You can test the study’s findings with the 10 Foreign Language Cover Songs we compiled here. When able to, we included the original English language song so you could compare the two versions. We posted the English language streams via the free online music service Lala. You’ll notice the YouTube video directly followed by a smaller gray and blue Lala player.

In order to stream the original English versions through Lala, you may need to start a free account. Signing up for Lala is easy, and once you have an account, you’ll be able to stream tracks from their music catalogue of more than eight million songs. You can also follow ALTA on Lala so you can hear what we’re listening to in the office and suggest new tunes to us!

Johnny Cash performing I Walk the Line in German

Die Ärzte performing Gehn Wie Ein Ägypter
A German cover of The Bangles’ Walk Like An Egyptian

Seu Jorge performing David Bowie’s Life on Mars? in Portuguese

Los Campos Magnéticos performing El Galán de La Paternal
A Spanish cover of The Magnetic Fields’ The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side

Blondie performing Call Me in Spanish

Mikel Erentxun performing Esta Luz Nunca Se Apagará
A Spanish cover of The Smiths’ There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Rachid Taha performing Rock El Casbah
An Arabic cover of The Clash’s Rock The Casbah

Adriano Celentano performing Pregueró
An Italian cover of Ben E. King’s Stand By Me

Oksana Mysina and Oxy Rocks performing Не то уж теперь
A Russian cover of Bob Dylan’s Things Have Changed

Shang Shang Typhoon performing レットイットビー
A Japanese cover of The Beatles’ Let It Be

More Music for Language Learners:

For additional covers in foreign languages, visit these sites:

The Word: Foreign Language Covers Thread
Lyrics Training: Improving Language Skills Through Song

____________________________________________________________________________________________

ALTA has provided Language Training to government agencies, corporation, and non-profit organizations for 30 years. As trailblazers in the area of language training through video-conferencing technology, we invite you to learn more about our Online Language Training programs. The only unconditionally guaranteed language lessons in the business.

                          

The Direct Method

The Direct Method is also known as the Oral or Natural method. It’s based on the active involvement of the student in both speaking and listening to the new language in realistic everyday situations. The process consists of a gradual acquisition of grammatical structure and vocabulary. The learner is encouraged to think in the target language rather than translate. He or she hears and uses the language before seeing it written.

The Grammar-Translation Method

This method grew from the traditional method of teaching Latin and Greek. The method is based on analysis of the written language using translation exercises, reading comprehension and written imitation of texts. Learning mainly involves the mastery of grammatical rules and memorization of vocabulary lists.

The Audio-Lingual Method

This self-teaching method is also known as the Aural-Oral method. The learning is based on repetition of dialogues and phrases about every day situations. These phrases are imitated, repeated, and drilled to make the response automatic. Reading and writing are both reinforcements of what the learner practices.

Comparing the Language Training Methods

This comparison graph shows the expected results for a typical student applying the same amount of time and motivation to the learning. We scored the value of each method from 1 to 10 in the following aspects: Speed of Learning, Listening Comprehension, Speaking Capability, Writing Capability, and Grammar.

The Direct Method gives the student the ability to communicate quickly because she is encouraged to be creative during practice. It gives, by far, the widest range of capability to understand what another person says to you and in developing your capability to speak. This is the method of choice for instruction with a live trainer and where speaking and listening are most important.

The Grammar-Translation method requires the learner to spend a lot of time understanding the language structure. Listening and speaking suffer because of this. Understanding the structure is helpful in reading and particularly in writing. Grammar and vocabulary are emphasized throughout. This is the method of choice when the student’s goal is to achieve a high level of writing and reading ability in a foreign language, versus speaking and listening.

The Audio-Lingual Method also allows the learner to communicate quickly but within the limited range that the repetition allows. It improves comprehension only if the speaker uses phrases that the learner has studied. Reading is limited, and an understanding of how to use the language is very limited. This is the method that is used when a live trainer is not available.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

ALTA creates customized online language training programs based on the Direct Method and the Audio-Lingual Method. ALTA lessons include initial, interim and final language testing to verify progress. All testing is on ALTA’s 1 through 12 scale or the U.S. government’s ILR scale (Interagency Language Roundtable). The Audio-Lingual Method is used for specialized programs that are not trainer-led, particularly at the lower levels of initial skill.

