Tag Archive for 'Hispanic'

Facebook’s Newest Machine Translation Tool Falls Flat

Published on November 15, 2011 in English Language, News, Spanish Translation and Translation Buyers. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Just in case you need more proof that most machine translation tools don’t quite cut the mustard, the latest attempt by social media giant Facebook to incorporate machine translation (MT) into its platform fails miserably with most languages.

In an effort to help pages connect better with their fan base—often found scattered across the globe—Facebook recently introduced machine translation, powered by Bing. With just one click, users can get an automatic translation of status updates and comments. Facebook plans to roll out this feature to all profiles (not just pages) in the near future.

There’s just one problem: most of the translations are unintelligible. Posts on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are rife with slang, and Bing’s machine translation tool simply isn’t up to task. An analysis of Bing’s performance by the site Lexiophiles shows that Bing only gets it right about 50% of the time, leaving users confused and, at worst, possibly misled by faulty translations. Interestingly, out of the ten languages tested, posts translated from Spanish to English fared worst of all, with less than 10% of the rendered text considered intelligible.

For greater accuracy, Facebook will also be implementing a feature that allows bilingual users to offer an alternative translation. If other users endorse the accuracy of the crowdsourced translation, it will take the place of Bing’s original translation the next time the “Translate” option is clicked. Page administrators will be able to manage crowdsourced translations through a “manage translations” link below the posts on pages they control.

One of the great arguments in favor of MT has always been that it can at least offer users a gist of the conversation when no other means of translation is available. It seems that, at least for now, Bing’s tool doesn’t even offer that to Facebook’s users.

Latinos and the Nonprofit Sector

Published on November 26, 2009 in Latinos and Spanish Language. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

With the Hispanic segment of the U.S. population growing rapidly, it’s no wonder that retailers have begun to sit up and take notice of this group’s influence; however, it’s undeniable that the non-profit sector needs to engage Latinos as well in order to advance their agendas.  Hispanics have a great deal to offer nonprofit organizations in the way of volunteerism and monetary contributions, but just as corporate outfits must modify their advertising approach for the Hispanic market, non-profit organizations must also find new approaches to actively engage Latinos.  “A launch into the Hispanic market is essential to any organization’s survival…but it’s not something that can happen without proper planning and thought.” [1]

One of the key means of reaching out to Spanish-speaking donors or potential volunteers is by securing a professional translation of all copy such as brochures, press releases, and fundraising letters.  While many Latino communities in the U.S. prefer information in English, be sure to provide literature that shows sensitivity to the traditions, norms, and other cultural subtleties that are unique to your prospective donors or volunteers.  Avoid using the same English-language materials that were developed for your non-Latino audience.

While traditional written materials are a mainstay of any fundraising or volunteer campaign, the power of the Internet and social media should not be overlooked.  According to Vanguard Communications, a public relations and social marketing firm based in Washington, D.C., “The number of Latinos using social media is growing exponentially, but the number of organizations tweeting in both English and Spanish is still fairly small.  A Facebook fan page or Twitter account dedicated to your issue is a popular mechanism for providing Spanish-language updates and action steps and promoting the offerings through your other outreach efforts.” [2]

A nonprofit organization looking to establish loyalty toward its cause must focus on getting to know its audience, encouraging involvement and demonstrating a commitment to the Latino community.  “The U.S. census identifies Latinos as a young population, indicating the majority has not reached their primary giving years,” thus the development of a thoughtful strategy for capturing Hispanic donors and volunteers has the potential to reap great rewards in the future. [3]  Latinos who perceive themselves as valued, respected and an integral part of an organization’s agenda will prove to be an invaluable resource to nonprofits as they look to advance their worthwhile causes and efforts.

[1] Fundraising Success, Conference Roundup: Reaching the Hispanic Population
[2] Vanguard Communications, Understanding Trends in Hispanic Outreach
[3] Association of Fundraising Professionals, Diversity Essay: Latino philanthropy in the U.S.

Related articles

Hispanic or Latino?

