Project Management and Translation Vendors
As a Project Manager you will be coordinating multiple projects – each project will have a minimum of two outside vendors (translator and editor) with the possibility of many more. Your vendors will usually work off-site as independent freelance vendors who have agreed to work with your agency on an independent basis. Your agency in […]
Origin of the word Brazil
The name Brazil is derived from the Portuguese word pau–brasil, the name of an East Indian tree with reddish-brown wood from which a red dye was extracted. The Portuguese found a New World tree related to the Old World brasil tree when they explored what is now called Brazil, and as a result they named […]
New Spanish Spelling Reforms from the RAE
Spanish Spelling Rules Get a Makeover Change is coming to Spanish orthographic conventions courtesy of the Real Academia Española (RAE), the organization that defines Spanish language standards. Last week, the RAE announced a number of planned changes prepared by 22 linguists from both Spain and Latin America. If all goes well, the changes to the […]
When was the first Spanish Grammar Book published?
In 1492, Antonio de Nebrija published Gramática de la lengua castellana, the first grammar book of the Spanish language. Works had previously been published on Latin usage, such as Lorenzo Valla’s De Elegantiis Latinae Linguae (1471), but Gramática was the first book to focus on the study of the rules of a Western European language […]
Number of Living Languages
Did you know that there are 6909 living languages in the world? Distribution of languages by area of origin Area Living languages Number of speakers Count Percent Count Percent Mean Median Africa 2,110 30.5 726,453,403 12.2 344,291 25,200 Americas 993 14.4 50,496,321 0.8 50,852 2,300 Asia 2,322 33.6 3,622,771,264 60.8 1,560,194 11,100 Europe 234 3.4 […]
Transpanish Blog’s Newest Feature: “Did You Know?”
As American author and scholar William Lyon Phelps noted, “One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.” So, in the interest of uncovering some engaging linguistic facts and promoting intellectual curiosity among our readership, here at the Transpanish blog we have decided to add a new feature titled “Did You […]
Some Linguistic Features May Be Genetically Linked
Linguistic researchers came to a consensus some time ago that humans’ capacity for language is genetically hardwired. It would seem, however, that with over 7,000 languages currently spoken worldwide, that this hardwiring of language is rather flexible. It’s no wonder, then, that scientists recently began to explore whether some of this tremendous linguistic diversity can […]
Castilian Spanish Versus Latin American Spanish
Castilian Spanish – so named for its roots in the region of Castile – emerged from Spain’s many regional languages and dialects to become the primary language of the nation. Castilian Spanish was later brought to the New World through the colonization efforts of the Spanish, where the language enjoyed widespread adoption throughout the Americas. […]
Spanish Language Among Top Three on Internet
Spanish has earned a place among the top three most widely used languages on the Internet. Trailing behind English and Chinese, it’s estimated that 136 million users – or roughly one third of all Spanish speakers – communicate and consume content on the web en español. Spanish speakers account for eight percent of the world’s […]
Translated Literature Reveals Cultural Similarities
Americans notoriously read very little in the way of foreign literature. With translations representing a paltry 3 to 5 percent of books being published annually in the United States, authors and translators alike are crying out for more fiction to be translated. Intellectuals argue that exposure to writing by foreign authors will help us to […]
