Black English Equals Any Other Language
22-1-2003
The federal "No Child Left Behind" Act is one year old. It mandates closing the achievement gap between white and black students.

Why do black students score lower than whites on standardized tests? Even when both groups are in equally wealthy and racially integrated schools? The subtitle of Berkeley anthropologist John U. Ogbu's recent book says it all: "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement."

Ogbu's work documents black students, since the 1980s, staying away from "acting white" behaviors such as dancing a certain way, speaking standard English - or even doing well in school. Language plays a big role in this. Take slang.
(Robert A. Leonard - Newsday.com)

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Translation mistakes can be dangerous for medical patients
7-1-2003
A new study suggests mistakes with potential health consequences are common when Spanish-speaking patients use translators -- especially untrained interpreters -- a challenge Kansas City medical centers are addressing.

The study, published Monday in the medical journal Pediatrics, examined effectiveness of translation services at a time when hospitals nationwide are struggling to serve increasing numbers of Spanish-speaking patients.
(MARY SANCHEZ - The State.com)

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Bad translations
19-1-2003
Germans are pretty tolerant when confronted with the seeping corruption of their language by foreign influences. Unlike the French, who tried to stem the Americanization of their language with special laws, German education authorities have limited their intervention to special lessons on “reflection on language,“ which also teach pupils how to spot anglicisms. Teachers don't worry much about the growing use of colloquial anglicisms, which they consider to be a largely temporary phenomenon.
Language experts reckon that the roughly 500,000 words that comprise the basic German vocabulary now include about 3,000 to 5,000 anglicisms. Admittedly, that is a lot less than the comparable number of words of Latin or Greek origin. But it's apparently still more than enough to get some Germans confused.
(Emma Burrows - FAZ.net)

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Translation Technology Failures and Future
31-12-2002
Because of improvements in technology designers, graphic artists, accountants and many other professionals can accomplish in an hour what used to take them a day. In other words, technology has improved their performance by as much as 800% and it has improved the quality of their work at the same time.

So why don't we see 800% performance gains in the translation industry?
(LISA.org)

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Hype vs. Effective Speech Technology
1-2-2003
My first real experience with speech technology was in the research group at WordPerfect in 1994. I was given the task of adding speech recognition capabilities to WordPerfect 6. After surveying the available technology and business opportunities, we inked a deal with Dragon Systems to include a version of DragonDictate in the box. Unfortunately, the deal was signed so close to the release date that the technology was not included in any of the marketing material. Further, to utilize the technology, the user had to send in to buy a microphone. This was, in our view at the time, a great technology breakthrough that remained hidden from the users due to poor marketing. The effort made no impact on either WordPerfect or DragonDictate sales.
(Bruce Armstrong - Speech Technology Magazine)

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Lab chimp speaks his own language
3-1-2003
A bonobo has surprised his trainers by appearing to make up his own "words". It is the first report of an ape making sounds that seem to hold their meaning across different situations, and the latest challenge to the orthodox view that animals do not have language.

Kanzi is an adult bonobo kept at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He has grown up in captivity among humans, and is adept at communicating with symbols. He also understands some spoken English, and can respond to phrases such as "go out of the cage" and "do you want a banana?"
(Anil Ananthaswamy - NewScientists.com)

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Slim chance Esperanto will ever be universal language
12-1-2003
PHILADELPHIA - A belated "Varmkoran Kristnaskon, Prosperan Novjaron to you.

Apologies for the fact that there are some punctuation marks missing from the holiday greeting and wish for a happy new year.

Like most people and communications devices in the world, our computer keyboard does not speak Esperanto - which, by now, was supposed to have become the world's language, and in doing so, helped all achieve peace and universal understanding.

That was the idea when the language, which only has 16 grammatical rules and whose pronounciation is phoenetic, was invented in 1887 by Polish linguist Ludvig Zamenhof...
(Philadelphia Inquirer)

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English – fifth language of Switzerland?
21-11-2002
While the majority of Swiss speak one of the four national languages, the number using foreign tongues – especially English - continues to rise.

According to a recent study, almost 64 per cent of Swiss speak German, 19.5 per cent French, 6.6 per cent Italian and less than 0.5 per cent Romansh.
(Andrea Tognina - SwissInfo)

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'Spanglish' speakers mix home languages
21-11-2002
Spanglish — a hybrid of Spanish and English languages — is increasingly making its way into mainstream America, a trend critics say could hamper the advancement of Hispanics who may not learn proper English
(Ellen Sorokin - THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

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