Marketing to Latinos through Social Media

Top reasons why you should target the Hispanic Community

2010 U.S. Census Data Reveals Continued Growth of Hispanic Population

Notable Hispanic and Latino Americans

Published on September 21, 2009 in Latinos. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

List of some notable Hispanic and Latino Americans, citizens or residents of the United States with ancestry or origins in Hispanic America

Architecture

Eduardo Catalano, architect (Argentina)
Eduardo Fernando Catalano (born 1917) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and came to the United States on a scholarship to the Universities of Pennsylvania and Harvard. In 1945, after earning his second Master’s Degree in architecture, Catalano taught at the Architectural Association in London until 1951, when he came back to the U.S. as a Professor of Architecture at the School of Design in Raleigh, North Carolina State University. In 1956 he began teaching in the graduate program for MIT, until 1977, when he moved on “to discover and participate in other endeavors as rewarding as teaching”
Catalano had an “understanding of the indivisible relationship between space and structure”, which earned him praise from Frank Lloyd Wright, who wrote to House and Home magazine when he saw the publishing of the “Raleigh House” AKA the Catalano House to say “It is refreshing to see that the shelter, which is the most important element in domestic architecture, has been so imaginatively and skillfully treated as in the house by Eduardo Catalano” Catalano sold the house when he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to teach at MIT. Years of neglect at the end of the 20th century culminated in the house’s demolition in 2001.

Other buildings designed by Catalano include the US embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina and in Pretoria, South Africa, the Juilliard School of Music at New York City’s Lincoln Center, Guilford County Courthouse in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Stratton Student Center at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rafael Moneo, architect (Spain)
José Rafael Moneo Vallés (born May 9, 1937) is a Spanish architect. He was born in Tudela, Spain, and won the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1996. He studied at the ETSAM, Technical University of Madrid (UPM) from which he received his architectural degree in 1961. From 1958 to 1961 he worked in the office in Madrid of the architect Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza. He has taught architecture at various locations around the world and from 1985 to 1990 was the chairman of Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he is the first Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture. In 1997, he became Academic Numerary in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid in May 1997.

Spanish constructions of his design include the renovation of the Villahermosa Palace (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum) in Madrid, the National Museum of Roman Art in Mérida, Spain, an expansion of the Atocha Railway Station (also in Madrid), the Diestre Factory in Zaragoza, Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation in Majorca the headquarters of the Bankinter (again, in Madrid), Town Hall in Logroño. He also designed the annex to the Murcia Town Hall, which was completed in 1998. His latest work is the enlargement of the Prado Museum, its greatest expansion in 200 years of history.

Some of Moneo’s prominent works in the US include the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, the Davis Art Museum at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and the Audrey Jones Beck Building (an expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). Moneo also designed the Chace Center, a new building for the Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently working on an Interdepartmental Science Building at Columbia University in New York City.

Dance

José Limón, modern dancer and choreographer (Mexico)
José Arcadio Limón (January 12, 1908 – December 2, 1972) was a pioneering modern dancer and choreographer. He was born in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico, the eldest of 12 children. He moved to New York City in 1928 where he studied under Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. In 1946, Limón founded the José Limón Dance Company. His most famous dance is The Moor’s Pavane (1949), based on Shakespeare’s Othello and set to music by Henry Purcell.

Danielle Polanco, dancer and choreographer (Puerto Rico)
Danielle Polanco (born October 26, 1985) is an elite dancer and choreographer. She is probably best known for being the leading lady in Omarion’s music video Touch and for playing in the 2008 movie Step Up 2 the Streets, in which she portrayed Missy Serrano. Polanco has an impressive resume; she has choreographed for Beyonce and Janet Jackson and has also appeared as a dancer in numerous music videos for top artists such as Beyonce, Amerie, Janet Jackson, and Usher. Danielle is a member of the House of Ninja. She is of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent. She’s from and still lives in the Bronx borough of New York City. Most recently, she can be seen in the Broadway revival of West Side story as one of the Shark girls. She is the dance captain for the show.

Fashion

Gisele Bündchen, model (Brazil)
Gisele Caroline Bündchen (born July 20th, 1980 in Horizontina, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) is a Brazilian model and occasional film actress. According to Forbes, she is the highest-paid model in the world and also the sixteenth richest woman in the entertainment world, with an estimated $150 million fortune.

Carolina Herrera, fashion designer (Venezuela)
Carolina Herrera (born María Carolina Josefina Pacanins y Niño on January 8, 1939), Marchioness of Torre Casa, is a venezuelan fashion designer and entrepreneur who founded her eponymous company in 1980.

Herrera was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Based in New York City since 1981, throughout the 1970s and 1980s she was named one of the best dressed women in the world. Her empire grew rapidly and steadily and she went on to dress Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for the last 12 years of her life.

Herrera is married to Reinaldo Herrera Guevara, Marqués de Torre Casa, an editor at Vanity Fair magazine, with whom she had two daughters. She was previously married to Guillermo Behrens Tello, with whom she had two daughters as well.

