Language Survival » Translation

How many languages are there world-wide?

John — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:00:59 +0000

Well, according to Ethnologue there are currently 6,909 languages world-wide. But let’s be honest, how many languages are really spoken by a majority of people in a country? As I am watching the world cup right now I checked out how many member associations the FIFA has – the teams need to communicate in one language, right? There are 208 members, more than the 192 UN member states. That’s quite cool. So my educated guess is that there are about 150-200 “major” languages in the world (yes, I know, some countries speak the same language, but other countries have multiple official languages so I guess it levels out somehow).
So, most of us speak at least one foreign language and we’ve heard of many others some of which we probably even can distinguish from others when we hear them. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to understand all those languages we’ve never even heard of? I found a website called Worldlingo which offer free and professional translation in 141 languages! Now, how cool is that? Amharic, Assamese, Baluchi, Bashkir, Dinka, Dogri… to name just a few from the top of a very long list.

Image credit: SXC.hu

Life as a translator can be h(e)ard

John — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:49:33 +0000

This week just a quick pick from Failblog.org. Life as a translator can be hard – just watch the video:

Image Credit: Failblog.org/Dailymotion

At the end of the day

John — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:53:40 +0000

A post on consultant talk got me thinking of what rubbish some people talk. We all now about downsizing aka firing people. Come on, people, just say it out loud an clear. You are not paid by speaking in a sophisticated way, just by delivering results. And that brings me to one of my favorite quotes: “At the end of the day…” And what about the beginning of the day? And it gets even better. I have heard people translating this into German word-by-word: “Am Ende des Tages…”. Guys, it doesn’t work!!! All that you are doing is “verschlimmbessern” (German verb). I haven’t found an English word for this yet but it basically means you are trying to improve something and actually making it worse. Maybe deprove would work. Yes, that could work. Even shows some hits on Google (18.000 results to be exact).

If you are looking for more “fancied up” consultant words check out the jargon generator. Always worth a laugh. Have I told you about the great Bullshit Bingo game that you can make up with these words? No? Well, that’s for another time. Or just look it up on Google.

Image credit: Flickr, llawiet

Apple needs to clean up its language, says UK

Tyler — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:51:16 +0000

Lawyer speak, otherwise known as legal speak or, more formally, legal English has never been easy to understand – even with a law degree. Apple has been criticized before for the level of the language in their Terms and Conditions’ fine print.

Recently reported by both the next web and PC Pro Apple has now been required by the UK government – or rather the Office of Fair Trading – to clean up the language they use in their Terms and Conditions. The reason given is that the consumer needs to be able to understand the rights listed therein.

image credit: Alistair Israel, flickr

Let’s stay friends = unfriend

Jonathan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:03:17 +0000

The Oxford University announced their Word of the Year 2009 on Monday: “unfriend“. That’s when you kick someone off your friends list on Facebook. It used to be “Let’s stay friends”, now it is even more efficient with just one click. And the cool thing is your “friend” won’t even notice this unless he specifically searches for you in his friend list. I just saw one of my friends put his relationship status back on single today. Now I am wondering what this button should be called: “unpartner” or “unlove”? Maybe “unlike”? Well, we leave that for next year to find out.

image credit: Ed Yourdon, flickr

Translate As You Type, But Why?

Tyler — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:47:36 +0000

Google recently made a change to Google Translate. They have made changes to the layout and added a new feature. The old layout wasn’t too bad, but the new layout is a little flashier and possibly user friendly.

The first thing you notice is that to switch the language translation direction Google has added a button. It used to be a very small text-link that simply said ’swap’. Google possibly came to the conclusion that the new layout is easier to understand and is a little bit more intuitive.

The other cool update is that instead of translating when you clicked the ‘translate’ button (or when you hit ‘enter’) anything you type is translated as you type it. And instead of being displayed in the old ugly courier style to the right of the input box the results are displayed below.

However, the usefulness of the translate-as-you-type update can be questioned. The feature is kind of cool, but it doesn’t really add to the usability.