http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog Don't let things get lost in translation Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:07:39 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Arab members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are pushing for Arabic to be recognized as an official language, along with English, French and Spanish. The addition of Arabic would come with a heavy price tag due to the costs associated with translating, interpreting and printing. As a Reuters article suggests, ... http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog/2010/02/16/arabic-potential-contender-for-official-wto-language/ Speaking of great online language resources, Wikilengua (a website devoted to Spanish language usage) has just launched a new oral linguistics atlas. Wikilengua defines itself as: An open and participatory site for sharing practical information about the rules, usage and style of the Spanish language, and a medium for reflecting the ... http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog/2010/01/20/wikilengua-launches-oral-atlas-a-spoken-spanish-encyclopedia/ One of our project managers was scouring the web and ran into a great source we'd like to recommend. It called "Ethnologue," an online encyclopedic database that catalogs "all of the world’s 6,909 known living languages." In its Statistical Summaries section, you can browse languages by world area, language size, language ... http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog/2010/01/15/the-ethnologue/ Anyone who's seen the box office hit Avatar and listened to the exotic-sounds of Pandora's inhabitants might have wondered: where did that language come from? "Na'vi," as it's called, is a constructed language (like Esperanto or Star Trek's "Klingon.") It was invented by University of Southern California professor Paul R. Frommer, ... http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog/2010/01/07/avatars-constructed-language-navi-is-a-hit/ "Your interpreter is way more important than your weapon," confides a U.S. army commander in a New York Times article about the interpreters who assist U.S. troops in Afghanistan. With a weapon, he says, you can only defend yourself. With an interpreter, you can command hundreds of Afghan soldiers. Army personnel ... http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog/2009/10/02/military-interpreters-deserve-more-respect-says-nytimes-opinion/ Broadway's current revival of West Side Story had some of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics translated to Spanish as an attempt for authenticity for some of the Puerto Rican characters. But this summer, the directors saw that the new lyrics weren't paying off the way they had hoped. In some pivotal moments, in ... http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog/2009/08/27/west-side-story-translations-flop/ 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. ... http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog/2009/08/25/how-to-translate-your-ecommerce-website/ A columnist of the Brownsville Herald delves into the origins of the Spanish language in two parts. Part I: How it came to be. Geography plays a huge part in the diverse roots of the Spanish language. Many words were borrowed from the various ethnic groups that occupied the Iberian peninsula ... http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog/2009/08/03/origins-of-the-spanish-language/ So many people in Argentina mispronounce "Pepsi" as "Pecsi" that the company has responded by changing its name—an unprecedented campaign for the brand giant. Given Spanish phonetics with an Argentine accent, "Pecsi" is easier to pronounce, and an estimated 25% of the country says it that way. Advertising Age writes: The motive ... http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog/2009/07/16/argentina-now-drinks-pecsi-instead-of-pepsi/ Two Cherokee groups in North Carolina, the Cherokee Nation (CN) and Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), worked together to translate modern words during a recent Language Revitalization Symposium. Among other terms, the Cherokee representatives there came up with translations for "helicopter" and "purse," from similar words in Cherokee. "Tsi-yu a-di-quo-lv-de-yo" ... http://www.wlstranslations.com/blog/2009/07/08/how-do-you-say-helicopter-in-cherokee/