Carolina Herrera is a Goodwill Ambassador and Facilitator for the Intergovernmental Institution for the use of Micro-algae Spirulina Against Malnutrition, IIMSAM, and its affirmative action programme, The Right to Food Campaign Initiative Against Malnutrition and Fashion United Against Malnutrition. IIMSAM works to promote the use of micro-algae Spirulina (Spirulina Platensis) to counter malnutrition and its severe negative impacts especially in the Developing and Least Developed Countries (LDC). Carolina states: “If my work at the IIMSAM were to save the life of even one child from the forty thousand children that die of malnutrition and related diseases each day, I would consider it the greatest work of my life.”

Ms. Herrera is a recipient of The International Center in New York’s Award of Excellence.

Film and TV

Jessica Alba, actress (Mexico)
Jessica Marie Alba (born April 28, 1981) is an American television and film actress. She began her television and movie appearances at age 13 in Camp Nowhere and The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994). Alba rose to prominence as the lead actress in the television series Dark Angel (2000–2002). Alba later appeared in various films including Honey (2003), Sin City (2005), Fantastic Four (2005), Into the Blue (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Good Luck Chuck both in 2007.

Alba is considered a sex symbol and often generates media attention for her looks. She appears frequently on the “Hot 100″ section of Maxim and was voted number one on AskMen.com’s list of “99 Most Desirable Women” in 2006, as well as “Sexiest Woman in the World” by FHM in 2007. The use of her image on the cover of the March 2006 Playboy sparked a lawsuit by her, which was later dropped. She has also won various awards for her acting, including the Choice Actress Teen Choice Award and Saturn Award for Best Actress (TV), and a Golden Globe nomination for her lead role in the television series Dark Angel. Her acting has also been criticized, as she has been nominated for numerous Razzie Awards throughout her career. Alba’s offscreen, personal life has been a frequent subject of media, celebrity

Benicio del Toro, actor (Puerto Rico)
Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez (born February 19, 1967), better known as Benicio del Toro, is a Puerto Rican actor and film producer. His awards include the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award and British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award. He is known for his roles as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects, Javier Rodríguez Rodríguez in Traffic, Jack ‘Jackie Boy’ Rafferty in Sin City, Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Franky Four Fingers in Snatch and most recently Che Guevara in Che. He is the third Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award.

Literature

Isabel Allende, writer (Chile)
Isabel Allende Llona, (born in Lima, Peru; 2 August 1942), is a Chilean-American writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the “magic realist” tradition, is one of the first successful women writers in Latin America. She is largely famous for her contributions to Latin-American literature, novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus) (1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias) (2002), which have been hugely successful. She has written novels based in part on her own experiences, often focusing on the experiences of women, weaving myth and realism together. She has lectured and done extensive book tours and has taught literature at ten American colleges. Having adopted American citizenship in 2003, she currently resides in California along with her husband. Her writings are comparable to those of Gail Anderson-Dargatz, Louise Erdrich and Laura Esquivel. Isabel Allende is of Basque, Spanish and Portuguese descent.

Gabriel García Márquez, author (Colombia)
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (born March 6, 1927) is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. García Márquez, affectionately known as “Gabo” throughout Latin America, is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha; they have two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

He started as a journalist, and has written many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best-known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magical realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, and most of them express the theme of solitude.

Source: Wikipedia

3 more schools add bilingual immersion programs

Published on July 15, 2009 in Latinos, News and Spanish Language. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The popularity of dual-language classes in Ventura County schools continues to grow, with three schools starting programs this fall.

Ventura Unified School District started a two-way immersion kindergarten class at Montalvo School about a decade ago. Five more dual-language programs have since come online at elementary and middle schools in Camarillo, Rio, Hueneme and Ventura.

In the fall, three more campuses are expected to be added to the list. Classes are set to start at Tierra Vista in the Ocean View School District; Juan Soria, a new campus in the Oxnard School District, and at Will Rogers in Ventura, which will start the district’s first schoolwide program.

“I think parents throughout the state recognize the value of having their kids be bilingual and biliterate. It’s a huge advantage,” said Associate Superintendent Roger Rice of the Ventura County Office of Education.

The county office plans to start regular meetings in the fall, bringing educators in the dual-language programs together to share best practices, Rice said.

All the local programs are offered in Spanish and English, and in most cases, classes are split evenly between native English and native Spanish speakers. The schools differ, however, in some aspects, including the amount of time students in the programs spend learning in each language.