                          

Paul Frommer’s Na’vi Language

For the indigenous Na’vi of the planet Pandora, James Cameron wanted to create a “complete and consistent” language that sounded both pleasing and alien, but was learnable by the human actors who would be required to speak it. He created a list of 30 base words that encompassed the “smooth and appealing” sound that he envisioned for the Na’vi language, and then passed that list on to linguist Paul Frommer.

Frommer, in turn, presented Cameron with three distinct phonetic structures: one tonal, one using different vowel lengths, and one using ejectives. The director chose the ejective structure and from there, Frommer created the 1,000-word language. Na’vi incorporates morphology and syntax from many existing languages, such as the infixes of Austronesian and Austroasiatic languages, and the tripartite language system of the Wangkumara people. In a recent interview, Frommer describes his thought process behind the language’s creation.

The hardest part of Na’vi, according to Avatar star Zoe Saldana, wasn’t speaking the language itself, but speaking English with a Na’vi accent. “It would always sound like Queens.”

Those feeling up to the challenge of learning to converse with natives of Pandora can find lessons at Learn Na’vi, or listen to samples of the Na’vi language here.

The Na’vi language may be only a couple of years old, but the languages of Middle Earth have been the subject of study for decades. Author J.R.R. Tolkien started creating languages at the age of thirteen, starting with Nevbosh. For his collection of fantasy novels, he created not only Sindarin and Quenya, the languages of Elves, but also abbreviated lexicons and syntax for the languages of Men, Dwarves, Ents, Ainur, and Orcs.

Tolkien’s Sindarin Language

Sindarin, in particular, is one of Tolkien’s most highly developed languages. It stemmed from his Gnomish language, dating from as far back as 1917 and first published in Parma Eldalamberon #11. Tolkien later referred to Gnomish as “the Elvish language that ultimately became that of the type called Sindarin.” He deliberately chose Welsh-sounding phonetic structures, as he felt that it seemed to “fit the rather ‘Celtic’ type of legends and stories told of its speakers.”

Tolkien’s Elvish languages have inspired academic papers, journals, and even the creation of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship, an international organization dedicated solely to the study of the invented languages of Middle Earth. To learn Sindarin, check this out.

Marc Okrand’s Klingon

As popular as Sindarin is, it is Klingon that Paul Frommer called the “gold standard” of fictional languages. Klingon was first heard on screen as spoken by James Doohan for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Since then, not unlike Tolkien’s Sindarin, it has taken on a life of its own. Several notable works have been translated into Klingon, including the Bible and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing (according to Chancellor Gorkon, “You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon”). The language has also inspired three heavy metal bands, one opera, and numerous organizations dedicated to its learning.

Klingon was developed into a fully-fledged language by linguist Marc Okrand. The producers of Star Trek wanted the Klingon language to sound “guttural and harsh”, not unlike the characters themselves. To achieve this, Okrand chose sound combinations not usually found in human languages. For example, Klingon has no velar plosives, but does combine voiceless alveolar plosives and voiced retroflex plosives. Even the punctuation follows its own rules. The apostrophe is a character itself, representing a full glottal stop. You can read various works in their original Klingon here.

Anthony Burgess’ Ulam Language

No list of movie conlangs would be complete without the Ulam language from the movie The Quest for Fire. The Ulam language, spoken by the Neandethal Ulam tribe, was created by none other than Anthony Burgess of A Clockwork Orange fame. By the time he was approached to create Ulam, Burgess had already created the Nadsat slang for A Clockwork Orange and was a noted polyglot.

Ulam was not the only language used in the film. The language spoken by the more advanced Ivaka people was that of the Cree/Inuit natives of northern Canada. It would seem, however, that the Cree language was not as well researched as the Ulam, as most of the lines spoken by the more advanced tribe in the movie have nothing to do with the plot itself.

                          

It is estimated that over 50 million people in the U.S. speak two or more languages. The majority of multilingual residents in the U.S. live in cities, and, as language professionals, we were curious which cities in the U.S. are the most multilingual. We combed through census data and developed a scoring system that includes cultural and linguistic factors in order to rank the top multilingual cities in the country –places where a resident might be able to read a газета, have a quick bite of a عجين الفطير, and maybe even take in a few minutes of a poésie reading, all in the course of an average day.

