Last year, the North American Academy of the Spanish Language teamed up with the US government to stamp out Spanglish.  The institution — a group of academics who regulate the use of Cervantes’ language in the U.S. — is guiding the government in its quest to supply official information in correct Spanish to the 40 million Hispanics living here.
Claudio Torrens at the Daily News as much as called the Academy the Spanish Inquisition. And we all know that nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
This ʻinquisition,ʼ known in Spanish as the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española  (ANLE), is based in New York and is directed by writer Gerardo Piña-Rosales, Professor of Spanish Language and Literature at Lehman College, City University of New York.
These Norteamericanos are the newest members of the venerable group [...]

Japanese moviegoers have been avid Hollywood fans for generations. An entire industry exists to groom American films for Japanese audiences.
As soon as the Americans send over a reel, these Japanese marketing tigers pounce on the title of the film, which rarely survives as Americans know it.  The title has to catch the attention of moviegoers and the media — press the right buttons. Garry Marshall’s films usually have the katakana script for “pretty” in them because of the success of “Pretty Woman;” Reese Witherspoon’s “Legally Blonde” became “Cutie Blonde,” while “Miss Congeniality” is “Dangerous Beauty.” Anything with Steven Seagal has to have the word “yosai” (fortress) in the title, probably because of the success of his first “Under Siege” film.
Chris Betros has studied this phenomenon. “I tried for years to [...]

Earlier this week, we got into the speed with which translators translate and how the three T’s (Technology, Traffic management, and Throwing-enough-translators-at-the-job until it’s done) affect delivery and deliverable. Most readers manage around 200 words per minute, and some can read much faster, especially if they scan for just the good parts. Written translation has great shelf life and wears very well. When properly managed, written translation is a gift that keeps on giving, communicating a message to whomever, whenever, wherever, no matter how long ago the translation was completed.
But while translation is asynchronous, meaning readers can read it anytime, not so with interpretation. The spoken word is synchronistic, meaning it’s driven by the clock. Once you say something, meaning expires faster than fresh-caught fish, and if the response lags, then [...]

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
My words will be beautiful.
Among the Navajo, the Blessingway [Hózhójí] is used to bless the “one sung over,” to ensure good luck, good health and blessings for all that pertains to them. It is sometimes described by English-speaking Diné (the term members of the Navajo Nation call themselves, meaning “The People”) as being “for good hope.”
But the beautiful tongue is stilled when talk turns to death. Discussion of death is forbidden in the language of the Navajo people. This creates problems for health care givers when cancer is the diagnosis.
Martha Austin-Garrison, Navajo language instructor at Diné College, says, “We all know from way back that people [...]

I’m trying to wrap my head around this: Meedan is a news site that translates from Arabic to English and back automatically using machine translation, with easy upgrade to human accuracy using a team of free-service translators. Now remember, we don’t call these folks “community translators” on this blog; they are “hobby translators.” But to give credit where credit is due, these guys have put their reputations on the line in a community designed to bridge the translation gap between Arabic and English — but not for money…world peace perhaps? There certainly is a crying need for more translation in this language pair.
This lack of translation between Arabic and English has been a problem for years — something like 4000 books per year. Anyway, the flow of cross-linguistic info has been [...]

Only humans have language, or so humans are wont to say. Homo sapiens researchers acknowledge the wonderful variety of communication systems used by other species ― the sly chatter of ravens, the dancing of bees, the swirls of color used by squids to flash messages and warnings to one another ― but we’ve got what they don’t: syntax (the set of principles and rules for constructing sentences in a language). Or do they? Recently, researchers found syntax in the communication system of a population of Campbell’s monkeys in Ivory Coast. While this finding is controversial, my own hunch is that closer study and better tools will yield more evidence that some animals use some degree of language.  Already we know that some species, like gibbons and whales, make complex vocalizations [...]