Over 100,000 would-be translators are on the waiting list for Duolingo, a platform with a unique approach to crowdsourcing.A few months ago, I wrote a post about how translation is falling back into favor as a language learning method, at least among s…

Founded in 1993, the organization’s mission is to support humanitarian work by providing free translations.The original organization Traducteurs sans Frontières (TSF) was founded in 1993 by Lori Thicke and Ros Smith-Thomas to help translators …

It may not be necessary for American presidents to speak a foreign language – but a surprising number of the early presidents did.An entertaining blog post from the Foreign Policy magazine website suggests that foreign language ability isn’t re…

Of course, companies increasingly need multi-lingual employees. But look for « multicultural » to be the recruitment buzzword of the coming decade.According to recruitment expert Kyung H. Yoon, Founder & CEO of Talent Age Associates, multicultura…

A new initiative aims to encourage “direct translation” of Hindu or Tamil literature into the world’s major languages – without going through the English translation.Due to a scarcity of translators for certain “language pairs,” esp…

Providing language interpretation services can be a key to getting injured workers back on the job.Language interpretation services in medical settings are clearly desirable for L.E.P. (Limited English Proficiency) patients, as we have discussed many t…

Over the past 50 years or so, translation has been pushed aside as a language-learning method. This could change.For many years, before the time when there was a cassette player in every classroom, translation played a key role in language teaching. B…

A new initiative aims to encourage “direct translation” of Hindu or Tamil literature into the world’s major languages – without going through the English translation.Due to a scarcity of translators for certain “language pairs,” esp…

I enjoy running passages through Google Translate from time to time – and not just for fun.In the years I have been writing this blog, I have run a number of highly unscientific tests on automatic translation systems. At first it was truly “ju…

“Europe” is a vast multilingual and multicultural patchwork; so don’t assume that English is always enough to do business there.Americans travelling in Europe are often impressed by how well the population speaks English. Or if they aren’t…