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Google has refined its translation tool to a point that “can make the language barrier go away,” as one of the principal scientists of the company’s machine translation team said. Now handling 52 languages, Google is yet again a visionary in an area most internet/computer companies have ignored over the years.

Remember those funny Babelfish translations you’d get at the dawn of the internet age, the computer translator that would give you “They are a small potentiometer, short circuits and a beer of malzes of the tea” for “I’m a little tea pot, short and stout”? Google has made those roundabout interpretations all but extinct.

How does machine translation work? And what makes Google’s so good?

Creating a translation machine has long been seen as one of the toughest challenges in artificial intelligence. For decades, computer scientists tried using a rules-based approach — teaching the computer the linguistic rules of two languages and giving it the necessary dictionaries.

But in the mid-1990s, researchers began favoring a so-called statistical approach. They found that if they fed the computer thousands or millions of passages and their human-generated translations, it could learn to make accurate guesses about how to translate new texts.

It turns out that this technique, which requires huge amounts of data and lots of computing horsepower, is right up Google’s alley.

Let’s be clear, no computer translation program will ever be able to capture the linguistic and cultural nuances beyond  the text. Only a thinking human can interpret text that way, and as we’d always prefer, a professional one with lots of experience. Google recognizes this too, but for anyone needing a quick translation of a news article, Google translations certainly will capture the “essence” of the story.

The New York Times reports: click here.

An online article on eCommerce discusses the importance of translating your website. It’s not a simple as you might think—and definitely not as easy as sticking your text into a machine translator and hoping for the best.

First, everyone needs to understand the value of hiring a human vs. machine translator. A human translator will pick up the idioms and intricacies of the target language in a way that a machine could never do. To use one example of an idiomatic translation, “never judge a book by its cover” would be most appropriately translated to French as “l’habit na fait pas le moine” (”the clothes don’t make the monk”).

The goal, especially in the advertisement world where words sell, is a natural-sounding and never literal translation.

The eCommerce article recommends rewriting and reducing content before having it professionally translated, not only to reduce costs but to reduce idioms as well.

Let’s take a look at a descriptive example:

Like they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover. This humble looking pocket knife has every feature short of the kitchen sink, including two cutting blades, a corkscrew, a can opener, and a global positioning system.

This product description (which I realize is not necessarily an example of a well-written paragraph) includes an idiom, a metaphor, and other figures of speech that would be hard to translate. Now, we rewrite it:

This folding knife has two cutting blades, a corkscrew, a can opener, and a global positioning system.

Having removed the idiom, the metaphor, and the term “pocket” which may not make sense in other languages, we have a matter-of-fact sentence that is ready to translate.

The article’s additional pieces of advice include: hire a professional translator, check the translation for errors (which a professional translation services should provide), hire a professional writer, and consider translation memory (also something a translation service should provide).

Note: the article cites some rather pricey costs for professional translation services. You’ll probably find better prices out there among the more competitive companies.

My best advice: discuss your options and goals with the translation service you choose from the very beginning. You can figure out how to cut corners from the start without having unknown costs spring up down the line, especially if you foresee lots of changes to your eCommerce website in the future.

Read the full article and recommendations here.

We can help! Contact WLS for a free quote for website translation.

Anyone who has ever tried to learn a second language knows that it’s not easy to express yourself exactly as you’d like, because some words and expressions simply don’t transfer from one language to another. High school teacher Jenny Sonya Patino sees this struggle in her bilingual students all the time, what she calls their lack of “voice.”

Patino’s own mother grew up in a generation that strongly discouraged speaking Spanish in school. Because of her mother’s negative experience, Patino was raised speaking English only.

She remembers being hit for using Spanish when she didn’t know the English words to express herself. Her suffering was common for students like her back then.

It seems that schools have been set up to shame children out of Spanish as a way to accelerate English learning. This is quite obvious in recent generations. Many who were punished for speaking Spanish have chosen to raise their children to speak only English because of the pain they went through.

How then, Patino asks, can we now encourage bilingual students to find their “voice” in school today? Where does Spanish fit in an all-English classroom? How can schools help develop students’ “voice” in both languages?

Imagine the possibilities for our bicultural children if they were able to weave a precise selection of words from Spanish into their writing. They would have much more to offer because their means of expression would increase.

Patino offers the idea of incorporation of Spanish into English because, like Pat Mora’s famous poem “La Migra” written primarily in English with some important Spanish speckled throughout, it would give children the opportunity to include their unique bicultural experience into their expression.

