Hello, and welcome to readers of the monthly e-newsletter, The Translation E-Buzz. We have created a complimentary website where more immediate issues pertaining to translation, languages and global business are posted almost daily. I have been working hard the past month or so to build up an array of articles that will hopefully be springboards for fruitful discussion, or at the very least, provide you with new information you may not have come across in your daily newspaper.

Each columnist's and commenter’s views and ideas are his and her own, and every effort will be made to keep discourse civil and constructive where opinions differ. If you would like to comment on an existing posting, please click on the hyperlinked title to read and comment on the individual posting. If you wish to become a guest columnist to E-Buzz, please and include what areas of interest you will write about in your blogs.

--Evan

The role of the translator seems to be misunderstood by both Iraqi insurgents as well as the U.S. Government. An article published last year in USA Today described the perilous role of being a translator in a war. The translators in Iraq were (and no doubt still are) perceived as spies.

"If the insurgents catch us, they will cut off our heads because the imams say we are spies," said Mustafa Fahmi, 24, an Iraqi interpreter with Titan Corp., the biggest employer of linguists in Iraq. "I've been threatened like fifteen times, but I won't quit. A neighbor saw me driving and said, 'I am going to kill you.'"

More recently, an article in The Nation describes how an Arabic translator hired by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's defense lawyers has been accused of being a co-conspirator in the sheik's crimes, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Merely by agreeing to be the bridge of communication for the defense seems to have raised the suspicions of investigators.

Yousry was essentially held liable for his part in Stewart's "crime" of issuing a press release purporting to represent the sheik's views on a cease-fire in Egypt. But Yousry did not even sign the administrative agreement that Stewart contravened. He was a translator, not a lawyer, and he relied on the lawyers to make the decisions about what could be communicated to the sheik, and about what could be said about the sheik to the outside world. It was Stewart's decision, not Yousry's, to issue the press release in question, and he played no role in that decision. In fact, Yousry, a nonpracticing Muslim married to a Baptist who raised their daughter as a Christian, was never a follower of the sheik's and had publicly accused the sheik of seeking to replace one form of totalitarianism in Egypt with another.

The government's theory was that by translating the sheik's words, which Stewart eventually issued in the press release, Yousry was a co-conspirator in the crime. But the notion that Yousry was a conspirator is belied by the record. Unbeknownst to Yousry, the government taped the prison meetings with the sheik, as well as Yousry's phone conversations. In the prison meetings, Yousry and the sheik were often the only ones in the room who spoke Arabic. Had they truly been co-conspirators, they could have plotted all sorts of illicit activities without the lawyers or the guards knowing.

Here is a humorous short that might be helpful to someone doing business in Germany. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "15 second elevator pitch."

Germans are hardly known for being gregarious. But stick them in an elevator and they just won't shut up. A hello and goodbye to fellow riders is mandatory.

Most of us are aware of the ongoing debate over the past few weeks regarding the translation of the U.S. national anthem into Spanish (which was hardly the first of its kind). A few of us read about bilingualism and immigration reform issues in places like Canada and France. But, how about a push for a bilingual anthem in another country that is often strongly unified in its language and patriotism, if not moreso, than the U.S.? Of course, everyone has a strong opinion of what language immigrants ought to speak, but we should also take into consideration the economic might of their numbers. This is not so much a prescriptive question, but a pragmatic one--simply what happens when large numbers of people will vote with their dollars.

A German politician has triggered a debate by calling for an official Turkish translation of the German national anthem to symbolize how multicultural Germany has become. But conservatives worry it would send the wrong signal about integration.

Many Turkish-Germans feel perfectly at home in Germany. Somehow it's hard to imagine many of Germany's 2.6 million Turks, even the 840,000 of them with German passports, singing "Unity, Justice and Freedom for the German Fatherland" during the World Cup this summer, even if they get the lyrics in Turkish.

But a politician has stoked a debate by calling for an official Turkish translation of the third verse of the song -- the only verse sung on official occasions because the others, including the first one starting "Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles" and the second one ending "German Women, German Loyalty, German Wine and German Song", are deemed outdated, subject to misinterpretation, and a bit too fervent.