In order to keep the rankings manageable, we included only cities that the 2000 Census cited as having more than 400,000 residents, leaving us with 40 cities. We ranked them using a calculated point system. Each of the 40 cities received a score between 1 – 40 in ten different categories. The lower the number, the better score for the city, as in the game of golf. Here is a list of the categories, followed by the ranking results:

Population Statistics

Cultural-Linguistic Data Set

We also compiled data sets on cultural and linguistic events and institutions in each of the 40 cities. With the cultural-linguistic data set, we attempt to go beyond population stats to highlight the diversity that multilingual places enjoy. We ranked cities on a scale from 1 – 40 in the following cultural categories:

Leading off the group is New York City, which may not surprise many readers given that New York remains the most populous city in the country. According to census data, 47% of New Yorkers are multilingual. Almost 3 million New Yorkers speak languages in addition to English. If we would have included the city’s boroughs independently on this list, a few of them would have scored towards the top as well.

Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” Languages certainly landed in Los Angeles and stuck around. Even more than New York City’s, Los Angeles’ population consists 57% of multilingual residents. The city has some of the nation’s largest cultural enclaves including Historic Filipinotown, Koreatown, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Tehrangeles, and Thai Town.

Chicago has more than a million multilingual residents. An international business and tourist destination, Chicago is often referred to as The City That Works, but calling it The City That Speaks might be more appropriate. Among the famous cultural enclaves in Chicago is the Puerto Rican neighborhood Paseo Boricua.

With significantly large populations of Asian and Latin American immigrants, San Francisco has become a truly multilingual city. Almost 400,000 multilingual people live in San Francisco. The city contains several large cultural districts, and it even hosts the largest Chinese New Year Parade in the US.

Texas alone claims a third of the 15 most multilingual cities in the country, and Houston is the largest of the group. With more than 800,000 multilingual residents, Houston is the international Capital of the Sunbelt. Some parts of the city display Chinese and Vietnamese street signs for residents.

More than 37% of Dallas residents speak languages in addition to English. Although Dallas possesses a large Latin American population speaking both Spanish and English, the city also has a significant Korean American presence and a large Koreatown in the northwest section of the city.

The second largest city in California, San Diego is home to more than 450,000 multilingual residents. Notably, Chicano Park, located in the city’s Mexican-American Barrio Logan, contains the nation’s largest collection of outdoor murals.

Boston has a population below 600,000 people, but it still manages to rank highly due to the diversity of its residents. A quarter of the population in Boston is foreign born, and more than 30% of residents are multilingual. Take a trip to the Mattapan neighborhood to hear some Haitian Creole or trek to Andrew Square to hear some Polish.

More than half of San Jose’s population is multilingual. Approximately 460,000 out of almost 900,000 residents speak multiple languages at home. If you visit San Jose, you may have the chance to hear the wide array of spoken languages in one convenient setting: the San Jose Flea Market, which is the largest open-air market in the country.

Almost 47% of San Antonio is multilingual — a percentage likely influenced by the majority Latino population in the city. San Antonio is among the historic centers of Tejano culture in Texas, and both English and Spanish remain the most prevalent languages.

If the 200,000 multilingual residents of Austin are not helping “Keep Austin Weird,” they are at least helping to keep it linguistically diverse. More than 30% of Austin’s population speaks a language other than English. If you want to hear some Spanish take a stroll along Cesar Chavez Street.

A mile high and 150,000 multilingual residents deep, Denver can claim a language culture as unique as its geographical location. Immigrants from across Latin America make up its multilingual population, and Denver holds the largest Cinco de Mayo celebration in the U.S.

El Paso, know as “El Chuco” by residents, has the largest percentage of foreign language speakers of any city on this list. More than 70% of El Paso is multilingual. El Paso shares four bridges with Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua, Mexico, allowing the two cities to act together as an international metropolitan area.

Since its inception as a city, Philadelphia has had links to foreign languages. Named the City of Brotherly Love from the Greek words philos and adelphos, Philadelphia has more than 250,000 multilingual residents. Visit the Italian Market to hear a variety of different languages from Italian, to Korean, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

Only about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, Long Beach has more than 200,000 multilingual residents. If you want to hear some Khmer, take a trip to Cambodia Town, the largest Cambodian community in the nation.

