With the 2009 Tour de France gearing up for its start on Saturday I can’t help but question—beyond lodging, food, and transportation for all of the teams, media, organizers, and fans—what the language logistics of the race must be like. Since its beginning in 1903, the Tour de France has been internationally recognized as one of the most challenging sports events in the word, both physically and emotionally. This year the twenty-one stage race will cover 3,500 kilometers in France, Monaco, Spain and Germany between July 4 and July 26 and will feature intense mountain climbs, a fast-paced peloton, hairpin curves, and, as always, spectacular, if not dangerous, crashes.

Nine countries are represented by the twenty teams competing—Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, the United States—and, while I’m too lazy to count up the nationalities of all the riders, at least twenty-five nations are represented by the individual riders. While many of these countries are located in Europe, not all are. Last year Australia, the United States, South Africa, Columbia, and Kazakhstan all contributed riders to the race, and these statistics are just for the riders. Imagine how many nationalities and people groups are represented by the coaches, trainers, fans, sports announcers, tv crews, and crepe-makers. Not to mention that the race course itself spans three different languages in its route. Who needs the Olympics when you have the Tour de France?

One of the more interesting outliers in this language amalgamation is the Boulder, Colorado-based Team Garmin-Slipstream. 2009 marks the first year that any team has been comprised of only English-speaking riders, and Team Garmin-Slipstream’s roster includes four Americans, two Englishmen, a New Zealander, a Canadian, and an Irishman. Now, it’s not that Garmin-Slipstream tried to have only English-speaking riders (Dutchman Martijn Maaskant is first reserve) in the 2009 race, but given the fact that it is, I would assume that communication isn’t an issue between coaches and riders. This team might have something going for them.

At the moment I’m unable to find any information about official Tour de France translators or translation issues the race has encountered, but I am searching for some because I find it impossible to believe that a race representing this many nations and languages does not have either several official translators or several major translation snafus.

Certainly the media outlets dilute many of these issues by broadcasting in specific target languages to their viewership, but how do race organizers handle the crowds at finish and starting lines? How are real-time, in-person issues dealt with at the race? Is the official Tour de France language French, or logically, does it include at least English, German, and Spanish? And what is the hiring process for these announcers/organizers? I realize I’m raising more questions than I’m answering, but if anyone has some ideas/thoughts/answers, I’d love to hear them.
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Photos via Garmin-Slipstream Pro Cycling team

Ben Zimmer’s discovery last week of the first usage of the term Ms. in America sparked my interest. Zimmer found the term in the November 10, 1901 Springfield (Mass.) Sunday Republican under the heading Men, Women and Affairs. In the article, the writer attempts to fill “a void in the English language” by suggesting the now common term Ms. as “a comprehensive term which does homage to the sex without expressing any views as to their domestic situation.”

All discussion of antedating aside (which, I might add, I find incredibly fascinating — who knew that finding the origin of a word was a competitive sport?!), Zimmer’s discovery led me to question the very necessity of the term Ms. and to wonder if any languages other than English have faced or do face the quandary related by the Springfield Sunday Republican writer.

Although we now know that the term was used as early at 1901, Ms. was not commonly used until the 1970s when it was firmly established as the neutral female complement to Mr. With the rise of feminism and women’s rights, it only seemed natural for women to define themselves by their status as a woman and not by their status as an unmarried (Miss) or a married (Mrs.) woman. In fact, the first issue of Ms. magazine clarified its name by stating that the term Ms. “is being adopted as a standard form of address by women who want to be recognized as individuals, rather than being identified by their relationship with a man.”

Whether or not the term is actually neutral can be debated, but what I found most interesting is its existence in the English language. After some cursory research, I cannot find any term equivalent to Ms. in another language. It seems that no other culture finds it necessary to allow for a socially neutral female address, which, of course, makes me wonder why this country spent so much time and energy establishing a debatably neutral term (many argue that Ms. still associates a woman with her marital status and is often interpreted as the address of an unmarried woman).

I’ve listed below the female addresses in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

In German and French it appears that Frau and Madame are actually equivalent to both Mrs. or Ms. in English, but again, there is not a separate socially neutral female address.

If I’m absolutely wrong about my conclusion that there is no equivalencey for Ms.in any other languages, please let me know!

Arabic: آنسة (Miss); ﺳﻴﺪۃ (Mrs.)

Chinese: 小姐 (Miss); 夫人 (Mrs.)

