Lingo24 Company Blog

Today I came across two rather interesting stories form the Southern Americas, or technically, the Central and Southern Americas…namely from Mexico and Venezuela.

The first piece of news from Mexico, relates to a new initiative originating from the office of the Mayor of Mexico City. The Mayor, Marcelo Ebrard wants all city employees to learn the Aztec language Nahuatl in an attempt to halt its national decline and, in fact, to reverse this growing trend…this new initiative will be applicable to every stratum of City employee from the very top reaches of the council right down to bus drivers.

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We all know that there is a lot of money in the translation services industry; one only has to look around at some very high profile examples to see that.

No one can be unaware of the huge amount expended on translation and interpretation services by the UN…in every full Council meeting a minimum of 60 (and growing) interpreters must be present just for the Council to be able to function; further, there is a permanent staff of some 2,500 linguists of all kinds and regular ad hoc employment of agency translators in order to fill in any shortfall. Another closer to home example is that of the burgeoning cost of providing translation services to the growing number of new arrivals within the country; all Government and Local Authority sectors are affected by this and the expenditure only looks set to increase substantially.

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Last Thursday, a group of professional translators and interpreters founded South Korea’s first national association for their professions; the aim of the association is to improve the country’s generally poor standard of translations. The Korean Association of Translation and Interpretation or KATI as it is known, is the only such recognised Association in its field; the Association’s inaugural meeting was held at the Press Centre in the nation’s Capital, Seoul, with over 100 invited members present.

The Association’s Director Ms Kim Ji-myung said that the Association would serve as a national resource for users to locate reliable and quality translation resources and went on to pinpoint several reasons for the country’s poor level of translation output.

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Throughout the world it is commonly accepted that although being deaf is a substantial handicap, deaf people are valuable members of society and that with the right provision for them, they can and do, lead lives of comparable quality to the non-deaf and, furthermore, they make valuable contribution to society in general.

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Thanks to a long deceased linguist and the efforts of some scholars from the University of California Davis (UCD), the work of linguist John Peabody Harrington is being resurrected, along with the extinct languages that he recorded.

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The US Army is using handheld translation devices in its campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is finding them a useful tool for communicating with the local population. There are currently around 7,000 of these ‘Phaselators’ in the Iraqi and Afghan theatres, but they are also being used by US servicemen stationed in Japan, where once again, they are being found useful…the device can translate into more than 40 languages.

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Well…perhaps not exactly as stated…but almost!

The Executive Director of G.A.D.H.O.H. (Gambia Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing) Mr Dodou Loum has bitterly complained that there are only four sign language interpreters in the whole country to aid in the communication between the deaf and the remainder of the hearing population.

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Based on some recent news stories from central Europe, it seems that being an interpreter is not always the cushy life of coffee and doughnuts that people often imagine. Of course, we knew that this was sometimes the case; I cite the experience of local Farsi interpreters in Iraq. Not only is this work obviously dangerous, but from past reports it has not always been well rewarded; take the experience of ‘end of tour’ interpreters in recent months.

If you recall, all the interpreters working for US forces were safely shipped out to the States and given a ‘green card’ as a reward for their services…not a bad reward. Conversely all interpreters employed by us were left there and given forms to apply for entry to the UK…not a good reward.

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Staying with the general theme of Northern American / Canadian / Alaskan native languages I noticed some excellent publications by the Alaska Native Language Centre. The centre was set up in 1972 under Alaskan State legislation, in order to document, preserve and perpetuate the 20 native languages of Alaska.

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After yesterdays look at the extinction of the Eyak language; aided in no small measure by its active discouragement in the 20th century, it is heartening to be able to see the opposite side of the coin in relation to the Inuit language; Inuktitut.

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