Thursday, June 30, 2011

Translation English-German

German, Standard

A language of Germany

Population75,300,000 in Germany (1990). Population total all countries: 90,294,110.
RegionAlso in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Moldova, Mozambique, Namibia, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russian Federation (Europe), Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan.
Alternate names  Deutsch, Tedesco
DialectsMajor related language areas are Bavarian [bar], Schwäbian [swg], Alemannisch [gsw], Mainfränkisch [vmf], Hessisch, Palatinian, Rheinfränkisch, Westfälisch [wep], Saxonian, Thuringian, Brandenburgisch, and Low Saxon [nds]. Many varieties are not mutually inherently intelligible. Our present treatment is incomplete. Standard German is one High German variety, which developed from the chancery of Saxony, gaining acceptance as the written standard in the 16th and 17th centuries. High German refers to dialects and languages in the upper Rhine region. Lexical similarity: 60% with English, 29% with French.
ClassificationIndo-European, Germanic, West, High German, German, Middle German, East Middle German
Language useNational language. 28,000,000 L2 speakers.
Language developmentTaught in primary and secondary schools. Fully developed. Bible: 1466–2004.
Writing systemLatin script. Latin script, Fraktur variant, used until 1940. Runic script, no longer in use.
CommentsBased equally on East Upper German and East Middle German. Christian.

Also spoken in:

Austria

Language nameGerman, Standard
Population7,500,000 in Austria (J. A. Hawkins 1987).
DialectsKärntnerisch.
Language useNational language.
Source: Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Translation

Why Translators and Translation Agencies Are Still Necessary

French paper goes global, risks ridicule with translation

by Rory Mulholland

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news166456107.html
A man reads French economical newspaper La Tribune in front of the Palais Brongniart




A man reads French business newspaper La Tribune in front of the Palais Brongniart, Paris, 2008. The leading French business newspaper is launching a multi-lingual version of its website using automatic translation, dispensing with journalists but producing often comic results.
A leading French business newspaper is launching a multi-lingual version of its website using automatic translation, dispensing with journalists but producing often comic results.

“Ryanair loan to make travel of the passengers upright,” read a typically bizarre headline on La Tribune’s site this week above a story in equally mangled English on the low-cost airline’s plans to make people fly standing up.
“The Chinese car in ambush,” “Internet Explorer: mistrust!” and “Assets of the continental right in management of the crisis” were some other mysterious headlines the same day on the site, which is still in an experimental phase.
But the paper’s editors are confident that the project will, once the software is refined and a human hired to tweak the texts, open La Tribune to a potentially huge international audience.
“The aim is to be able to offer business news in different languages to reach a new public on the Internet,” said Astrid Arbey, head of new media at the paper, France’s second biggest-selling business daily.
The project involves the French website being translated in real time by computer software into English, German, Spanish and Italian, with Japanese and Chinese to come by the end of the year.
Most of the English articles on La Tribune’s site were, with a little effort, understandable despite their many linguistic oddities.
But it is generally accepted that translation software cannot, as Translate admits on its site, “approach the fluency of a native speaker or possess the skill of a professional translator.”
Arbey acknowledged that the results on La Tribune were still far from ideal, but said that the software was being continually updated and that within a few months it would achieve “almost perfect” news articles.
Britain’s BBC has an entirely different model for the news website it provides in 30 different languages, staffed by hundreds of journalists, and says it has no plans to cut costs by following La Tribune’s lead.
Spokesman Mike Gardner, who declined to comment directly on the French paper’s approach, said that some of the BBC’s online content was translated, but that this was always done by journalists.
“The whole point is that if you want news that has a resonance, you want journalists doing that,” he said.
In Spain, the EFE news agency has been using computers for years to translate Spanish copy into Portuguese and Catalan. But all the copy is revised by editors before being published.
“This system is possible because Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan are similar languages,” said an agency spokesman. “But we don’t think it is possible for English, for example, and we have translators for our English service.”
La Tribune currently has one person dealing with the foreign language sites and plans to soon hire another person to tweak the English-language articles, said Arbey.
That approach, say some journalists at the paper, is typical of the cost-cutting mentality of Alain Weill, the media entrepreneur who bought the daily last year.
“The quality (of the foreign-language sites) is really mediocre because there is no journalistic intervention,” said one journalist, who asked not to be named.
Worse, he said, the sites “damage the image of La Tribune,” which in France has a reputation as a serious newspaper aimed at the banking, financial and business world.
No other French newspaper has gone down this road, said the journalist, because they know that automatic translation “doesn’t work in journalism.”
But Arbey is nevertheless confident that the foreign language sites will soon be producing clean copy thanks to ongoing software improvements and the intervention of the human being the paper plans to hire.
Will they be able to end sentences like these ones in the Ryanair story?
“Ryanair plays the provocation once more. After the paying toilets, ones surtaxes for the largest passengers, Ryanair would plan to make travel part of its passengers upright!”
The jury will have to remain out until the experimental phase — the site is only sporadically viewable on the web at the moment — is over.
(c) 2009 AFP

