Accent Reduction Techniques

Posted On March 19, 2010By TranspanishIn English Language, Languages, Spanish Language/ 1 Comment

Though many learn to express themselves quite masterfully in a foreign language, most speakers of a language other than their mother tongue can still be easily identified by their accent. Most of the time, an accent poses no problems in terms of intelligibility; indeed, many people find foreign accents charming. However, if your accent interferes with native speakers’ ability to understand you, or you’re simply looking to blend more with the locals, here are some tips for reducing your accent. Remember: it’s very difficult to completely eliminate an accent. Instead, your goal should be to neutralize your accent.

» Don’t speak too quickly. Native speakers will have a difficult time understanding you until you learn the correct intonation and rhythm of the language. Speak slowly so that you can enunciate each word.

» Observe and imitate the facial movements of native speakers. When watching television or conversing with native speakers, take note of the facial movements of the person speaking in order to more accurately reproduce the sounds of the language.

» Record your own voice and listen for errors in pronunciation. Become more aware of the mistakes you’re making by listening to a recording of your voice.

» Read aloud every day for 15 to 20 minutes. This exercise will help strengthen the facial muscles you use when speaking a language other than your native tongue.

» Become accustomed to the prosody or “music” of the language. Each language has its own rhythm, intonation/tone, and pausing. Familiarize yourself with these patterns in order to speak more naturally.

» Listen to audiobooks and follow along using a printed version of the text. You can also make a recording of yourself as you read portions of the book aloud, and then compare your speech to that of the audiobook’s narrator.

» Keep your dictionary handy. Familiarize yourself with your dictionary’s phonetic symbols, and look up the correct pronunciation of words that pose difficulty.

» Create a list of words that are difficult for you to say, and ask a native speaker to pronounce them for you. Make a recording of these words, listen, and practice saying them.

» Consider working with a speech-language pathologist or a dialect coach for professional evaluation and feedback.

Borges as Translator

Posted On March 5, 2010By TranspanishIn English Language, Languages, Spanish Language, Spanish Translation/ No Comments

As one of Argentina’s most famed writers, Jorge Luis Borges produced numerous original works of fiction, poetry, and essays; however, a lesser-known fact is that Borges also made significant contributions to literature through his work as a translator.

Borges’ paternal grandmother was English, and he grew up in Buenos Aires speaking both Spanish and English at home. “Borges would later comment that the household was so bilingual that he was not even aware that English and Spanish were separate languages until later in his childhood.” [1] Borges also spent a portion of his formative years in Geneva, Switzerland, where he studied both French and German.

Borges demonstrated a talent for translation at a very young age. At just nine years old, his very first translation into Spanish – Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Happy Prince” – was published in a local newspaper. As a young adult, he began to write and translate poetry while living with his family in Spain, focusing on translation from English, French, and German into Spanish. Borges went on to translate and subtly transform the works of literary greats such as Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, Rudyard Kipling, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and G. K. Chesterton, and he was the first to translate the writings of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner into the Spanish language.

Borges developed his own theories of translation through three key essays: “Las dos maneras de traducir” (1926), “Las versiones homéricas”(1932), and “Los traductores de Las mil y una noches” (1935). In these essays, Borges “challenges the idea that original texts are superior to translations and rejects the concept of a ‘definitive text.’” [2] Borges also puts forth the view that alternate and possibly contradictory translations of the same work can be equally compelling.

Borges’ reflection on translation nourished his creativity, and translation formed an integral part of the author’s literary process. “The intertwined functions of writing and translation for Borges ‘became nearly interchangeable practices of creation.’” [3] In fact, “not only did he argue that a text could be enhanced by a translation, he went further. For Borges…a translation could be more faithful to a work of literature than an original text.” [4]

Sources:
[1] Swarthmore University, The Garden of Jorge Luis Borges
[2] Periódicos Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
[3] Perilous Peripheries: The Place of Translation in Jorge Luis Borges
[4] The Chronicle of Higher Education, Invisible Work: Borges and Translation

The Lost Works of Jorge Luis Borges

Posted On February 25, 2010By TranspanishIn English Language, Languages, Spanish Language/ No Comments

Jorge Luis Borges, one of Argentina’s most celebrated writers, wrote not only in his native Spanish but in English as well. In collaboration with American translator Norman Thomas di Giovanni, Borges penned a number of short stories in English including “The Library of Babel” and “The Lottery in Babylon.” Unfortunately, after Borges’ death in 1986, the author’s widow revoked publishing rights on stories translated by or written together with di Giovanni, rendering many of these works inaccessible to the public.