Dutch: Mejuffrouw (Miss); Mevrouw (Mrs.)

Filipino: Binibini (Miss); Ginang (Mrs.)

French: Mademoiselle (Miss); Madame (Ms./Mrs.)

German: Fraulein (Miss); Frau(Ms./Mrs.)

Hindi: सुश्री or कुमारी (Miss); श्रीमती (Mrs.)

Italian: Signorina (Miss); Signora (Mrs.)

Japanese: お嬢さん (おじょうさん) (Miss); 女史 (じょし) (Mrs.)

Korean: 숙녀 (Miss); 부인 (Mrs.)

Russian: Девушка (Miss); Госпожа (Mrs.)

Spanish: Señorita (Miss); Señora (Mrs.)

Vietnamese: quý cô (Miss); Bà   (Mrs.)

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Michael Jackson’s talent transcended language and culture differences. As a testament to this, the above graffiti portrait can be found in Berlin, Germany. Similar tributes can be seen and heard in cities around the world. The artist is MTO Graff.

Since last year, all of us at Beyond Words have worked hard to provide a fun and useful resource for language lovers and professionals.

In between the fun language articles, we occasionally offer advice on how to become a professional translator, and we try to deliver some context on the history of translation, as well as some of the trials and tribulations that translators face.

If you are thinking about embarking on a translation career, we’d like to offer this new series as a useful reference.

Paths to Success in Translation

The Paths to Success series will serve you interviews with professional translators, guides to the best schools and certification programs, and advice for translators at every level. We hope you enjoy it, and find it useful.

With this first of our Paths to Success interviews, we turn to Mary C. Maloof-Fleck for her point of view on what it takes to make a successful translation career. (Hint: In Mary’s case, it has already involved the State Department, wine, dental surgery and a particularly surly gang member.)

Mary translates Spanish, French, and Portuguese into English. She resides in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. With 15 years of experience in the language services industry, she is the founder and moderator of SpTranslators, an extremely popular Yahoo! Group for Spanish translators, as well as the founder and moderator of Legaltranslators, a Yahoo! Group for legal translators of all languages.

As a child, Mary, who is of Lebanese descent, surprised her parents by choosing to study Spanish instead of Arabic because she felt inexplicably drawn to the Spanish language and Latin culture. Although she was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, she has traveled extensively throughout Western Europe, and lived in Madrid, Paris, and Washington, D.C. before embarking on her translation career. She is an accomplished classical pianist and has even been known to sing at a club or two!

Without further ado, we give you Mary Maloof-Fleck on paths to a successful translation career:

Why did you become a translator and what path did you take to get to this point in your career?

Originally, in college and in my early twenties, I never wanted to become a translator, and in fact, had never even considered that career path. I had actually been dreaming of a job with the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Service Officer, and had engineered my entire college career toward that end, with study abroad in Spain and France, a semester of study in foreign affairs at the American University, and an internship with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. However, for the written portion of the FSO examinations I scored 145 points out of the 146 points I needed to make it to the oral tier, so my dream of becoming an FSO was dashed. I then graduated from college and moved to Washington, DC in 1994, attempting to break into the international relations sector from another angle through applying for jobs as a foreign affairs analyst, and all my efforts went up in smoke there as well. I couldn’t even get a job as an executive assistant at any of the embassies or government offices in town. In my job search I was invited back by people countless times for a second interview, but the jobs always ended up going to someone in-house or to someone they knew. Always the bridesmaid, but never the bride!

In the meantime, I had to pay the rent, so I temped as an executive assistant at the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and numerous think tanks. At one of them, the World Resources Institute, I worked as part of a team that was preparing a report to be submitted to the first Summit of the Americas (Miami Summit). I was asked to translate some articles that a group of Latin American journalists had written on sustainable development projects in Latin America, articles that would be included in this report with their translations. My co-worker, who was responsible for coordinating the articles and communicating with the journalists, had worked as a part-time translator for 20 years, and told me, “Your translations of these articles are excellent. You have a gift. Have you ever considered becoming a translator?” I laughed because I had this picture in my head of translators being these pedantic recluses without a life, huddled behind piles of books that they never emerged from to see the light of day, and I, of course, was not like that. After patiently listening to all my objections and stereotypes, she simply handed me information on the translation certification program at Georgetown University’s Linguistics Department, saying, “Look, just humor me and check it out.” I went to their next orientation session, spoke with the professors, and in two hours’ time, I knew in my heart that this was for me.