The following is a list of the remaining 25 cities we ranked:

A Note About ALTA’s Scoring System:

In order to compensate for the population differences between cities and ensure fair score distribution, we factored per capita statistics into each city’s score. For example, New York City has more foreign language media outlets than Albuquerque, but New York also has a much larger population of foreign language speakers, giving it an unfair advantage in that category. So, we divided the number of multilingual persons in a city by the number of foreign language media outlets in that city. Per capita calculations were used when dealing with non-census cultural data. Some cities with very high percentages of multilingual residents did not make it past our initial round of data collection due to their population numbers. The city of Miami, for instance, had only 362,470 residents when the 2000 census was done. Had the population exceeded our 400,000 cut-off mark, Miami would surely have placed somewhere near the top cities as 74.6% of its residents are multilingual.

Even as you read this, the U.S. Census Bureau is busy compiling data for the 2010 Census. Population data will have significantly changed in many of these places over the course of the past decade. We will make sure to provide an updated ranking as soon as the data is made available!

                          

Before we have time enjoy all the new talks in search of the next great language moments at TED, we thought we could at least round up five of the most thoughtful, interesting, and entertaining talks from past TED conferences. The following talks approach the subject of language from diverse fields including linguistics, biology, and digital media.

1. Wade Davis on endangered cultures

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Wade Davis, discusses the erosion of the ethnosphere in this TED talk from 2007. He proposes that language loss may be the greatest indicator of weakening global cultural diversity. To use Davis’ own words, the experience of watching this talk might be like “being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with Baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity”—and even if it’s not that, it is definitely one of the most entertaining TED talks about language and culture currently available.

2. Erin McKean redefines the dictionary

Editor-in-chief of the American Heritage dictionary, Erin McKean, describes how the role of lexicogrophers is really to “fish” for new words rather than to “direct traffic” on questions of language. In this talk, McKean discusses the nature of the bound printed dictionary and how digital technologies can potentially improve upon the dictionary’s centuries-old form. If you enjoy what you see and hear, visit her online dictionary: Wordnik.

3. Steven Pinker on language and thought

Stephen Pinker gives viewers a crash course in simple grammar and then proceeds to extrapolate on the not-so-simple topics of human intelligence, human language, and indirect human verbal communication. Most importantly, though, viewers get to hear Pinker tell jokes about guacamole.

4. Susan Savage-Rumbaugh on apes

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh comments on the nature-versus-nurture debates surrounding language development in animal species through her studies of the bonobo ape. Savage-Rumbaugh, a distinguished primatologist, shows TED viewers how bonobos may respond to language and learn language much like humans do.

5. James Geary, metaphorically speaking

James Geary, aphorist and author, speaks on the complex topic of the metaphor in spoken, written, and symbolic language. Watch as Geary shakes up ideas about the metaphor—possibly even giving viewers a new appreciation for Elvis Presley as a wordsmith.

Are there any TED talks about language and translation you thought we excluded? Let us know in the comments for this post.

                          

Since the earthquake in Haiti, thousands of medical workers, translators, and interpreters have organized for specialized relief efforts. Translators Without Borders will soon offer a medical triage dictionary for use with Haitian Creole, and ALTA has enlisted our resources to translate and record Haitian Creole medical phrases for aid workers and volunteers. Based on selections from the Emergency Multilingual Phrasebook published by the Red Cross, we hope that the phrases are useful for those who want free Haitian Creole pronunciation practice.

Haitian Creole sometimes has more than one term or phrase to describe a medical condition or English term. In those cases, our translator was asked to choose the most common Haitian Creole variant in order to be understood by all speakers despite regional and cultural differences.

You can listen to them directly on our website or download them for later playback on any standard MP3 compatible device. Each sound clip contains a recording of the English phrase followed by the Haitian Creole pronunciation, and finishes with the Haitian Creole phrase repeated for emphasis. We hope that this resource is helpful and we welcome any feedback.

Haitian Creole Medical Phrases:

1. What is your name?
Download audio file (01.-What-is-your-name.mp3)

2. I am a nurse.
Download audio file (02.-I-am-a-nurse.mp3)

3. I am a doctor.
Download audio file (03.-I-am-a-doctor.mp3)

4. I am a disaster volunteer.
Download audio file (04.-I-am-a-disaster-volunteer.mp3)

5. I am a social worker.
Download audio file (05.-I-am-a-social-worker.mp3)

6. May I examine you?
Download audio file (06.-may-I-examine-you.mp3)

7. How old are you?
Download audio file (07.-how-old-are-you.mp3)

8. Were you recently injured?
Download audio file (08.-Were-you-recently-injured.mp3)

9. Did you lose consciousness?
Download audio file (09.-Did-you-lose-consciousness.mp3)

10. When did you become ill?
Download audio file (10.-When-did-you-become-ill.mp3)

11. Do you have any pain? Where does it hurt?
Download audio file (11.-Do-you-have-any-pain-Where-does-it-hurt.mp3)

12. Does it hurt when I press here?
Download audio file (12.-Does-it-hurt-when-I-press-here.mp3)

13. What is your level of pain, rating it from 1 to 10?
Download audio file (13.-What-is-your-level-of-pain.mp3)

14. Are you bleeding anywhere?
Download audio file (14.-Are-you-bleeding-anywhere.mp3)

15. Do you have a cough? Are you coughing anything up?
Download audio file (15.-Do-you-have-a-cough-Are-you-coughing-anything-up.mp3)

16. Are you having trouble breathing?
Download audio file (16.-Are-you-having-trouble-breathing.mp3)

17. Please take a deep breath.
Download audio file (17.-Please-take-a-deep-breath.mp3)

18. Please open your mouth, stick out your tongue, and say “aah”.
Download audio file (18.-Please-open-your-mouth-stick-out-your-tongue-and-say-aah.mp3)

19. Please hold this under your tongue.
Download audio file (19.-please-hold-this-under-tongue.mp3)

20. I’m going to take your temperature.
Download audio file (20.-Im-going-to-take-your-temperature.mp3)

21. You have a high fever.
Download audio file (21.-You-have-a-high-fever.mp3)

22. Do you have diarrhea?
Download audio file (22.-Do-you-have-diarrhea.mp3)

23. Are you constipated?
Download audio file (23.-Are-you-constipated.mp3)

24. Do you have any swelling?
Download audio file (24.-Do-you-have-any-swelling.mp3)

25. Do you have trouble seeing?
Download audio file (25.-Do-you-have-trouble-seeing.mp3)

26. Do you have trouble hearing?
Download audio file (26.-Do-you-have-trouble-hearing.mp3)

27. Do you have trouble swallowing?
Download audio file (27.-Do-you-have-trouble-swallowing.mp3)

28. Do you have trouble walking?
Download audio file (28.-Do-you-have-trouble-walking.mp3)

29. Are you pregnant?
Download audio file (29.-Are-you-pregnant.mp3)

30. When was your last menstrual period?
Download audio file (30-a.-When-was-your-last-menstrual-period.mp3)

30 (b). Alternate phrase using a common idiomatic expression for ‘menstrual period’:
Download audio file (30-b.-When-was-your-last-menstrual-period-vernacular.mp3)

31. Do you have a history of cancer, heart disease, or diabetes in your family?
Download audio file (31.-Do-you-have-a-history-of-cancer-heart-disease-or-diabetes-in-your-family.mp3)

32. Do you have any chronic diseases, such as asthma, diabetes, or epilepsy?
Download audio file (32.-Do-you-have-any-chronic-diseases-such-as-asthma-diabetes-or-epilepsy.mp3)

33. Are you taking any medicine right now?
Download audio file (33.-Are-you-taking-any-medicine-right-now.mp3)

34. Are you allergic to any medicine?
Download audio file (34.-Are-you-allergic-to-any-medicine.mp3)

35. I need to take your blood pressure.
Download audio file (35.-I-need-to-take-your-blood-pressure.mp3)

36. I need to listen to your chest.
Download audio file (36.-I-need-to-listen-to-your-chest.mp3)

37. I need to give you an injection.
Download audio file (37.-I-need-to-give-you-an-injection.mp3)

38. I need to take a blood sample.
Download audio file (38.-I-need-to-take-a-blood-sample.mp3)

39. I need to give you some stitches.
Download audio file (39.-I-need-to-give-you-some-stitches.mp3)

40. You have a broken leg.
Download audio file (40.-You-have-a-broken-leg.mp3)

41. You have a broken ankle.
Download audio file (41.-You-have-a-broken-ankle.mp3)

42. You have a broken arm.
Download audio file (42.-You-have-a-broken-arm.mp3)

43. You have a broken wrist.
Download audio file (43.-You-have-a-broken-wrist.mp3)

44. You have a broken shoulder.
Download audio file (44.-You-have-a-broken-shoulder.mp3)

45. I need to put a cast on your broken leg.
Download audio file (45.-I-need-to-put-a-cast-on-your-broken-leg.mp3)

46. I need to put a cast on your broken ankle.
Download audio file (46.-I-need-to-put-a-cast-on-your-broken-ankle.mp3)

47. I need to put a cast on your broken arm.
Download audio file (47.-I-need-to-put-a-cast-on-your-broken-arm.mp3)

48. I need to put a cast on your broken wrist.
Download audio file (48.-I-need-to-put-a-cast-on-your-broken-wrist.mp3)

49. I need to put a cast on your broken shoulder.
Download audio file (49.-I-need-to-put-a-cast-on-your-broken-shoulder.mp3)