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

English-Spanish Translation

Spanish

A language of Spain

Population 28,200,000 in Spain (1986). Population total all countries: 328,518,810.
Region Central, south; Canary Islands. Also in Andorra, Anguilla, Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Jamaica, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, United States, U.S. Virgin Islands, Uruguay, Venezuela.
Language map Portugal and Spain
Alternate names  Castellano, Castilian, Español
Dialects Andalusian (Andalú, Andaluz, Andalusí), Aragonese, Murcian, Navarrese, Castilian, Canary Islands Spanish (Isleño), American Spanish (Chicano), Silbo Gomero. Leonese has similarities to Asturian, and may be extinct. Lexical similarity: 89% with Portuguese, 85% with Catalan [cat], 82% with Italian, 76% with Sardinian [src], 75% with French, 74% with Ladin [lld], 71% with Romanian [ron].
Classification Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Italo-Western, Western, Gallo-Iberian, Ibero-Romance, West Iberian, Castilian
Language use Official language. 60,000,000 L2 speakers.
Language development Fully developed. Bible: 1553–2000.
Writing system Latin script.
Comments The Aragonese dialect of Spanish different from Aragonese language [arg]. Silbo Gomero whistled variety of Spanish used in the Canary Islands. SVO; prepositions; genitives, relatives after noun heads; articles, numerals before noun heads; adjectives before or after noun heads depending on whether it is evaluative or descriptive; question word initial; (C(C))V(C); nontonal. Christian.

Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.

Monday, June 27, 2011

English-Spanish Translation Cleveland OHIO

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Friday, June 24, 2011

Translation Chicago ILLINOIS

Seven Language Apps: Spreken Ze Francias, Por Favor

By Lisa Hoover Mar. 20, 2009, 12:00pm PT 7 Comments
Source: http://gigaom.com/apple/7-language-apps-spreken-ze-francias-por-favor/
If one of your New Years Resolutions (remember those?) was to learn a new language, there are quite a few ways you can use your Mac or iPhone that will have you speaking in a foreign tongue in no time flat.

Keep Your Word

bambooapps Keep Your Word is combination dictionary and flashcard trainer for the Mac and iPhone. For $24.95, you can create your own word dictionary, add images and tags, and organize them in whatever way works best for you (alphabetically, grouped by adjective, etc.). You can even let the app put your words in Smart Groups that function similar to the smart lists in iTunes. Once you’ve got your words assembled, choose one of three exercise modes — flash cards, quick quiz, or printed test — to help you learn them.

ProVoc

provocIf you’re looking for a free app to get you started on the road to learning a new language, ProVoc is a good vocabulary training tool. Use it to listen to words on your iPod or print double-sided flash cards. Although it’s not as robust as Keep Your Word, ProVoc makes good use of your Mac best features. Use iSight to include images or video clips in your library, Spotlight to search for words quickly, and the Dashboard Widget to help you learn through repetition. Although ProVoc is no longer under development and has no user support, it’s a terrific free alternative to its commercial counterparts.

Eurotalk

eurotalkWant to learn a really exotic foreign language, like Telugu or Gujurati? Chances are Eurotalk will have something for you. The company has put together learning sets for more than 115 languages, for every level of experience from children to advanced users. Eurotalk’s free iPhone app simply teaches you how to say “hello” in 115 languages, the CD-ROM sets offer iPod integration so you can listen to lessons on the fly. Depending on which resources you purchase, Eurotalk’s language programs will run you between $34.99 and $179.99.

Byki

bykiForeign language software vendor Byki may not offer as many languages as its competitors, but it has an active community of contributors, iPhone apps for eight languages, and offers tons of free downloads with no restrictions. The deluxe CD-ROM set costs $49.95 and offers extra learning activities, advanced pronunciation practice, and other additional features.

DialectX

dialectxIf you’ve mastered your foreign language vocabulary lists but are still having difficulties with enunciation, use DialectX to improve your foreign accent and sound as if you were born speaking the language. It’s a simple free app that provides voiceback delay so you can teach yourself the nuances and subtleties of a new language by listening to yourself speak.

