Learning Languages »

[8 Apr 2010]
Globish: how English rules the globe

Just stumbled across a book review of a book called Globish which will be released in the next few days. It states that English has become the world language. Let me cogitate that (ha, I do use my new favorite word from time to time). After a little bit of deep thinking I have to agree. Much of the way we communicate today or what we use on a regular basis is dominated by “English-speaking” companies, products, services or similar. Let’s take the computer for example: Windows’ market share is …

Language Technology »

[1 Apr 2010]
Google Translate gone WILD: Translate for Animals

As I have talked about the Google Translate functionalities a few times already I didn’t want you to miss out on the latest addition: Google Translate for Animals.
Quite a cool achievement, I would say. Now Google just needs to take over a few content databases so that it actually works out with the animal translation. How about this one? Actually, once Google is done with its street view project it could just reuse the cars to catch animal sounds. Anyway, here’s the video:

Nice idea, only that it is April Fool’s …

Learning Languages »

[23 Mar 2010]
Cogitate: my new word for 2010

Just stumbled across a post from one of my favorite news sources, the New York times (yeah, you might have noticed by now). And as this blog is about languages and learning (at least most of the time) I wanted to share my new favorite word of the year for 2010 with you: Cogitate – to think deeply. I like! Nothing more to say…
Image credit: Flickr, Gutter.

Language Technology »

[11 Mar 2010]
Google Translation part II

A recent article from the New York times discusses the way how Google tries to tackle the translation problem. I wrote about the Google babel phone idea a couple of weeks ago but I wanted to pick up the topic nonetheless. As the article points out Google uses sheer computing power to make automatic translations work. The first approach was to explain the computer all grammar rules of a language, combining it with a dictionary. Unfortunately it seems that there are just too many exemptions and people just don’t like …

Translation »

[26 Feb 2010]
At the end of the day

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, …