50. Please urinate into this container.
Download audio file (50.-Please-urinate-into-this-container.mp3)

51. Do not eat or drink anything. (Note: Haitian Creole recording separates this into two phrases: Do not eat anything. Do not drink anything)
Download audio file (51.-Do-not-eat-or-drink-anything.mp3)

52. You are going to be okay. Don’t worry.
Download audio file (52.-You-are-going-to-be-okay.-Dont-worry1.mp3)

Listen to these Haitian Creole Medical Phrases on a Mobile Device

DOWNLOAD the Complete Set of MP3s

Other Online Resources

Byki Haitian Creole for iPhone and iPod Touch
English – Haitian Creole Medical Dictionary
Haitian Creole Phrasebook
Translators Without Borders

____________________________________________________________________________________________

The Help Heal Haiti graphic T-shirt by Bruno Postigo can be purchased online. Proceeds go to Red Cross.

ALTA is an Atlanta based Language Services Provider celebrating 30 years in business. In addition to providing Translation Services, Language Testing, and Language Training, ALTA participates in various charities, from raising money for AIDS research, to offering free language training programs to non-profit organizations. For more information, please call 404.920.3800.
____________________________________________________________________________________________

                          

新年快乐, xīn nián kuài lè, 過年好, guò nián hǎo, or Happy New Year!

Yesterday marked the first day of the Lunar New Year and all around the world people celebrated by feasting, wishing each other peace and prosperity for the year to come, and by setting off firecrackers. As the longest and most important holiday during the Chinese Lunar year, Chinese New Year is celebrated in areas with significant Han Chinese populations (the dominant people group in China, representing 92% of the country’s population) including (but not limited to) Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. While not an official holiday in Australia, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere, significant celebrations occur in the countries’ various Chinatowns and in homes everywhere.

The date of the New Year differs from year to year and is determined by the lunisolar Chinese calendar (the calendar indicates both the lunar phases and the time of the solar year). According to the Gregorian calendar, the new year falls on a date between January 21 and February 20; according to the lunisolar calendar, it occurs during the eleventh month, generally on the second new moon after winter solstice. Each year is marked by an animal of the zodiac—rat (鼠), ox (牛), tiger (虎), rabbit (兔), dragon (龍), snake (蛇), horse (馬), sheep (羊), monkey (猴), rooster (雞), dog (狗), and pig (豬)—along with a ten year cycle of the heavenly stems—the five elements of Chinese astrology: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. The five stems are alternated yin and yang (yang wood, yin water, yang metal, etc.). This year, 2010, for example, is the yang metal tiger, and it happened to fall on February 14, Valentine’s Day.

Chinese New Year Traditions:

Some of the traditions associated with the New Year holiday include a thorough cleaning of one’s house. The act of sweeping away dust and dirt is believed to sweep away the bad luck of the previous year and readies the home for good luck. Once the broom and dust pan is put away, good luck cannot be swept away. The color red is also associated with the New Year, and many cut out paper symbols of luck and prosperity and decorate their homes with them.

Food, of course, plays a large role in the celebrations, and some common dishes include some form of fish (the pronunciation of fish, 魚 or yú is a homophone for surplus 餘 or yú), Jau gok (油角, yóu jiăo), Jin ju or mandarin oranges (金橘, jīn jú), noodles (which represent longevity), and a Nian gao (年糕) which is the Chinese New Year Pudding and whose pronunciation is a homophone for “a more prosperous year” (年高). The half-moon shaped Jau gok is the main Chinese New Year dumpling and is one of the more well known dishes served. Originally found in Cantonese cuisine and originating in the Guangdong Province in China, the fried dumplings are made of a glutinous rice dough and filled with variations of pork, Chinese sausage, and black mushrooms. A sweet coconut version called 甜角仔 is also made and consists of dried coconut and sugar.