Read Patino’s full column in the El Paso Times here.

Just a few years ago, you might not see anyone logging onto Facebook on the remote island of Boracay in the Philippines—much less clicking “buy now” to purchase a product they saw on a Web site. An online article explains that because of rampant corruption in the country, consumers didn’t always trust online transactions.

But all of that is changing, says the article’s author Greig Holbrook, who’s an expert in international SEO. And the Philippines is the not the only country that’s beginning to buy online. Holbrook asks:

What does all this mean for online businesses?

It means that having an English-only website is no longer sufficient. For those under the illusion that their potential customers are all surfing the web in English, it is time to realize that the language of the web is multilingual.

People prefer to search and interact online in their own language: it’s natural and comfortable. And the more relaxed a potential customer is when they’re browsing an online store, the more likely they will make a purchase. That is, of course, if they even find your site in the first place.

Holbrook’s insight is invaluable for companies of all sizes hoping to reach out to international consumers. For example, it’s not enough just to translate your Web site (although that’s a great start!). It’s also important to know how people in a particular country search. Knowing, for example, that French people commonly misspell “holiday” as “holliday,” and modifying your keywords to get more hits.

To read the rest of the article and learn about what to consider when marketing internationally, click here.

With funding support from the Missouri Foundation for Health, Centro Latino will provide health literacy and access for Latinos in mid-Missouri.  Thomas Adams, lead program officer, states that they already have various programs with components for Latinos, but this new initiative solely focuses on helping low-income, rural Latinos understand and access health care.

The agency is not new to assisting this demographic with their health care needs, but the new model will essentially allow them to guide limited English proficient Latinos through a health care system they may not understand very well:

Public health and social service have always been a large part of Centro Latino’s service to the community. Over the past decade, it has helped visitors with many procedures that can make health care complicated for those who struggle with English or are new to the area, like the filling out of medical forms, the translation of documents, the procuring of care for those without insurance or documentation.

“I just want the people to feel comfortable and supported and not alone.  Many times when one arrives here they feel very alone,” said Zapata, who has already begun her work with Promotores.

With the new program, Crespi expects its public health and social service efforts to be even more organized than before. He also hopes that the program will encourage more people to take advantage of the number of resources provided by Centro Latino (ESL classes, Spanish courses and an after-school youth program).

Follow this link to read the entire article from the Missourian.

Despite the regularity with which I find articles from all over the U.S. about interpretation in the court system, I am still amazed that each new article brings up something I’d not previously considered.

For example, take these articles from the Los Angeles Times and South Oregon’s Mail Tribune.  The LA Times article chronicles the difficulties courts face when trying to find a speaker of a rare language. In this case, they had to rely on telephone interpretation during the trial of an indigenous dialect spoken by only 7,000 people in Mexico.

In Ortiz’s case, attorneys initially thought he would need a Zapotec interpreter, court records indicate. A Spanish interpreter told officials he thought Ortiz spoke Mixe, an indigenous language spoken in eastern Oaxaca by an agrarian people who have increasingly been migrating to northern Mexico and the United States to find work.

So began the search for an interpreter for Ortiz.

Even among the indigenous populations in Oaxaca, Mixe is spoken by few people. And the language has four to eight variants that have grown apart over centuries as they were passed down orally with no standardization. Different variants of Mixe can be as different as French is from Catalan or Romanian, said David Tavárez, a linguistic anthropologist at Vassar College.

To read more about the search for an interpreter who spoke this particular dialect, click here.

The second article got me thinking about the emotional highs and lows of being an interpreter:

The job can be tough, especially when an interpreter has to communicate bad news. Stawsky has been in situations when a doctor has told a patient he has a terminal disease. She also has worked as a 9-1-1 operator and been part of some extremely stressful calls.

“I have had to take breaks from interpreting because of these situations,” she said. “As an interpreter you cannot say to the person, ‘I am so sorry for what I have to tell you’ and then say what the doctor said. You have to say exactly what the doctor says without putting yourself into the conversation. It can be hard.”

Some of Stawsky’s most trying jobs involved debtors seeking to collect money from poor families.

“Those calls are probably the most stressful,” she said. “Debtors can be very harsh.”

Go here for the rest of this article.

An exihibit displayed at Miami’s Freedom Tower art gallery until March 7th has some non-Spanish speakers confused because almost all of the accompanying text is only in Spanish. 