“We’re really excited,” said Ocean View Assistant Superintendent Marcia Turner. Tierra Vista will have two dual-immersion kindergarten classes this fall, Turner said. Classes will have about one-third Spanish-speakers, one-third English-speakers and one-third bilingual students.
May attract students, funding

District and school officials had planned to reach out to the community with an information campaign to fill the available spots. But after announcing the move at the spring open house, families signed up, filling every seat.

In Ventura, the first class of two-way immersion students at Montalvo will move to high school this fall, having finished immersion classes at Anacapa Middle School. Many already have met college entrance requirements for foreign language studies.

“We knew there was plenty of interest to have a second program,” said Jennifer Robles, a bilingual education director for Ventura schools. This year, about 20 families were on a waiting list at Montalvo School.

Those students were offered a spot at Will Rogers, which will have dual-immersion in all four of its kindergarten classes this August.

Each year, as students move up a class, a grade level will be added to the program.

With the state’s fiscal crisis prompting layoffs and other cuts at local districts, officials said some might question why schools would start new programs. Dual-immersion doesn’t cost the district more money to run than current programs, Robles said, and it benefits students.

Turner said Ocean View officials think it might eventually bring more funding to the district by attracting more students.

Teaching students in Spanish began to disappear in California public schools after voters approved Proposition 227 in 1998, which banned bilingual education unless parents of English learners sign a yearly waiver consenting to the class.
Families see benefit

In two-way or dual-immersion programs, English learners and speakers learn two languages, unlike some bilingual programs in which native Spanish speakers learn in Spanish only until they master English.

Families want their kids to learn a second language while keeping their first language, Robles said, and the dual-immersion programs allow that to happen.

Carlos Avila’s daughter Penelope, 5, will start kindergarten at Will Rogers in August.

“I want her to know that it’s OK to speak a different language,” Avila said. His parents were fluent in English and Spanish, but he learned Spanish only by taking classes in school.

He took part in a student exchange program in Spain. There, he said, children are encouraged to learn multiple languages, unlike the culture he has experienced in the United States.

Because of his family’s Spanish-speaking history, Avila loves that his daughter will learn Spanish and English. But, he added, “I would love to see (programs) not just in Spanish but other languages, too.”

Source: http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2009/jul/15/3-more-schools-add-bilingual-immersion-programs/

Latinos “Moved the Needle” in 2008’s Historic Election

Published on November 12, 2008 in Latinos. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

As we mentioned in an earlier Transpanish Blog post, several groups pushed for Latino permanent residents to apply for citizenship in time for this year’s election.  In fact, one in five new voters is Hispanic.  Both Obama and McCain spent millions reaching out to Hispanic voters, especially in the swing states.  These campaigns, along with non-partisan groups which encouraged Latinos to participate in civic life, made the votes of Hispanic citizens critical to the presidential race.

So what does this mean for Obama’s success?  One well-known blogger says that Latinos voted against the Republicans and not for Obama.  Tejeda’s blog offers some fascinating commentary about Latinos and politics, and is worth a read.  In an Oppenheimer Report released before the election, the point is made that Obama’s almost flawless Spanish pronunciation and use of the familiar tu, may be disingenuous and make Latinos think that he’s more on their side than he actually is.

In Colorado and Florida, both key states, Latinos voted more than ever before.  In Colorado, the number of Latinos who voted more than doubled from the 2004 election.  A Colorado Independent article cites Pew Hispanic Center data showing that Latinos in Colorado made up 17 percent of total voters, up nine points from the 2004 election.

In Florida, Obama was the first Democrat to win the vote of the majority of Latino voters.  While nationwide, Obama won by a larger margin, no other democrat has ever taken Florida since they begin doing exit polls in the 1980s.  Older Cubans typically vote Republic, but Florida is experiencing a demographic and generational shift, as non-Cuban Hispanics and younger people of Cuban descent lean towards the blue.  The Miami-Herald reports on what this may mean for Florida’s political landscape.

The Pew Hispanic Center, as always, provides detailed demographic info about Latinos in the U.S. and their report on the exit polls is no exception.

Of course, Obama hasn’t yet articulated a plan for immigration reform and Latinos themselves certainly don’t have a uniform stance on immigration.  But whatever opinion Latinos have of immigration in the U.S., the NALEO Educational Fund is an incredible resource for Latinos who want to participate more deeply in civic life.