Another important tradition is the exchange of red paper packets or envelopes commonly filled with money. Known as lai sze or 利是 in Cantonese, ‘hóng bāo’ or 红包 in Mandarin Chinese, the red envelopes are 壓歲錢or Ya Sui Qian, literally translated as “the money used to suppress or put down the evil spirit.” In Western countries, dollar amounts of $8 are common because eight is considered a lucky number (its homophone is wealth). In other countries, the amount varies, but only even-numbered dollar amounts are considered proper, but odd numbered amounts are associated with funeral cash gifts, and the envelopes are given by married couples to unmarried friends and family members.

Other traditions and elements include the setting off of firecrackers at nighttime to drive evil spirits away, the lighting of red, oval lanterns, and dancing the dragon dance or lion dance. The dances along with their accompanying drum beats and cymbal clashes are believed, like firecrackers, to ward off bad or evil spirits. Gathering with one’s extended family and practicing 守岁 or Shou Sui (reminiscing about the past year and predicting the year to come) the night after the reunion dinner on Chinese New Year is another common event.

Although the first celebration day of the New Year was yesterday, the holiday extends up to fifteen days and includes traditions such as visiting relative members in other areas, eating more dumplings (Jiǎozi or 餃子) on the morning of Po Wu (破五), and celebrating yuán xiāo jié (元宵节) which is the fifteenth day of the New Year and features tangyuan (汤) dumplings, a sweet, glutinous rice ball dumpling eaten in soup. On this last day of the New Year celebrations, candles are lit outside of homes to guide wayward spirits home.

So, Happy New Year and may you find peace and prosperity in the year to come!

Photo by Twonggg

                          

During the Summer Olympics in Beijing, language played an important, and sometimes confusing role. According to a Telegraph article from 2008 , taxi drivers and Olympic officials completed an intensive English training course, but despite the country’s best efforts, much of the accented English was barely decipherable. In response to the language barrier, one company developed a new translation platform called Jajah Babel, which was essentially a free telephone service that translated English into Mandarin and vice versa. Marketed at visitors, the IBM-based platform helped Olympic tourists navigate simple questions and answers at the touch of a phone.

Some translation issues, however, cannot be navigated by a simple iPhone-type application. How do coaches and athletes and officials communicate during events? Almost all communication between officials and athletes or coaches occurs in French or English (or in the home country’s tongue, which, this time, is English and French, coincidently), but for visitor navigation and other Olympics-related language barriers, the home country, in this case Canada, supplies the translators.

According to Werner Patels, the blogger behind Translation-Language-Culture-Communication , Canada may not be prepared for the onslaught of Olympic crowds. In April of 2009, The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, reported that Graham Fraser, the Commissioner of Official Languages, i.e. the official promoter and supporter of a French-English bilingual Canada, appeared before the House of Commons’ official languages committee and stated that Olympic organizers were falling behind in their efforts to make the Olympics fully bilingual. Apparently the federal government was holding back on assistance to the Olympic organizers — an ironic stance given that the government aims to promote bilingualism.

Patels argues, however, that the federal agency (the translation bureau) translation and interpretation services are sub-standard, and that the bureau contracts translators all around the world rather than using the many professional French-Canadian translators and interpreters right in their back yard:

Bureau interpreters, for example, regularly interpret into a “B” or “C” language, rather than exclusively into the “A” language (A being the interpreter’s mother tongue). English Canadians who want to follow proceedings in the federal parliament are therefore treated to English interpretations with thick and often unintelligible French accents. Quite often, too, those interpreters produce a kind of franglais that makes most people’s hair stand on end: in this context, I always give as an example that francophone Bureau interpreter with a really thick accent who rendered “dans un cafe” as “in a coffee” several times in a row in such phrases as “We discussed it while sitting in a coffee”.

The question, then, is whether Canada actually responded to this language crisis. In September, The China Post reported that, “Federal Heritage Minister James Moore announced US$7.7 million in new funding for the Olympics just hours after reports raised concerns that the organizing committee was out of cash to meet the commitment.” Even with the extra funds, though, it seems as if Canada never quite got it together bilingually — something very odd given that much of the country is bilingual.

On February 7, 2010, Kelowna reported that while the organizers arranged for a wide array of francophone artists to take center stage at cultural events, the Cultural Olympiad’s 86-page program guide was subpar (in regards to translation):

The guide’s French translation is peppered with grammatical inconsistencies, awkward sentence structures and, strangely enough, a few cringe-inducing typos…but the biggest issue we found with the guide is that French readers will sometimes find themselves confronted with event descriptions that read more like backwards run-on sentences without a proper beginning, middle and end.

