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 …

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.

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 …

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, …

Yes, you read right. A new study has found out that people should talk in two languages, even when the baby is not born yet. This increases the chances of the baby “liking” both languages. Now, you might ask how you can check whether a baby likes one language more than the other. The answer is quite easy: What does a baby want the most? The method is known as “high-amplitude sucking-preference procedure”. Here’s the entire study.
Image Credit: flickr, BadrNaseem.