The exhibit sounds like it would be fascinating to those interested in the immigrant experience, but the author of the article was disappointed that the signage has not been adapted for English-speakers who would like the full impact of the photos and accompanying commentary.

In defense of Miami Dade College, it has been – overall – a bastion of bilingualism. In this instance the college is sort of a passive vessel, hosting an exhibition supplied by agencies of the Spanish government. If Spain really wants to reach out to all Americans – and not just to Hispanic Americans and others with a reading knowledge of Spanish – it should consider providing fully bilingual signage for such exhibitions as this, and for other events in Miami intended to promote Spanish culture and to foster international trade and tourism.

Before coming to Miami, Laberinto de Miradas was displayed in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, where of course no English translation was needed. For this venue, someone at the cultural center or the consulate should have adapted it to the distinctive linguistic needs of Miami.

To read the rest of the author’s commentary, click here.

Closed Caption Latina is a Florida company which provides simultaneous dubbing and subtitles for Spanish-speakers and the hearing impaired.  Maria Victoria Diaz, a Colombian immigrant and co-ounder of the company makes the case that their services help non-English speakers and the hearing impaired participate more fully in public life in America:

“Whether it is the visually or hearing-impaired, or the immigrant who doesn’t speak English, we’re not going to be able to fully participate in this society unless we understand how things work here,” said Diaz, a Colombia native. “Television, videos and DVDs are a great way of getting those cultural and social nuances.”

Diaz moved to Longwood from Bogota in 2005 with her mother and her then- 8-year-old daughter.

“I have felt the weight of isolation, the absence of friends and family,” she said. “We have to become more integrated to the American experience to overcome these things. But if you don’t understand what is being said on TV, it becomes that much more difficult.”

Diaz got her start with grant money from the Department of Education to provide video description of Plaza Sesamo (the Spanish-language version of Sesame Street) and from that start, more clients signed on for her services.

To read the entire article, click here.

How cool is that?  Just when I was lamenting the fact that there is such a high demand for qualified translators and interpreters, but very few places to study for these fields, I find an article describing elective courses in translation and interpretation.  Three of the students in the program have already passed the Department for Social and Human Services certification test and are planning to take the test for court certification next spring.

It’s exciting to see that youth who’ve grown up bilingual are able to get the training necessary to capitalize on that as early as high school:

Sergio Jara has spent his youth interpreting for his Spanish-speaking parents during trips to the store or translating letters in the mail.

It’s just something you do to help your parents, said the first-generation American.

Even though he already spoke the language, he studied Spanish in middle school and during his freshman and sophomore years at Pasco High School. He knew there were “slight differences” in the Spanish he learned at home and the proper language taught in the classroom.

“I want to perfect it,” he said.

In planning his junior year curriculum, Jara’s counselor recommended he take English/Spanish translation and interpretation.

The two-year elective program is offered at Pasco High and New Horizons High School in Pasco. It is geared at helping students develop interpreting skills so they can get a job in the medical, legal or social services fields.

Given his upbringing, Jara expected it to be effortless but soon found he was wrong.

“It was easy because I know both languages but that is only part of it because you have to create these skills with these languages to help you,” he said.

Click here to read the entire article.

Any Spanish speaker, native or non-native, knows that certain words in the language mean very different things depending on the country one is from.  Someting that is used in every day speech in Mexico might deeply offend someone from the Dominican Republic and vice verse. 

An article in the Yuma Sun describes one such incident that riled people up at a high school soccer game:

This case here, coach is yelling out to his players, players are hearing it left and right, nothing is done about it because it’s in Spanish. That’s a huge issue and an issue I want to speak up about.”

Nicewander said the injury was the turning point in the game. It happened at the 6:23 mark with his team up 2-0. Exactly two minutes later, Yuma High had its first goal, and with 1:46 left the Criminals tied the game.

“When you have a coach on the sidelines yelling ‘break them,’ ‘chocalo,’ smash into them, then you see a player go down an get carted off in an ambulance, it’s natural for a player to say ‘Wow, I’m not being protected, so if I come in on this guy, and he throws an elbow at me and I get hurt, what’s going to come out of it?’” Nicewander said.

This is a good example of people being overly sensitive to language use and looking for an offense where there was just a misunderstanding.  Rather than make it about lack of sportsmanship, it could have been about increasing understanding about word connotations and being more careful. 

To read the article, click here.