Language Translation – Hawaii restaurant to force foreign-language speakers to tip

A Waikiki restaurant has stirred controversy by applying a mandatory 15% tip to diners who don’t speak English.A friend of mine has a son who is a waiter in a Parisian restaurant – and he is always delighted to see Americans sit down to eat in …

Language Translation – Tattoo translation: it’s for life

If you want to get an exotic tattoo in a foreign tongue, you had best be sure of the translation.We all know tattoos are the rage in the USA, but were you aware that tattoo mistranslation is a recognized problem? Even the rich and the famous have been…

Language Translation – Thanksgiving in translation

Thanksgiving is primarily celebrated in two countries: the USA and Canada. Since 1957, Canadian Thanksgiving has been celebrated on the second Monday of October. So as US residents settle down to Thanksgiving supper on Thursday, our Canadian neighbors …

Language Translation – What could be simpler than saying yes, no and thank you?

A lot of other terms, actually – maybe like “dog” and “cat”?I learned the hard way about the complexities of saying merci. In France, when someone offers you something to eat or drink, it is considered ever-so-slightly impolite to say &ldquo…

Language Translation – Poetry meets machine translation

Google Translate’s experiments with machine translation of poetry are yielding some intriguing results.In a post published last week on the Google Research blog, software engineer Dmitriy Genzel explains how Google is experimenting with poetry and st…