Univision: There's more to Spanish newscasts than change of language

"There is a lot more to making a Spanish-speaking newscast than merely translating the news for non-English speakers." - MyWestTexas.com

Emphasis on English

"Terri Rychlak grew up in Baltimore's Fells Point section and has seen her neighborhood of Polish immigrants become home to a growing Hispanic community. Miss Rychlak says she enjoys the new cultural diversity of the area, where shops and restaurants increasingly cater to Ecuadorean and Salvadoran immigrants. But she sometimes is frustrated by her new neighbors' inability or unwillingness to learn English — which her grandparents had to master when they emigrated from Poland." - The Washington Times

At a tense World Social Forum, an interpreter finds herself lost in translation

"We are Latin Americanist Hindi interpreters from the subcontinent, bespectacled Brazilian graduate students who served in the Israeli army, rangy Galician professionals fresh from the European Union's halls." - The Village Voice

HP debuts Spanish-language training

"HP has premiered an industry-first Spanish-language online training series dedicated to enhancing the performance of Hispanic businesses through technology." - eChannelLine USA

Court interpreters are in high demand

"By 11:15 on a Thursday morning, Kathleen Penney has already worked 13 hearings in Juvenile Court in Mesa. Penney is an interpreter for Maricopa County Superior Court, a one-woman information highway between the judge and jury on one side of the courtroom, and defendants and witnesses who don't speak English on the other. -
The Arizona Republic

New pages added to website

I've recently added some web pages to Spanish-translation-help.com:

Spanish-schools-barcelona.html

Spanish-language-school-spain.html

Spanish-schools-abroad.html

Spanish-language-schools.html

Spanish-translation-service.html

Software learns to translate by reading up

"Translation software that develops an understanding of languages by scanning through thousands of previously translated documents has been released by US researchers. Most existing translation software uses hand-coded rules for transposing words and phrases. But the new software, developed by Kevin Knight and Daniel Marcu at the Information Sciences Institute, part of the University of Southern California, US, takes a statistical approach, building probabilistic rules about words, phrases and syntactic structures." - New Scientist

Multilingual staff can drive up auto sales

"A stroll through the Longo Toyota showroom on a busy afternoon is like eavesdropping at the United Nations. Buyers of all nationalities and races — many of them immigrants — flock to the dealership where the staff speaks more than 30 languages and dialects. From Vietnamese to Punjabi, the sounds of many tongues float across the cavernous, open sales floor." - USA Today

It's about time that people began to realize the importance of multilingual markets in business.

Aspen Elementary School to offer report cards in Spanish

"This June, Aspen Elementary School will send report cards in Spanish to parents of Spanish-speaking students, school officials announced last week.

The decision is a continuation of a policy adopted earlier this year that mandated teacher comments be translated into Spanish for Spanish-speaking parents. By June, officials say, the transition to Spanish will be complete, and the school will send entire reports - grades as well as comments - in Spanish." - The Aspen Times

Automatic translation of the four languages in the Spanish State

"The Eleka Ingeniaritza Linguistikoa company is leading an R+D project in order to design and develop a system of automatic translation of texts and web sites from Spanish to Basque and also to the other two official languages within the Spanish state: Catalan and Galician. The principal novelty lies in that the system will be an open code one and of free distribution, thus enabling the system to be modified with total freedom in order to update and optimise it for new users and applications. Another important novelty is that, for the first time, a single system involving the four official languages is to be developed simultaneously by groups based in different geographical locations." - EiTB24.com

This is pretty cool in that it will be open code and free distribution.

Google Introduces New Toolbar Features

"Google released a new beta version of its popular toolbar software this morning that adds some handy new features. The toolbar still features an integrated search box, pop-up blocker and PageRank display options that made it so popular, but now includes features like a translation tool, an autolink feature and an integrated spell checker.