Several IT storage firms have collaborated to create a petabyte disk storage system, which was donated to MIT Media Labs. The goal? Study language by reviewing videotapes of kids learning their first words.

Better technology could yield more fruit from an age-old idea of how language learning takes place. Everyone from shepherds to robots have been utilized through history in attempts to understand this. The MIT project relies on our ever-increasing access to processing power and memory to collect early language learning data and analyze it.

Most people have heard of the story told by Herodotus of Psammetichus, a Pharoah of Egypt from 664 – 610 BC, who sought to discover the origin of language by conducting an experiment with two children. Allegedly he gave two newborn babies to a shepherd, with the instructions that no one should speak to them, but that the shepherd should feed and care for them while listening to determine their first words. The hypothesis was that the first word would be uttered in the root language of all people. When one of the children cried “becos” with outstretched arms the shepherd concluded that the word was Phrygian because that was the sound of Phyrgian word for “bread.” Thus, they concluded that the Phyrgian were an older people than the Egyptians. Whether or not the Herodotus story is true is not known.

A recent press release from the the North American Securities Administrators Association, Inc. (NASAA) announces their commitment to Spanish-speaking investors. This underscores the fact that the Spanish-speaking community is increasingly being recognized as a potent economic force. If you are doing business nationwide in the U.S., getting Spanish translations of your corporate content is simply the smart thing to do.

WASHINGTON, DC — The Securities Industry Association (SIA) and the North American Securities Administrators Association, Inc. (NASAA) today unveiled a Spanish translation of their joint publication “Understanding Your Brokerage Account Statements.”

This guide is intended to provide Spanish-speaking investors with tips on analyzing their monthly statements. It includes a frequently asked questions section, details on common features of most brokerage account statements, a step-by-step checklist on how to review them, and an extensive glossary of investment terms that investors may come across while reviewing their statements.

“SIA is committed to providing the most useful information in an accessible manner to all investors.” said SIA President Marc Lackritz.“The United States is home to the fifth largest Spanish speaking community in the world. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States after English -- spoken by approximately 12% of the population (over 30 million people). Working in cooperation with our NASAA colleagues, this guide is an important step in promoting investor education among non-English speaking people. “

Here is a good article from the Washington Post that addresses yet again where the big potential for the tech industry lies.

"There are more high-tech big-screen TVs not just in the U.S. and Japan, but they're shipping a lot to India and China," Landis said. "They've done a great job at addressing the global market."

Landis recognizes that while Silicon Valley may be the heart of the U.S. tech industry, the biggest potential is in Asia. He made two trips to China and one each to India, Japan and South Korea in the past year to analyze the markets. He owns shares of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China's biggest chipmaker.

"It's time to watch the tech industry get really international," Landis said.

Those of us who follow languages in the news can't help but notice some of the bilingual debates (and counterpoint, here) going on within our borders as well as other places in the world. Being a provider of translation services for companies in the US and other parts of the world, we are, according to the cynic, going to take the position that more languages are better. However, beyond this rather simplistic view of the matter, there are plenty of reasons more languages are better for the economic health of the U.S. economy. Let's say the owner of a business, large or small, discovers that his or her native English-speaking customer could potentially comprise only half of the revenue. And, that the other as-yet unattained half would do business with him or her upon getting to know the business first in their native language(s). What business owner wouldn't want to increase profits by 100%, simply by performing some basic cultural hygiene?

From the Washington Post: Yahoo and television network Telemundo announced a deal yesterday that will merge the two companies' Spanish-language Web sites into one bilingual site offering telenovelas, movies, e-mail and other online tools targeted at the growing Hispanic online market.

If you are logged into your Yahoo account, and happen to stop over at the newly merged site (which I couldn't find a link to from the Telemundo site's announcement of the partnership), you will find mostly what is different is the insertion of the Telemundo logo and Yahoo's announcement of the partnership.

In order to see most of your personalized information in Spanish, you will still have to walk through a series of semi-complicated steps, as the Yahoo site isn't set up to change automatically based on your browser's language preferences like Google's is.

Tags: Yahoo | Telemundo | Spanish