Bueno, entonces…

buenoCD-ROMs are great for some people but others prefer total immersion. If you want to learn Spanish but don’t have a trip to Latin America scheduled anytime soon, check out “Bueno, entonces…” designed especially for the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s a series of 30-minute, fast-paced classes that gradually ramp up the difficulty level until you’re speaking fluent Spanish. It’s creators warn, however, the series is not for the faint of heart. “This is a super fast and challenging class… If you prefer to learn at a slower pace, this is probably not for you.” ¿Comprende?

Rosetta Stone

rosettaOf course, the grandaddy of all language learning software is Rosetta Stone. It’s the product of choice for the U.S. State Department, NASA, and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. Rather than rely on rote memorization techniques, Rosetta uses an highly interactive immersion process that mimics the way you learned your native tongue. Learning a language from Rosetta won’t come cheap, however. Prices for CD-ROM sets start at $259 and peak somewhere north of $500.
Once you mastered your foreign language of choice, don’t forget to adjust your Mac’s keyboard accordingly so you can email people using the correct character sets. Check out these instructions on how to manage the foreign language keyboard settings in Mac OS X

Translation Cleveland OHIO

Eastern European English-language news sources

News from the east

Source: The Economist
THERE are a bewildering number of east European English-language news sources out there, as readers of this blog who have spent any time searching on Google News may have discovered. Here is a (subjective and partial) guide to some of them.
General
The Southeast European Times (SETimes), which covers 12 countries in nine languages other than English, boasts a solid reference section and news archive, but is perhaps not as slick or thoroughly updated as one would expect from an outlet sponsored by the US Military’s European Command.
Bosnia
Neither the public nor private sectors appear to have treated English-language news as a priority. ONASA is a competent private-sector outlet. The FENA state outlet grants free access only to news that is four days old. The official Bosnian Serb news agency, SRNA, first failed to deliver on its promised English-language page and now seems to have disappeared entirely.
Bulgaria
One of the stellar performers, boasting a large and varied range of English-language news outlets, including English-language services on Radio Bulgaria. FOCUS Information Agency offers a first-class service. For those without a subscription, however, the Bulgarian News Agency, offers a grimly functional site which may have been designed to distract readers from the limitations of its torpor-inducing content. Even within sources the standards can lurch wildly. At Novinite, the country’s largest English-language provider, stories can range from the fine to the (endearingly) broken to the utterly incomprehensible.
Croatia
Little of value here to the seeker of English-language news. The extremely limited Croatian Information Centre and the Croatian Times Online, which mixes local and crime reporting with tales of human interest, are the best it gets.
Czech Republic
The public-sector news agency CTK offers little to non-subscribers. But the private Prague Daily Monitor distributes up-to-date CTK news free of charge. Private-sector outlets include České Noviny and the Prague Post (whose website needs updating).  
Estonia
A new news portal, Estonian Public Broadcasting (ERR), says it aims to offer Estonia a “consistent, objective voice in a language not its own”. Private media outlets in Estonia have suffered as advertising spends have declined, hence this publicly funded outfit.
Hungary
The MTI news agency, a public broadcaster, offers only a limited sample of its reporting to non-subscribers. The Budapest Report and the more established Budapest Times (which also offers a German service) are private providers, both founded by journalists, and targeting non-Hungarian-speaking expatriates. Strangely, neither offers a wide selection of Hungarian news, at least in their online incarnations. The Budapest Business Journal, which appears bi-weekly in print, is a confident and cogent source of data and analysis.
Kosovo
Given Kosovo’s vested interest in making its voice heard it is perhaps strange that the English content at state broadcaster RTK is so limited. Private agencies offer either malfunctioning web addresses or the briefest of stories.
Macedonia
The Macedonian Information Agency sports a jazzy homepage and a solid and up-to-date collection of news. Also worth an honourable mention is the independent Makfak agency.
Montenegro
Not much to see here. The private MNNews, operated by the Montenegro News Agency, Mina has nothing but syntax-wrestling story previews available to non-subscribers.
Poland
As the largest media market in eastern Europe, you might expect Poland to have a diverse and thriving English press. Yet a click on the English news service icon buried deep on the homepage of national news agency PAP reveals a page entirely—bar the title—in Polish. A few hopeful clicks later and you are invited to subscribe for a three-day demonstration without having gained a whiff of the content. Elsewhere, private and non-profit providers of English-language news are a mixed bag. Poland.pl enjoys a prime URL but sometimes struggles to express itself (“Entrepreneurship Incubators New Project” runs one headline). In a similar vein the New Poland Express is notable mainly for its colourful interest stories (“Drunken doc touched up by patients”). Moving up the scale, the daily Warsaw Voice grants online access to most of its (rather short) stories while reserving a stock of premium content, and the weekly Warsaw Business Journal offers a sparse but well-written collection of articles. Perhaps the best is thenews.pl, an offshoot of Polskie Radio, a solid provider of national and international news.
Romania
Romania’s AGERPRES operates in a competitive English-language market, including state radio stations broadcasting in English, suggesting that fears of public-sector “crowding out” may be overdone. The effective Nine O’Clock News (which combines its own domestic reporting with Reuters stories), and the private Mediafax agency are other examples.
Serbia
Tanjug
offers a rump service. B92, a vibrant private-sector broadcaster, offers limited English news.
Slovakia
The Slovak Spectator is the country’s only English-language newspaper, and operates an out-of-date website. There is little competition; the TASR news agency’s slim English-language offerings are presumably intended to entice visitors to pay to join the “Client zone”.
Slovenia
At the STA state press agency you are granted a short taster of an interesting story, before being rewarded with information on how long the article you are barred from viewing is, and how much it will cost you to access it. Alternatives are scarce. The country’s first private English-language paper, the Slovenia Times, has an extremely sparse website, and if you are in the country the state broadcaster RTV (in line with Slovenia’s studied cultivation of its tourism industry) provides internal English and German services for tourists.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Translation Services Cleveland OHIO

