The United States government has a high demand for linguists. President Obama’s administration is looking to put more emphasis on diplomacy through more effective multilingual communication in all areas: intelligence, defense, State Department agencies, etc.
The ILR (Interagency Language Roundtable) was created and includes several agencies of the State Department. Its main focus will be increasing [...]
Posts Tagged ‘technology’
The Importance of Language in Diplomacy
Sunday, December 13th, 2009The Importance of Language on Websites
Friday, November 13th, 2009As I was searching for something on the Internet, I came across a very interesting point that brings up a topic of great importance for us today.
“If I can’t read it, I’m not buying it”. This is something often heard from people who are trying to make purchases online.
A lot of companies have doubts and [...]
Why Human Translators Still Have a Job
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009Humans and machines don’t always get along: the former are often envious of the latter’s ability to perform tasks with greater efficiency, consistency, and more precise results. The antagonistic sentiments which many people have harbored for machines stretch back many years, and in particular any time machines or technology in general have displaced human workers, [...]
New Multilingual Web Search Tool
Monday, July 20th, 2009Consider my mind blown. I was pointed to 2lingual.com the other day by a friend who shares my interest in multilingual information and I am still playing around with it.
The premise is simple: carry out a Google search in two different languages at the same time. Normally if I am looking to do that, I [...]
New Language Toy (Wordnik)
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009I was sent over to Wordnik.com yesterday and all productive plans I had were immediately dashed and replaced with “let’s see what it says about this word…”
Wordnik’s purpose is to display all working knowledge, centered around the definition, etymology, and usage examples, but also providing information such as statistics and associated images, of just about [...]
Using Technology in Translation Work
Friday, December 19th, 2008These days it is impossible for a translator to do his or her job without using a computer. But let’s not forget that it wasn’t always like this…
A few decades ago, before there was such a thing as advanced technology, translators worked only with pen and paper. Research was a very difficult aspect, since it [...]
Language Change and Technology
Friday, December 12th, 2008Following up on my last blog, it is worth discussing another important cause of language change: technology. While technological innovation and dissemination have always influenced language change, some speculate that the scale of such influence today may lead to more rapid and significant changes than in the past due to the nature of contemporary technological [...]
