New page added

I finally got around to adding another page to the site. It's up to about 68 pages I believe. My goal is to have anywhere between 150-200 pages. If I can double or triple the traffic I have now, that would most likely reflect on my clickthroughs, which would be a good thing. My new goal is to do 3 new pages a week, which will give me about 160 total pages by next August, which will be my two year mark.

My new page is song-translations.html and is all about how translating songs can help you become a better translator.

Marketing with Hispanics in mind

I was perusing some business news today and ran across an article on Internet activities of Hispanics.

There were some important statistics the report pointed out that are important to keep in mind, especially if you're thinking about marketing to the Hispanic population, or if you're an online information publisher.

• 56% of Hispanics online want to own their own business
  
• 52% of Hispanics online connect with a broadband connection
  
• 51% of Hispanics online agree that they "get more information about products and services from going online than they do from television or newspapers or magazines."
  
• 67% of Hispanics online feel it's important to have Spanish content online
  

More stats are available from the article. It is a must read especially if you are in the entertainment, health, or financial industry.

New pages to website

I've added some new pages to Spanish-translation-help.

Feel free to check them out:

Becoming a certified translator

Spanish translation programs

Spanish professor jobs

Freelance transltion jobs

Online translation jobs

First batch of medical translators graduates - 2005-04-20

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided a grant in Memphis in order to train medical interpreters and the first batch of interpreters has just graduated. It's about time people started focusing on this problem and began thinking of ways to deal with the problem of people not getting the care they need because of the language barrier.

Hopefully this will lead to more people and programs for medical interpretation.

First batch of medical translators graduates - 2005-04-20

Spanish Ecommerce Package: iSpeak Launches Its Turnkey Spanish Ecommerce Package - iSpeak.net

There's some new software out there that might be able to help you market your business to the world's Spanish speakers. iSpeak.net looks like it might be a good solution for those interested.

While it's not the solution I use for my ecommerce business, it could work for you. (Within the next week or so I'll tell you how I do it with my Spanish translation website.

Want to do machine translation?

Anybody out there interested in working for a group doing statistical machine translation in a variety of languages (including Spanish)? According to a business wire release, a company in California called Language Weaver looks like it's growing and maybe they could use the likes of you.

While I have done a lot of translation work, my heart lies in doing linguistic things with computers and if there is anybody interested in natural language processing or computational linguistics, I highly recommend looking into it to see if it fits with your interests. There is a lot of work to be done, especially in languages other than English. If you're wondering what it's all about, check out the article on computational linguistics that got me interested.

New incentive for brushing up on your Spanish skills

TheLadders.com (a website for executives making over $100,000 annually) recently posted a survey of executives. The survey asked them to rate which language (behind English) is the most important for them to learn (and subsequently will have the most impact on them as business owners and executives). Not suprisingly, Spanish was at the top of the list (followed distantly by Mandarin Chinese). Read the article.

New page

I just put up a new page on the website:

Translator jobs

Feel free to visit...

The life of a court interpreter

I've worked a fair amount of years in the translation industry but I have never professionally done any interpreting? Would I ever consider doing it? No way. When I was in school working on my degree in Spanish translation and interpretation, we mostly focused on translation theory and practice. However, we were introduced to interpretation and even practiced doing some. Let me just say that I think it is an extremely challenging activity.

However, if intpretation is your cup of tea, and especially if you speak a less-commonly taught language, chances are you could readily find work in any of the larger population areas doing interpretation for the courts.

I've read a couple articles the past little while about the need for more court interpreters in all kinds of languages, not just Spanish or Mandarin.

Here's an interesting article about the need for more interpreters.

400th anniversary of Don Quixote

It's the 400th anniversary of the classic book Don Quixote. I think everyone that has anything to do with the Spanish language should read the book, in Spanish (that goes for me as well). I started to read the book in English a while back and then felt guilty that I hadn't even read it in Spanish. So my new literary goal for this year is to read the entire Cervantes classic in Spanish. If you feel too intimidated to read it in Spanish, you can always try an English translation. You can follow along with Sam McManis from Tacoma who will be writing about his adventures reading the book this year.

Tuning out Hispanics

In Boston, an AM radio station that traditionally played Spanish programming announced it was being bought and the format was going to change to ESPN sports programming (Boston.com). Just the opposite happened in Washington, D.C. a while ago. 99.1 (a rock station that had been around a long time) just one day converted over to Spanish music. Let's just say that a lot of people were definately in shock when that happened. I can see that happening in more markets around the country. Especially in high population areas.

"Rise of Spanish does not predicate decline of English"

Here's a good article on not only why Spanish is becoming so important in the United States, but also why it will never overtake English as the most important language in the country. (A good reason to have top skills in both languages.)

As a translator, it's especially important to have skills in both languages because your skill is only as successful as is your complete understandin of all the nuances in both. If you don't know one very well, chances are you're going to miss something important in some future work that you have to do. - The Japan Times Online

Unique Barcelona City Break Takes On Language Barrier : Khalsa News Network- KNTimes.com

Unique Barcelona City Break Takes On Language Barrier : Khalsa News Network- KNTimes.com

There are so many schools that offer language programs not only in Spain but all over Latin America as well. It can be a daunting task when trying to find one that fits your particular situation, as well as your budget and your expectations. I wrote an article a while back about what to keep in mind when choosing a Spanish language school. You might find it interesting: Choosing a good Spanish school abroad.

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