Total immersion in a foreign language can be a great way to learn, but it is not always a magical solution.You hear it all the time: “the only way to learn a foreign language is to go live in a foreign country.” As a long-time language tea…

I’ve never seen an art exhibit about translation, and I’ll probably never see one……but it’s certainly interesting to know that one is going to take place at one of the U.S.’s top museums. Indeed, an exhibit sponsored by the &l…

Language translators have reaped great benefits from the Internet revolution.Some occupations lend themselves easily to working remotely, and language translation is one of them. Through the Internet, freelance translators can contract with language s…

What’s in store for the language service sector in 2011? Research group Common Sense Advisory has some ideas.Since 2005, the major research group Common Sense Advisory has been publishing predictions about the language service industry. The group&rsq…

A new site called Viki claims it has 100,000 volunteer translators subtitling for free. Subtitling is a highly difficult and painstaking translation task. Comprehension of film dialogue can be difficult even for native speakers; rendering the dialogue …

There was a time when almost everything on the internet was in English. And that was a long time ago.In the early online years, some argued that the internet would increase, or even cement, the dominance of English as a lingua franca. Many of the worl…

Technology now allows learners to study languages interactively at home, in the car or on the plane. But how effective are these methods?Today’s language learner is faced with a dizzying array of methods. Traditional classes are of course offered…

In the final post of our three-part series on evaluating language skills, we’ll take a look at assessing language interpretation competence.In the US, one of the most recognized language skill evaluation tools is the ILR, or Interagency Language Roun…

A leading business educator and strategist argues that a true global business culture is unlikely to emerge from the global economy.Most people would agree that the past decades have brought about not only a great deal of economic globalization, but al…

We hear a lot about “dying languages.” But which ones are really on the verge of extinction?Languages, like species or cultures, can be endangered. When we think of languages that could disappear, we often think of obscure tribal languages, where t…