Rep. Tim Ryan wants Brazil sanctioned for refusing to extradite accused murderer to Ohio

Published: Tuesday, June 21, 2011, 8:00 AM
Source: Cleveland.com
Sabrina Eaton, The Plain Dealer By Sabrina Eaton, The Plain DealerIt’s been more than four years since Claudia Hoerig of Newton Falls allegedly shot her husband with a newly purchased Smith and Wesson revolver and fled to her native Brazil, which refuses to extradite its citizens for any crime but narcotics trafficking.Hoerig would face life imprisonment in Ohio if she’s found guilty of the March 12, 2007 murder of her husband Karl, a U.S. Air Force Reserves major who also was a pilot for Southwest Airlines. The pair had been married for less than two years. Karl  Hoerig was planning to move out of their house on the day he was killed. The case has been featured on America’s Most Wanted.
Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Niles, has done his best to feature Hoerig’s case in Washington. He’s sent letters about it to everyone from President Barack Obama to then- Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He put language into a 2009 foreign relationsbill that urged justice in the case. Now he’s introducing bills that would prevent Brazilians from emigrating to the United States until Hoerig’s case is resolved, and would block more than $14 million each year in foreign aid to Brazil.
“It is shameful that Claudia Hoerig has managed to remain on the run from justice for over four years after killing her husband in cold blood,” Ryan said in an emailed statement. “Brazil should not be rewarded when they fail to honor their promises to America. My proposal is meant to honor the memory of Karl Hoerig and see that justice is finally done.”
A diplomat at Brazil’s embassy in Washington said his country is trying to resolve the case without extraditing Hoerig and has offered to <a title=”Legal Translation PortugueseEnglish” href=”http://localizationllc.com/” target=”_blank”>try the case in Brazil.
Trumbull County prosecutor Dennis Watkins says that’s not an acceptable option for many reasons including the high costs of transporting all witnesses to Brazil, differences between U.S. and Brazilian laws, and the language barriers involved in a case where all the witnesses would testify in English and the case would be conducted in Portuguese. He said it makes most sense to ship the alleged criminal back to Ohio for trial in the jurisdiction where the murder took place.
“For me to agree to transfer this case now to Brazil for prosecution under the known circumstances, would be irresponsible and contrary to my oath of office and not in the interest of the citizens of Ohio,” Watkins said in a letter to the U.S. Justice Department.
In an interview, Watkins said there have been numerous well-publicized problems with U.S. citizens obtaining justice from the Brazilian court system, ranging from the murder in Brazil of Sister Dorothy Stang, a nun from Dayton, to the child custody case of David Goldman, who spent years retrieving his son from his dead ex-wife’s family in Brazil.
Watkins said his evidence shows Hoerig shot her husband, removed $10,000 from their bank account, and took a free flight to New York using his airline employee privileges. From there, she fled to Sao Paolo, Brazil.
“Brazilians know they can come to the U.S. with a visa, commit any crime against Americans while visiting here, and then have safe haven if they get on an airplane,” said Watkins, who noted that Claudia Hoerig obtained U.S. citizenship in 1999. “That is not acceptable.”