Document translation to and from languages currently thought to be endangered could be safeguarded in the future thanks to the efforts of a project with almost £3 million in funding.

The National Endowment for the Humanities and National Science Foundation in the USA have outlined $4.5 million of financial support for 43 separate initiatives designed to make sure endangered languages are not lost completely.

With about 7,000 distinct languages currently in use around the world, document translation is an important means of making sure information can be understood by people who do not speak the original language of any given text.

However, as many as half of those languages are expected to die out before the end of the century, meaning the clock is ticking on efforts to document the languages themselves – including their vocabulary, spelling conventions, grammatical structures and so on.

With the latest round of funding, many of these dialects can be studied and recorded, with a focus on understanding them as soon as possible where their extinction is an imminent possibility.

Source: EurekAlert!

Working in the translation industry definitely goes hand in hand with a sense of pride in my knowledge of the English language – the Birmingham branch of The Translation People often turns into something of a debate room when one of our German team asks for advice on a particular word or phrase, and the English team battle it out to see who can prove they have the best knowledge of the English language (dare I say it, I’ve been proven wrong on occasions!) Consequentially, I find myself fascinated by any kind of discussion of this weird and wonderful language.

The BBC recently reported on “The rise of inflated job titles” (see link to article below). The article discusses the growing trend of some groups of professional people in today’s society feeling the need to protect their job titles, for example the Royal College of Surgeons. According to the article, some surgeons believe that the status of their job title is under threat from other groups of “surgeons”, such as tree surgeons or plastic surgeons.

The article moves on to discuss other examples of “inflated” job titles, in which elaborate wording is used for a job title, instead of using the plain and simple terms which describe what a person actually does. The BBC asked readers to write in with their examples of such “inflated” job titles, and the response makes for great reading! Among the best examples are “director of first impressions” for “receptionist”, “environmental maintenance officer” for “binman” and, my favourite, “transparent-wall maintenance engineer” for “window cleaner”.

These all seem like great examples of when the English language goes too far, and it’s hard to imagine the advantages of using such inflated job titles, yet easy to suggest the disadvantages: people won’t understand what you do, people might take you less seriously, and your business cards will cost more to print! In the case of some examples, it seems as though the aim is to simply make the job title seem better. Well, my Uncle is a binman and I have no qualms telling people that, and neither does he!

Author: Hannah Snell, Account Manager in Birmingham

Sources: BBC News

Last week we saw how Bradley Wiggins, the winner of the Tour de France 2012 and now Gold medallist at the Olympic Games in London, had won over some French hearts with his ability to communicate in their language. More recent coverage touches on how he always reverted back to English, his mother-tongue, when discussing doping at press conferences. In a sport, where world record holding athletes, such as Lance Armstrong, have been investigated for doping, Wiggins wanted to ensure that he was very clear on his stance towards drugs and his beloved sport. Wiggins mania in the UK is of course down to his fantastic sporting achievements of the last couple of weeks, but we also think that his clear messages about anti-doping has warmed both English and French people alike to his integrity. Speaking at French press releases in English on this issue, using a French interpreter, ensured he knew exactly what he was saying and that nothing got lost in translation.

Perhaps Philip Hindes, German born cyclist, cycling for team GB earlier this week in the three lap team sprint, could have learned a lesson or two from Wiggins’ caution. The 19 year old was heard to say to the press that he “…just crashed, I did it on purpose to get a restart, just to have the fastest ride“. His coach later explained that he had only been learning and speaking English for two years and so perhaps his real message was lost in translation.

When it really counts, and it’s essential to get the message right, the services of a professional translator working exclusively into their native language is vital. One word or phrase out of place and in the examples above professional atheletes run the risk of endangering their acclaimed titles.

You could be forgiven for expecting that document translation is a fairly emotionless process – but despite the need to adhere to the right tone of voice, grammar and spelling of the target language, emotions can still play a role.

New research from the University of California at Berkeley and Bard College, New York, highlights how bilingual people might switch to a preferred language for expressing certain emotions.

For instance, they point out that a Finnish-English speaker will often say “I love you” in English, as such outward expressions of emotion are rarer in the Finnish language.

The study was focused on interactions with children, but could have implications for document translation, and even for specific professional disciplines like medical translation.

“We’re especially excited to see how the implications of emotion-related language switching can be explored beyond the parent-child dyad, for example in marital interactions, or in the context of therapy and other interventions,” says psychological science and report co-author Stephen Chen of UC Berkeley.

As such studies progress, they provide further insight into how less obvious concerns like the expression of emotion can play an important role in medical translation and other professional translation disciplines, in creating a target-language document that is suitable both in its grammar and tone of voice, and in its general reading style to a native speaker.

Source: EurekAlert!