Borges’ working relationship with di Giovanni expanded his influence within the English-speaking world and helped catapult Borges to fame as one of the best-known authors of the 20^th century.

Until di Giovanni can reach some sort of settlement with Borges’ widow and/or the publisher, English-speaking readers will have to be content with translations by Andrew Hurley. Sadly, hidden away under lock and key, some of Borges’ original works in English are doomed to remain unread and unappreciated for the foreseeable future.

Read more about Borges’ collaboration with di Giovanni and the resulting works in English here at The Guardian website.

Rules for Capitalization in English

Posted On February 1, 2010By TranspanishIn English Language, Languages, Tips for Translators/ 3 Comments

The rules for capitalization in English can be complicated. Use this list to help guide you when composing a text in English.

Capitalize the first word of a sentence.
Capitalize the first word of a direct quote.
Capitalize the first word of each line in a piece of poetry or verse.
Capitalize the pronoun “I” including its contractions (e.g. I’m, I’d).
Capitalize proper nouns (used to denote a specific person, place, organization, or thing).
Capitalize familial relationships when used as proper names (e.g. Uncle Bob).
Capitalize acronyms except for those that have become regular words, as in the case of “radar” and “scuba.”
Capitalize the names of countries, nationalities, and specific languages.
Capitalize a person’s title when it precedes the name; however, do not capitalize when the title serves as a description following the name.
Capitalize the titles of government officials when used before their names.
Capitalize the names of national, political, racial, social, civic, and athletic organizations.
Capitalize points of the compass (north, south, east, west) only when they refer to specific regions or sections of a country.
Capitalize the first and last words of titles of publications regardless of their parts of speech. Capitalize other words within titles with the exception of short prepositions or the articles “the,” “a,” or “an,” unless they appear as the first word of the title.
Capitalize the months of the year, the days of the week, periods and events (e.g. Great Depression), and holidays. Do not capitalize the names of seasons except in a title.
When writing a letter, capitalize the first word of the salutation and the first word of the closing.
Capitalize words and abbreviations derived from proper nouns (e.g. Daliesque).
Capitalize the names of trademarks.
After a phrase ending in a colon, do not capitalize the first word if it begins a list.
Capitalize the names of God, specific deities, religious and mythological figures, and holy works. Do not capitalize the word “god” when used in a non-specific manner.

“Unfriend” Selected as the 2009 Word of the Year

Posted On January 9, 2010By TranspanishIn English Language, Languages/ No Comments

The New Oxford American Dictionary considered a slew of new words for the 2009 Word of the Year. The technology sector contributed heavily to the roster of candidates – particularly from the realm of social media – with new additions such as “hashtag” and “tweetup” growing out of the much talked about site Twitter. The world of fashion, the economy, and politics and current events also pitched in with words like “jeggings,” “Great Recession,”“zombie bank,” and “snollygoster.”

So, which new word took top prize? “Unfriend” was bestowed the title of 2009 Word of the Year by the lexicographers at Oxford, a verb meaning “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”

For a more complete list of the contenders for the 2009 Word of the Year along with their definitions, take a peek at this article by The Telegraph.

10 Free Online Resources for English Language Learners

Posted On January 7, 2010By TranspanishIn English Language, Languages/ 2 Comments

Studying English can open all sorts of doors – it’s no wonder that there are an estimated one billion people currently learning the language! Fortunately, the English language resources you’re in search of are right at your fingertips. Explore the following 10 free online resources for English language learners:

ESL Instructors and Students The OWL at Purdue The Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) delves into English grammar and mechanics and provides practice exercises and business writing tips. The OWL’s writing tutors even serve up individualized help online.

ToLearnEnglish This site features a placement/leveling test, reading and listening exercises on a range of topics, over 7,000 lessons for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners, and free, printable grammar and vocabulary worksheets. ToLearnEnglish also features chat rooms and forums that add to a sense of community.