The new translation tool will be of primary use to non-English speakers as it currently translates only from English into other languages. Languages supported include Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, German and Spanish. The tool works by allowing users to set a default language in the options menu so that Google can display the appropriate translation whenever a user hovers their mouse over a word on a Web page. I turned my translation tool on to Spanish and easily found the proper translation to a multitude of phrases without taking the time to look them up one by one." - Search Engine Guide

Many languages of healing

"A recent study by City Comptroller William Thompson corroborated immigrants' anecdotal complaints about hospital access. Of the hospitals studied, 75 percent lacked access to Spanish-language interpreters in clinics, on the phone, in emergency departments or in billing departments." - Newsday.com

Translation vs. right to proper defence

"Ever since the trial began in the Haika-Segi (Basque nationalist left youth organisations) case, we have heard some very poor translations in the Spanish National Criminal Court. On Friday the indictees, lawyers and relatives were open-mouthed when they heard the translators renderings and the same thing happened yesterday. But yesterday beat all."
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"The lawyer Jone Goirizelaia began her questioning by asking Perez if she knew what Jarrai (the Basque nationalist left youth organisation) was. Perez replied: “Yes.” The interpreter rendered this as “bad”." - Berria.info

Pretty bad that this happens in the courtroom. It probably happens a lot more than we know, even in the United States.

UPN 31 makes strong play for Hispanics

"When Bruno Cohen took over as general manager at KMAX-TV UPN 31 last June, one huge statistic was staring him in the face -- 16.8 percent of the local television market is Hispanic. He wanted to find a way to get part of that market watching his station.

So in October, after months of planning, he tried something a little different. He brought in translators to offer on-the-spot Spanish-language interpretations of the station's free-wheeling "Good Day Sacramento." The news-and-talk show is the station's centerpiece, with 31 hours a week of local programming. Viewers can use the SAP (secondary audio programming) option on their sets to tap into the Spanish-language feed." - Sacramento Business Journal

Here's yet another example of news media confusing the difference between intrepretation and translation. This article discusses a project by a news station to provide real-time interpretation of their English-language show but they refer to it as translation. The article only mentions interpretation four time. That's opposed to variations of the word translation being mentioned 19 times. In a story about interpretation! It's a losing battle.

New website

I've recently been working on a new informational website on mesothelioma. It's also hosted on Blogspot at http://information-about-mesothelioma.blogspot.com

Activists push for Spanish-language translation of environmental report on landfill

"Some residents of Sun Valley are pushing for a Spanish-language translation of a massive environmental impact report on the proposed Bradley Landfill expansion so everyone in the heavily Latino neighborhood can read it." - KESQ NewsChannel 3 Palm Springs

LeConte Builds on Dual Immersion Language Program

"In Mary Shogren’s kindergarten class at LeConte Elementary School, some students can’t understand a single word she says. Sitting on the floor with wide-eyed gazes, they stare at her as she reads a children’s book aloud. Some seem to understand everything, while others look puzzled.

It’s what she calls the “deer-in-the-headlights” effect. They won’t look like that much longer, Shogren says.

Most pupils in the Berkeley Unified School District prepared for their first day of school by getting pencils, backpacks and binders. Students in Shogren’s class, however, needed a lot more than a few supplies. They needed another language.

Shogren teaches lessons almost entirely in Spanish as part of the district’s dual-immersion program, designed to make children proficient in Spanish and English by fifth grade and fluent by eighth." - Berkeley Daily Planet

Bilingual police perform vital job as translators

"Burbank police Detective Mark Metelski often makes a special connection with some of the people he meets on the job.

As one of the department's three translators, Metelski, who speaks Polish, said residents appreciate that he speaks their language." - Northwest Herald

LingvoSoft dictionaries for MS Smartphone released.

"Now LingvoSoft English <-> French, English <-> Italian, English <-> German, English <-> Russian and English <-> Spanish dictionaries run on the Microsoft Smartphone operating system, and more languages are expected to follow soon!

With the addition of these handy dictionaries, your Smartphone does become language-smart. Extensive word bases of 400,000 entries each, prompt two-way translations, together with powerful search options, make it into a translation tool that is always ready to go whenever you are.

One neat feature that Smartphone users will particularly appreciate is the ability to look up words containing a specific combination of letters. By typing less you cut back on the time and the button-pressing and streamline your work!

Also, when placing an order at LingvoSoft all customers get a chance to take advantage of various special offers and discounts." - MSMobiles.com

Extension filling need for seminars in Spanish

"Spanish-speaking workers are playing greater roles in the swine and dairy industries in Illinois. As a result, University of Illinois Extension programs for ag workers and managers are being re-tooled and offered in Spanish." - Agriculture Online