Your request is being processed... Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Translator Speaks Up For Translations

If you're a fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or have purchased the latest edition of "Don Quixote," you might know the name Edith Grossman.

You would have seen her listed on the cover of "Don Quixote," right under author Miguel de Cervantes, or recognized her from "Love in the Time of Cholera" and other Garcia Marquez books. You'd be happy to know that she is well compensated, highly regarded and in steady demand.

It's a good life for any writer, but it's especially charmed for the art form Grossman has mastered: translation.

More information at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/15/gabriel-garcia-marquezs-t_n_499693.html

Vocabulary size

Trying to convince speakers of English that they need to expand their vocabularies is one of the oldest strategies for selling word books. The very first English dictionary, A Table Alphabeticall, published in 1604, stated on its title page that its approximately 2,500 words (most of them relatively obscure) were intended for the “benefit and help of ladies, gentlewomen or any other unskillful persons.” For the next 100 years, most published dictionaries were concerned with helping the verbally unsophisticated (or at least the insecure) feel more comfortable with their verbal repertories. These early dictionaries were filled only with “hard” words and did not bother with defining cow or apple, reasoning that everyone knew what words like that meant. Instead they sought to explain to the uninitiated the meaning of terms like desticate (to cry like a rat) and antipelargy (the reciprocal love children have for their parents).

More information at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/magazine/14FOB-onlanguage-t.html

EC plans translation rights

Image by TPCOM via Flickr

All EU governments will be obliged to provide full interpretation and translation for criminal suspects under European Commission plans.

The idea is to help people "exercise their fair trial rights anywhere in the EU when they cannot understand the language of the case" said a statement.

The Commission cites the examples of an Italian tourist involved in a car crash in Sweden who was not allowed to talk to an Italian-speaking lawyer during his trial, and the Polish suspect denied access to written translations of evidence used against him in a French court.

Such "unexpected barriers" could lead to unfair convictions during legal proceedings in other EU countries.

More information at: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5j4lWKvBU7V50mpHv1OuMKZsawuQA

Google’s Computing Power Betters Translation Tool

In a meeting at Google in 2004, the discussion turned to an e-mail message the company had received from a fan in South Korea. Sergey Brin, a Google founder, ran the message through an automatic translation service that the company had licensed.

The message said Google was a favorite search engine, but the result read: “The sliced raw fish shoes it wishes. Google green onion thing!”

Mr. Brin said Google ought to be able to do better. Six years later, its free Google Translate service handles 52 languages, more than any similar system, and people use it hundreds of millions of times a week to translate Web pages and other text.

More information at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/technology/09translate.html

Conference on 'Translation at the European Commission: 1958 – 2010'

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DGT presents a study on the multilingual operation of the European Union, from the days of
the Economic Community in 1958, with six Member States, to the present Union of 27
Member states, with 23 official languages. Right from the very start, the translation service
has guaranteed European citizens access to the legislative and major political documents of
the EU in their own language and enabled each Member State to contribute actively to EU
policy making.

...The round table will be made up of key figures and witnesses of this shared chronicle, as
well as academics and high officials from the European institutions...

More information at: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/translation_commission_conference_note.pdf

YouTube Makes Captioning Available to All

Google's YouTube on Thursday announced that it has moved its automatic speech-recognition and closed-captioning technology out of beta and have now made it available to the YouTube community at large.

Most, if not all, YouTube videos now include a "CC" button that, if pressed, will automatically generate the closed-captioning technology. The technology processes the audio feed, using the speech-recognition technology used in the core voice search feature that has also built into the Android voice search feature, the GOOG-411 phone search, and other products.

More information at: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2360955,00.asp

Spain, Philippines sign agreement on Spanish language

MADRID—Spain will help the Philippines reintroduce Spanish language instruction at public schools in the southeastern Asian country under an agreement signed Tuesday between the two nations.

The study of the language is currently voluntary at public high schools in the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, but the government plans to make its availability widespread from 2012.

Under the agreement signed Tuesday, Madrid will help train Spanish language teachers in the Philippines, help develop the curriculum and provide electronic teaching aids as well as technical advice, the Spanish foreign ministry said.

More information at: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20100224-255038/Spain-Philippines-sign-agreement-on-Spanish-language