Spanish-Language Statistics

Published on June 30, 2008 in Spanish Language and Translation Buyers. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

If you live in the United States, you’re probably no longer surprised to overhear Spanish being spoken. But just how widespread is the Spanish language in the world today? Over 250 million people speak Spanish as their first language and if we include those who speak Spanish as their second language, the total number of Spanish speakers is over 400 million.Within the United States, Spanish is the second most widely spoken language. According to the 2006 US Census, over 34 million people primarily speak Spanish at home.

Some more facts about Spanish usage in the United States:

  • Over half of the country’s Spanish speakers live in California, Texas, and Florida.
  • 19% percent of Hispanics in the U.S. speak only Spanish, 9% speak only English, 55% speak very limited English, and 17% are fully English-Spanish bilingual.
  • Almost all second-generation Hispanic Americans speak English and 50% speak Spanish at home.

It’s clear that over generations in the U.S., Hispanics shift from being Spanish-dominant to English-dominant, as explained in a previous blog post. But it also remains clear that as immigrants continue to arrive in the United States with little to no English-language proficiency, there remains a need in the marketplace for products and services to be marketed in Spanish.

Text Expansion in Spanish Translations

If you’ve ever listened to a Spanish-English interpreter, you may have wondered why the interpreter’s translation into English of a Spanish statement seemed so much shorter and the converse so much longer. What you’ve witnessed is contraction and expansion when translating between two languages.

The same thing occurs in written translations, and can affect how your final document appears if you don’t take text expansion into account when creating your layout. When translating from English into Spanish, the text may expand up to 20% and when working into Spanish from English, the text can contract up to 15%.

If you need a document with a fixed template or page count translated, such as a brochure or newsletter, not taking text expansion or contraction into account can make your best graphic design attempts fall apart in translation.

Here are a couple of tips to avoid large expanses of white space or overcrowding in the final translated document:

  • Use a larger font in English to account for text expansion into Spanish and a smaller font for Spanish to English translations.
  • Have a translation-friendly template ready with reduced point size and decreased space between paragraphs.
  • Avoid document styles such as nested lists, since what looks clean and crisp in English may look silly when translated into Spanish.

Spanish usage in US

Published on April 30, 2008 in News and Spanish Translation. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

On April 23, 2008 Transpanish posted a blog article about the movement to cultivate the usage of “proper” Spanish on the Internet. Remember that this movement originated in Spain. But what import does this movement have on Spanish speakers residing in the United States? The usage of proper written and spoken Spanish may still be of import in university Hispanic Studies or translation studies programs in which students are working from documents written by native Spanish speakers. But the reality of spoken and written Spanish and how they’re used in the U.S. is very different from what the Real Academia Española purports.

Take the following points into consideration:

• Mainly monolingual Spanish speakers immigrate to the U.S., but by the third generation, the descendants of those immigrants are primarily English speakers.

• The children and grandchildren of first-generation immigrants generally speak some Spanish, but are educated in English and therefore do not have a background in the conventions of written Spanish.

• Spanish speakers in the U.S. are extremely heterogeneous with regard to their educational level and country of origin.

• Spanish speakers, regardless of their fluency in English, must to some degree navigate an English speaking world.

The result of these combined points is that Spanish spoken in the U.S. is constantly transforming and deeply informed by English, which results in the unique language that we refer to as Spanglish.

Spanglish is the popular term for what linguists refer to as code-switching, which can be either mixing English and Spanish terms within the same sentence (i.e. “Voy a hacer un appointment” instead of “I’m going to make an appointment”) or transforming words from one language by applying the conventions of another (i.e. parquear instead of to park). Spanglish can only be used when both the speaker and listener are equally versed in both Spanish and English, the numbers of which are constantly growing.

Because of this, those who market to Spanish, English, and Spanglish speakers have to be flexible and aware of the truly fluid nature of language use in this country. A good translation agency will be able to help clients navigate the constantly transforming landscape of Spanish as it is spoken in the U.S.

Social Networking in Spanish Explodes

Published on February 5, 2008 in News and Spanish Translation. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, and MySpace are all social networking websites that are extremely popular with youth. Users can connect with others to chat, share photos, videos, and comments through individually designed pages. Up until recently, U.S.-based web applications have primarily been in English, although users can chat, post comments, and interact in Spanish.

A 2007 article in USA Today explores how social networking sites are branching out to appeal to Spanish-speaking users. ElHood.com, for example, caters to those interested in music in Spanish.

Continue reading ‘Social Networking in Spanish Explodes’

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