Google Translation Center Announced to Online Community
The online translation community is abuzz with the news that Google has announced the start of a Google Translation Center. The discussion revolves around two main questions: how exactly the service will work and how having an Internet giant like Google providing a platform for translation services will affect freelance translators’ business. How Will Google’s […]
Bilingual Education in the U.S.
If your goal is to become fluent in another language, many times total immersion is the best practice. However, this is not the case for young recent immigrants in public schools because they also must become proficient in the subject matter of instruction. This is where bilingual education comes in. Bilingual education and its alternatives […]
Spanglish in the United States
There’s language as it appears in grammar books and there’s language as it’s truly spoken every day. The way that bilingual Spanish and English speakers in the United States combine the two languages is a perfect example of this phenomenon. In every day vernacular, people use the term Spanglish to describe the mixing of the […]
Analyzing files in Trados
If you use Trados to translate your documents, one of the most important steps is to analyze your files. Analyzing files allows you to identify how much text can be leveraged from an existing Translation Memory (TM), or if you do not have an existing TM it allows you to analyze the source files. Example: […]
English Plus: The Antidote to English Only?
Last week’s blog post focused on the English Only movement and its proponents who want to make English the nation’s official language. Their hard-line approach, which many feel attempts to negate the benefits of a multilingual society, is countered by the English Plus movement. Those who support English Plus encourage second-language acquisition for immigrants and […]
English Only or Official English?
No one can deny that immigration is one of the hottest topics in the U.S. today, especially as we are poised to elect a new president. Often those who seek to limit immigration and combat illegal immigration use language about “invasion” and stridently oppose the “press one for English, press two for Spanish” phenomenon as […]
Spanish-Language Statistics
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 101 or How Not to Embarrass Yourself Immediately
Anyone who has successfully learned a second language as an adult will tell you that it’s not easy, but the more risks you take, the more rewarding the results will be. Rather than looking at the Spanish language as a minefield of potential mistakes, look at it as a journey during which you will explore […]
Voting en Español: The U.S. Presidential Race
With an estimated population of 44.3 million as of July 2006, Hispanics are the nation’s largest ethnic minority in the U.S. It’s no wonder that the three main presidential hopefuls (McCain, Obama, and Clinton until just recently) spend a lot of time and money courting this powerful demographic. The political realm is always convoluted and […]
Opening a Word 2007 files (docx) in an earlier version of Word.
“.docx” is the new file extension that Microsoft Word 2007 uses when it saves documents in the new default format. To open Microsoft Office Word 2007 .docx or .docm files with Microsoft Office Word 2003, Word 2002, or Word 2000, you need to install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for 2007 Office Word, Excel and […]