BBC Learning English For those keen on British English, the BBC’s Learning English site offers up interesting features such as “Words in the News” and “Keep Your English Up to Date,” plus 200+ episodes of an award-winning English language teaching soap opera called “The Flatmates.”

SharedTalk Owned by the well-known language-learning software company Rosetta Stone, SharedTalk offers you the opportunity to chat live (either text or voice) with native English speakers from around the world.

WordReference This site offers an extensive set of bilingual dictionaries for translating terms to and from English and valuable user forums where you can pose questions to native English speakers regarding grammar and vocabulary usage.

About.com: English as 2nd Language About.com’s ESL pages provide comprehensive grammar lessons, vocabulary lists, idioms and expressions, and strategies to improve your English communication skills.

Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab Randall’s listening activities for English language learners at all levels focus on improving comprehension of the spoken word.

Merriam Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary Merriam Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary, geared specifically toward those studying English as a second language, is an excellent resource for intermediate to advanced students. The site offers up 3,000 must-know words with the ability to create personalized, virtual flash cards, as well as quizzes and pronunciation exercises.

Antimoon The site aims to “provide advice and inspiration to learners of English as a foreign language.” Rather than vocabulary drills and grammar exercises, what you’ll find here is an overall approach to studying English that differs in some ways from conventional methods. Antimoon’s lively discussion forum focused on language learning is the site’s most compelling feature.

International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) IDEA is a site for those English language learners interested in listening to and comparing the recordings of English accents and dialects from around the world. This site is a great tool for training your ear to hear the differences among accents.

Will Slang Be the Ruin of the English Language?

Posted On December 19, 2009By TranspanishIn English Language, Languages/ 1 Comment

The answer, according to some detractors, is yes. But is slang really damaging the English language or is it just a natural part of its evolution?

Though colloquialisms have long been a part of the richness of the language, experts say that slang-filled “multicultural English” is overtaking proper English as teens’ preferred method of communication. Concerned parents and educators worry that their children’s inability to differentiate between slang and more formal speech could result in serious setbacks for them in the work world. As a result, some schools have gone to such lengths as to ban the use of slang; however, others disagree with such a hard-line approach. They argue that “slang is…a natural human tendency,” and they favor teaching youngsters about the appropriate uses of informal language as well as its origins, rather than trying to impose an outright ban that they say just won’t work.

Read more on the debate here at BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8388545.stm

Google Adds Dictionary to its offerings

Posted On December 7, 2009By TranspanishIn English Language, Languages, Spanish Language, Spanish Translation, Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ 2 Comments

Google adds another language tool to its arsenal with the introduction of Google Dictionary. Google’s new dictionary offers up results in close to 30 languages, including the major Western European languages, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Hindi. Notable exceptions from the line-up include Japanese and Persian (Farsi), though surely Google will work to support these languages at some point in the future.

Dictionary results in English show the main definition with pronunciation, synonyms, related phrases, and “web definitions” pulled from various sources throughout the Internet. Users can also star words for future reference. Google Dictionary features a minimalist design that makes it ideal for mobile devices and those with slow Internet connections. The absence of ads makes for a simple, distraction-free user experience.

Both monolingual and bilingual, bidirectional dictionaries are available. While the results provided by the English dictionary and the Spanish<>English dictionary were fairly comprehensive, the monolingual Spanish dictionary only returned a few sketchy web definitions. Many users would probably be better off sticking with an academic dictionary such as the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española for Spanish definitions.

Indeed, while Google’s new dictionary feature will be useful to some, it won’t be a solution that meets everyone’s needs. “Alex Zudin is the owner of Paragon Software, which works closely with Merriam-Webster, Oxford and other renowned keepers of language to build applications based on their data. Zudin says that Google could provide a service in the low-level consumer market, but higher-ed students and professionals would still buy the unabridged versions.” [1]

Google previously returned links to web definitions by entering “define:” plus a search term; however, Google Dictionary offers a more elegant solution with extra features. In addition, many users were unaware of this search trick, even though it existed for some time.

