Don't get it wrong - Cross-cultural awareness in professional translation.

Mistranslations and cross-cultural miscommunication sometimes arise as a result of insufficient knowledge of certain languages and cultures. It is wrong to assume that fluent speakers of a second language are able to produce a high quality translation without any other skills or qualifications. A professional translation is more than just identifying equivalent words in a dictionary or using an online translator; professional translators are able to bring valuable cultural knowledge to the translation work, which machine translation tools cannot produce yet.

Restaurant entrance sign

Looking ourselves in the mirror: how unique is human language?

In our quest to define our own identity as humans, we have continued to stubbornly highlight those features that enable us to stand out from the rest of species; however, that is not an easy task to accomplish. If we just consider that technology is the characteristic quality of human beings, we are inadvertently excluding the native indigenous tribes of the Amazon rainforest due to the abysmal gap between them and the technologically developed nations. Even though the exclusion would satisfy those corporations which are mainly responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon, our curiosity should lead us to find better ways to answer what makes us humans. Obviously, we all would agree that language is a key characteristic, but is it a distinctive human feature?

Chinese New Year / Spring Festival is here: The global festival of Chinese culture

2011 is the Year of the Rabbit

If language is the vehicle of a particular culture, the Chinese language is like a bullet train which is carrying the weight of more than four thousand years of cultural baggage at lightning speed towards the future. China is undeniably a country full of contrasts, where tradition and modernity often meet and clash while the country is on its rapid way of development. However, the millenary Chinese culture and language are keeping up well with the accelerated pace of globalization. Taking the internet as the mirror of cultural globalization, we find that Chinese netizens are colonizing the World Wide Web by creating more than 50% of the total internet content. Moreover, millions of people are studying Chinese all over the world and Chinese culture is also spreading thanks to the overseas Chinese communities celebrating their traditional festivals, where everyone is welcomed. Among those festivals, the Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival or the Lunar New Year, is the most important and lively of the traditional Chinese holidays and includes some of the most representative elements and powerful images of the Chinese culture.

Languages and Dialects: A matter of recognition

Being a controversial subject as it is, the distinction between language and dialect often sparks heated debates not only among linguistics experts but also throughout the entire society. What makes a language to be considered a language instead of a dialect? When and under what circumstances can a dialect thrive and become a national language?

In linguistics, a dialect can be defined as a variant of a given language which is spoken by a specific group or in a particular location, but whose distinctive features – e.g. vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation – are “not distinctive enough” to be recognized as a separate language. Experts analyze mutual intelligibility among speakers in order to distinguish languages from dialects. In other words, if two speakers can understand each other although they don´t recognize the use of some words or their pronunciation is different, they must be speaking two different dialects of the same language.

Poem: Burning by Sean Hopwood

Burning

By Sean Hopwood

A light bulb with never be able to replicate the beauty

In the pure and simple randomness of a flame

Be it a simple flicker

Or a roaring blaze untamed

From a simple spark it burns

With passion, love, and life

And creates in the room a presence

That you can cut with a knife

A flame burns long and strong

As long as you give it air

And warms the heart and mind

Of all those who are there

It glimmers, twinkles, and flashes

In a delicate battle of wind and flame

As you stare at it in worry

Of this odd and precarious game

It lives to burn and burns to live

Strong as life and the beat of the heart

But if comes a strong gust and blows it out

There is always a match and chance to restart