A few weeks ago, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, “Whenever some key issue comes up President Medvedev and I, of course, have to have a coordinated position. And as before, I see no problem in calling him and say, ‘Listen, let’s reach an agreement, let’s discuss this.’ We develop a coordinated position and make it even more stable and solid… Mr Medvedev does the same. Sometimes he just calls and says: ‘You know, we need to talk. Let’s think about this. There’s this problem, I would like to hear your opinion’… And believe me, Mr Medvedev and I cooperate very productively.”
As an opening paragraph, that’s what we in the blog trade call a “snoozer.” Then how come the Russian press called in the bomb squad when this French interview [...]

That the limited English proficient (LEP) may have a harder time in the emergency room is no surprise, since sometimes it seems that LEP is just an abbreviation for “leper” when it comes to communication. And it’s no secret that professional interpreter services in the emergency room make for happier patients and providers.
But a team of researchers at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. decided to take a closer look to figure out how different methods of interpretation delivery stacked up satisfaction-wise.
They put professionally trained medical interpreters on the floor of two New Jersey emergency rooms to provide on-site Spanish-English interpretation. This was the treatment group. The control group got the standard operating procedure for these hospitals, which included the usual mix: telephone interpreters, ad hoc interpreters, and no interpreter at all.  And guess what? Everyone preferred having [...]

I wonder how many patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) in the US health care system die each year due to the lack of care in their native language. I’ll bet it’s a lot given the health profession’s general penchant for planting so many of their patients six feet under.  After so many years in the business, I am no longer surprised by the carelessness of so many caregivers in making sure that LEP patients get the treatment that justice and compassion demand. Thank goodness for the efforts of many dedicated health care professionals to correct the problem of crossed languages in healthcare.
So it’s no surprise that the miscommunication so prevalent in hospitals and clinics extends to the pharmacy as well. Pharmacies that print prescription labels translated into Spanish often [...]

I know a lot of readers of this blog are bilingual switch hitters, speaking two languages, sometimes more, sometimes even multiple languages at the same time. Comes in handy, especially when you are doing multiple language puns, which are an even lower form of humor than monoglot puns. More seriously, are you the same person in one language as you are in another? Do bilinguals have split personalities? If so, which one of you is reading this?!!
A few years back, researchers at the University of Texas asked bilingual Mexican-Americans “a set of questions designed to assess personality, such as ‘Are you talkative?’ and ‘Do you tend to be disorganized?’ Many participants changed their answers when questioners switched from Spanish to English or vice versa.”
“When participants spoke in English, their responses emphasized [...]

“Read it and Weep, Translators” should be the subtitle for the most recent “Hispanic Cyberstudy,” but AOL settled for “Marketing to the web’s most rapidly growing population” instead.
“For years marketers have struggled with the complexities of the Hispanic market,” and translators have been busily following their lead to service this market. This is big business, too, with a US Census forecast of 50 million Hispanics in the US this year, nearly one in six US residents.”
The survey defined three translation-relevant market segments based on language fluency. Twenty-three percent of this audience is labeled ‘Hispanic Dominant:’ These people speak Spanish at home, watch and read in Spanish, are foreign-born, have a mean age of 40, and have lived in the US for seven years or so.
Biculturals account for 31% of the [...]

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 [...]

When a native English speaker tries to speak it, that’s when. Today, in the US, we’re seeing more and more Hispanic immigrants, and we sympathize as they learn our language, with its many slang words and colloquialisms. And, when the tables are turned? Well, it’s just as difficult to go into a Spanish speaking country and try to fit in.
I was all excited about using my “school learned” proper Castilian Spanish on my first trip to Barcelona. But, as I was preparing for my trip, I discovered that the official languages in Barcelona are both Spanish and Catalan, a mixture of Spanish, French and Portuguese, that is spoken little outside Andorra and the Catalonian region of Spain.  And, what’s more, many people in Barcelona speak very little Spanish on a [...]