Google Dictionary is a natural complement to the company’s other language tools. The dictionary joins Google Translate, Google Translator Toolkit (which includes a basic translation memory (TM) tool and offers the ability to share glossaries), and a newly integrated search feature called Google Translated Search that makes it easier to search for results written in other languages.

[1]Los Angeles Times, Google quietly rolls out Dictionary

Globalization and Its Effect on the World’s Languages

Posted On November 19, 2009By TranspanishIn English Language, Languages/ 5 No Comments

“Globalization is a social process characterized by the existence of global economic, political, cultural, linguistic and environmental interconnections and flows that make many of the currently existing borders and boundaries irrelevant.” [1] As the process of globalization expands its reach in the 21st century and linguistic barriers begin to fall, what are the possible implications on the world’s languages?

»Impact on Minority Languages
As mentioned in this recent blog post here at Transpanish, one of the greatest casualties of globalization is the loss of some of the world’s more obscure languages. Dialects and regional languages are becoming more marginalized as they succumb to languages such as English that wield greater perceived social and economic value.

Although the future admittedly looks grim for some minority languages, globalization doesn’t necessarily spell the end for all of them. Indeed, globalization can bring to the forefront the plight of some of these endangered languages, sparking attempts to revive them. In Andean nations such as Peru, there is increasing awareness that indigenous populations require special support if their minority languages are to survive. The Peruvian government now sponsors Educación Intercultural Bilingüe, a program that benefits speakers of the indigenous language Quechua as well as other minority languages.

»Loss of Uniformity among the Big Languages
Major languages such as English and French will likely “become victims of the Babelisation process” as these languages take on more and more local flavor in the various regions where they are spoken. Some researchers speculate that this phenomenon could lead to eventual non-comprehension between the variant forms of English. [2]

»Taking Grammar for Granted
Without a doubt, one of the driving forces behind globalization has been the Internet. With the ease of communication through digital means such as email, IM, and chat, it seems that many users across the globe have traded in style and form for speed. Use of SMS shorthand and the informal style pervasive in emails and the like have prompted some to say that good writing is gradually becoming a lost art.

» Decline in Foreign Language Learning among English Speakers
While today there are almost two billion people learning English and more bilingual individuals than ever before, the globalization of languages means that there’s even less motivation for English speakers to learn a second language. Despite the many benefits of picking up a second language, foreign language learning in both the U.S. and the U.K. is on the decline.

Sources:
[1] Globalization 101
[2] Languages in a Globalising World, p.28-9

Demystifying Internationalization and Localization

Posted On November 12, 2009By TranspanishIn English Language, Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

Internationalization and localization are two buzzwords that are often bandied about with respect to translations and global commerce. Internationalization and localization are actually two complementary phases of globalization, a critical process for companies with an international presence. While these terms can apply to a pure text translation, they are most often used in reference to software development, web sites, and video games, where the user interface and images must be considered in addition to text.

The internationalization phase of globalization is integrated with the design process of a product. The product is “neutralized” during internationalization, meaning that cultural references, language and country-specific information are removed. Internationalization is a forward-thinking process that makes the product more easily customizable to the specific markets that the company is targeting. According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), “Internationalization significantly affects the ease of the product’s localization. Retrofitting a linguistically- and culturally-centered deliverable for a global market is obviously much more difficult and time-consuming than designing a deliverable with the intent of presenting it globally.”

The second phase of globalization is localization. In the localization step, the product is adapted for the unique needs of a specific market. It is important to note that localization is much more than mere translation. Localization of software, web sites, etc. involves an intimate knowledge of not just the language but also the culture of the company’s target market. Usually, this level of understanding comes from someone with a native command of a language and culture.

Although text translation is an integral part of the process, localization goes deeper to address more complex issues and differences such as:

1) local currencies

2) weights and measures

3) format for the date, time, addresses, etc.

4) cultural preferences regarding color and aesthetics

5) adaptation of graphics to remove potentially offensive or culturally-inappropriate symbols or images

As the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) notes, “All these changes aim to recognize local sensitivities and to enter the local market by merging into its needs and desires.”

Remember that in both the internationalization and localization phases, it is important that the product pass through a testing and quality assurance step to ensure that the end result meets the client’s needs and expectations.

English Language