The European Commission has succeeded in formally presenting a proposal allowing 12 European Union (EU) countries to push for a ‘single European patent’. These member states have acted under the process of ‘enhanced co-operation’; this process allows nine or more countries to ask the commission to support and allow a proposal on which a united […]

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Research published at the end of 2010 shows that Welsh companies could increase their export sales by almost 50 percent if they employed staff with better language skills.
This has lead to Welsh businesses and language experts to call for more to be done to get young people learning foreign languages. These statistics show the enormous […]

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A survey has revealed that more US college students are studying languages than ever before. The increased interest in previously unpopular languages, such as Korean, has resulted in more crowded language classes at community colleges, but how much longer can this trend continue when faced with fierce budget cuts?
The survey, released by the Modern Language […]

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The Irish Times has published an interesting perspective last month with an article written by two European students who discuss the confusion of moving to Ireland. Its narrative explores the past three months in the lives of Julia Gollub and Susanne Graatrud Schiager, from Norway and Germany respectively, and how they have coped with life […]

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When foreigners learn the English language, they tend to learn it through the use of the standard English accent. But what is the ‘standard English accent’? In Britain, we have so many different accents that are difficult to decipher even for the British people – never mind people from other countries. The story doesn’t stop […]

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Kwintessential are proud to announce their inclusion in the latest version of The Savvy Client’s Guide to Translation Agencies. Authored by John Yunker the guide offers great insight into the industry and the main players offering translation services.
More about the guide…
Go global with confidence

Your translation agency is your voice to the world. Select the right […]

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Reuters News Tokyo published an interesting idea from the Japanese National Tourism Organisation (JNTO) this month: provide tourists with a ‘free’ trip to Japan, find out what difficulties they experience and then try to fix them.
The plan would roughly enable one hundred English, Chinese and Korean tourists, all non-speakers of Japanese, to visit the major […]

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With the well publicized case of Dr Daniel Ubani earlier this year has come the question as to how many other EU GPs practicing in the UK are ‘lost in translation’. Dr Ubani had “unlawfully killed” UK patient David Gray in 2008 after mistakenly giving him a large overdose of diamorphine.
Alongside this case came a […]

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With the 11.5% rise of the Yen against the Dollar in 2010, many Japanese businesses face the problem of how to communicate their ambitions within the culturally distinct market of the West.
Is the solution to make English the compulsory language of communication for all global businesses or to implement ‘Globish’- an interlanguage variant on English […]

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Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?
Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. […]

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