UNESCO is attempting to document and preserve all of the unique cultural information and languages of the world--an ambitious project, but there is some good information at this site.

Don't take our word, or the word of another translation vendor--MarketingSherpa offers a real-life case study to answer this question.

2006 attendance at the International Newspaper Marketing Association (INMA) annual World Congress was depressingly flat. Members from around the world bought about the same number of tickets as they had in 2005.

How could the marketing team boost ticket sales for a 77-year old event in an industry that's coping with budget cuts, as well as being notoriously tight-fisted about executive travel? Event Manager, Megan DeLeon, and Marketing Manager, Ginni Mercer, had to find a way.

Even though global businesspeople, especially highly literate publishing execs, increasingly speak and read English, DeLeon and Mercer wondered what sort of impact translating marketing copy into native languages would have.

This blog entry underscores how even some very basic words can be misunderstood out of context when translating them.

The example provided illustrates how mind boggling it is to provide an accurate human translation, much less one offered up by an automated tool.

Simon Matthews, over at Ion Global's blog, the Globe, points us to an interesting Japanese phenomenon, the use of English words as a design element. This made me think of all the popular Kanji tattoos we see in the U.S., and Simon also points to a site that offers an explanation of what some of those tattoos really mean.