of beer laced with green food coloring. More encouragingly, however, the Washington Post notes that increasing numbers of Americans are learning to appreciate their Irish heritage on a much deeper level: [...]

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Aer Lingus Halts “Language Tests”

by Alison Kroulek March 16, 2012 Languages
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Beware of Greeks bearing passports. Until just last week, that’s the attitude that Air Lingus often displayed towards its Greek customers, especially Greek nationals flying into Ireland through Spain and Portugal. To try to catch people traveling on falsified Greek passports, Greek passengers were asked to complete a language test to prove they were fluent [...]

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BSL Translation in Your Hand

by Alison Kroulek March 15, 2012 Machine Translation
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Machine translation has proven a difficult nut to crack, even for written and spoken languages. That’s even more true for sign languages, though we’ve written about some previous innovations in the field like the Fingual translation glove. However, that may be about to change. Researchers at Aberdeen University are working on providing sign language users [...]

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New Languages Take Tweets in Another Direction

by Alison Kroulek March 13, 2012 Twitter
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Twitter added four new language options to its translation repertoire last week: Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu. Like the other languages that the popular online messaging service has been translated into, the task was crowdsourced to volunteers via Twitter’s translation center, allowing it to be completed in just a couple of months. Twitter described the [...]

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It’s Irish Language Week!

by Alison Kroulek March 8, 2012 Celebration
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There’s no doubt about it, March belongs to the Irish. It’s not just St. Patrick’s Day, either- right now, we are in the middle of Seachtain na Gaeilge. Though “ Seachtain na Gaeilge” is usually translated as “Irish Language Week,” the festival actually runs for two weeks each year. The first Seachtain na Gaeilge was held in [...]

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Sami People Travel To Israel To Revive Lost Languages

by Alison Kroulek March 7, 2012 In Danger of Extinction
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For thousands of years, the Sami people roamed across in the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, as well as Russia’s Kola Peninsula. Semi-nomadic, they hunted, trapped, fished and herded reindeer, remaining culturally and linguistically distinct from the Europeans around them. As Scandinavia was carved up into modern nation-states, the Sami came under the [...]

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CNN’s Translation of Japanese Memo Contested

by Alison Kroulek March 6, 2012 Translation
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Has CNN found Toyota’s smoking gun, or is it just a case of incorrect translation? From 2009 to 2011, the Japanese automaker issued a series of recalls prompted by reports of “sudden unintended acceleration,” in which cars seemed to accelerate of their own accord. Investigations by NASA and the National Highway Safety Association found that [...]

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