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Most people would agree that some languages have just the bon mot for a particular sentiment.

The English language has adopted many of these perfect expressions and incorporated them into everyday speech and writing.

Check out this list of words and a bit of the story behind how they made their way into English.

à la

If you are having a brownie with a scoop of ice cream on top, you are having a brownie à la mode, and you have the French to thank for the delicious treat. In French, à la means “in the style of”, with à la mode meaning “in the current style.” If a restaurant has an à la carte dining fashion, patrons are free to select from a fixed list of options on the menu, or carte.

amateur

Originally, to be an amateur meant to be a lover of something, from the Latin amare, meaning “to love.” The contemporary meaning of the term, meaning a non-professional practitioner of some pursuit, comes from the French. A similar term of Italian origin – dilettante – comes from the verb dilettare, meaning “to delight.”

armada

The term used to describe a large navy fleet made its way into English from the Spanish armada. The root arma, meaning “weapon,” described the heavily armed and protected Spanish ships. Similarly, the armadillo is a small “armored” creature thanks to its heavy outer shell.

banana

The name of this fruit comes from the Arabic ba’nana, meaning “fingers.”

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From Translate for Iran:
The Translation and Interpretation Initiative for Iranian Protesters (TIIIP) is an ad hoc initiative to produce free, publication-ready translations and high-quality interpretations of the written and spoken communication streaming out of Iran in the Farsi (Persian) language in the form of e-mails, YouTube videos, Facebook entries, press releases, etc. We leverage volunteer translators, interpreters, linguists, bilinguals, and technical and administrative support personnel to achieve these goals. Our approach is similar to crowdsourcing, but with greater emphasis on the use of professional translators, writers, and editors. Our platform is the wiki.

With Web 2.0 making its debut as the millionth word in the English language this past month (according to the Global Language Monitor) we have been introduced to a new interpretation of what we can classify as an English word.

What counts towards this million-word marker to begin with, given the many slang words that are created daily and the many compound words which are not included in many English dictionaries? Do we count the million odd insect species names or the 80 million chemical compounds?

While the millionth word may seem like a milestone in the history of the English language, it raises many questions among linguists and the general public.

I know that to most people, Web 2.0 does not seem like a word which should be included in any dictionary, much less count as the millionth word in the English language. Linguists who are supporting this new millionth word maintain that it appears in over 25,000 internet searches online, thereby making it popular enough to be construed as a word of importance within the language. While the word originated as a technical term referring to the next generation of web products, it has gained much circulation in the past six months, causing it to originally be considered amongst words like slumdog and n00b as a contender for the millionth word.

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Most people are all too familiar with the tip-of-the-tongue sensation of trying to express what seems almost inexpressible. Perhaps you’ve felt the frustration of having the perfect word just beyond reach. Whether it’s some quality, sentiment, observation, or emotion, some descriptions are hard to come by.

To help Beyond Words readers overcome this unfortunate quandary, here are a few adjectives for words that pertain to other nouns:

Source:
The Phrontistery

Like many people, I’ve put in a good amount of time watching internet clips of cute babies/kittens/puppies/parrots/etc on YouTube. While the videos range from ridiculous to fairly amusing, I recently found myself totally captivated by a video featuring a baby who uses sign language.

What at first glance appeared to be yet another cute baby making faces video quickly took on an added dimension. I noticed this baby doing something with her hands. Over the next few minutes I came close to rubbing a bald spot on my chin because of my amazement.

Watch the video, I highly recommend turning your sound on.

The child in the video is a one year old girl and her parents started training her using sign language at an early age. The fascinating part is that, although she was able to say a few words, a good portion of the words that she was able to sign she wasn’t able to say.

In fact, according to the norms of child development, babies usually aren’t able to ask for foods by name until they’re 18-24 months old, but she does this in the video with signs. At a year old they have a vocabulary that can be counted on both hands. This is not for lack of cognitive ability.

It turns out that as children grow, their hand-eye coordination develops much more quickly and at an earlier age than their speech abilities. While there are many muscles in the human hand and arm, there are many more in the face and throat that are required for making intelligible sounds.

So because they’re able to exhibit comprehension at 12 months old, they’re also able to mimic giving commands or requests at 12 months old. While their vocal ability takes longer to develop, babies, it seems,have the cognitive and physical ability to communicate by making signs or approximated signs.

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