Kelowna reports that VANOC (Vancouver Olympics Committee) had the massive translation completed “by hand” — by which, I’m assuming they mean that Vancouver avoided using Machine Translation. However, it is not clear whether they employed any computer-assisted translation tools (CAT). The two are very different. From 2006 to 2009, Vancouver translated over three million words (with an additional five million needed by the end of the Paralympic Games in March). It would be difficult to produce such a large scale translation, and keep it accurate and consistent all the way through, without software assistance. Sometimes people outside the language industry do not know how CAT platforms function, so here’s a brief explanation:

SDL Trados and Déjà vu, to name just a couple of the major CAT options, offer translators and project managers with an interface that breaks the text into segments and presents the segments in a convenient way to make translating easier, faster and more consistent. Most importantly for large scale projects such as the Olympics Guide, these tools have Translation Memory capabilities. Translation memory files store previously translated source texts and their equivalent target texts in a database and retrieve the related segments during the translation of new texts for consistency across and multiple documents over time. These are tools that assist humans in performing large scale, complicated translation jobs — they are not machine translations.

Even with CAT software, errors sometimes creep into large scale projects, but it does seem a bit strange that VANOC and its contractors have been unable to render accurate French translations. Below is an example of the incorrect translations via Kelowna:

Description for Art of Craft, at the Museum of Vancouver (p. 18).

Original English text (excerpt):
Celebrating the inventiveness and refinement of over 100 fine craft artists from across Canada and the Republic of Korea.

French translation (excerpt):
Celebrer l’imaginaire et le raffinement de plus de 100 artistes des metiers d’art de partout dans le Canada et en Coree du Sud.

Our translation:
Une exposition celebrant l’imaginaire et le raffinement de plus de 100 artistes des metiers d’art de partout au Canada et en Coree du Sud.

(Note: The English text assumes the exhibit is “celebrating,” therefore it needs to be fleshed out in French. Our version is one of many options — it could have easily been “celebrez,” where the audience is the subject instead but the infinitive form “celebrer” is incorrect. “Dans le Canada” is a literal translation of “in Canada,” which might have been part of the original English text before editing. This particular French phrasing, in any context, remains awkward.)

Whether Vancouver will live up to its bilingual heritage or not, only time will tell. Until then, let’s just hope that everyone ends up where they need to be and learns what they need to know — whether it is in French or English.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

ALTA is an Atlanta based Language Services Provider celebrating 30 years in business. In addition to providing quality Translation Services, Language Testing, and Language Training, ALTA was the official Translation provider for the 1996 Olympic and Paralympic Games held in Atlanta, GA.

The above photo depicts an art installation by Ron Terada that is currently outside the Vancouver Library. Photo taken, and brilliantly cropped, by Uncle Buddha

                          

Top 10 Languages Tested (2009)

Rounding off the list, the next 10 most-tested languages after Russian are: German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Somali, Turkish, Cantonese, and Sorani.

Other Language Testing Articles

Language Testing and Health Care Reform:
ALTA and Kaiser Permanente Breaking Cultural Barriers

Psychometricians: What They Are, and What They Do

What is the Angoff Method?

Norm Referenced vs Criterion Referenced Testing

Multiple Choice Test Development 101

The Value of Independent Language Testing

                          

As usual, five feature length films were nominated — Ajami, El Secreto de Sus Ojos, The Milk of Sorrow, Un Prophète, and The White Ribbon. I immediately looked up the films to get a description of each one and share them here.

Ajami

Israel’s official submission to the Academy Awards is a coming of age story of Nasri and depicts the conflict and confusion of growing up in a Jewish-Arab neighborhood in the Mediterranean city of Jaffa. Directed by Scandar Copti and Yaron Smith, it is the fifth ever Israeli movie to be nominated for an Oscar. Copti hopes that the film nomination will give people “a chance to understand what a Palestinian living in Israel is” (Ynet News). To further the cause, the film is the collaboration of both Jews and Palestinians and much of the dialogue is written in both Hebrew and Arabic. Peace is not easy to come by in the Middle East, but maybe this film will help break down some barriers. (source IMDB)

El Secreto de Sus Ojos

The project of Argentine director Juan José Campanella, it is based on Eduardo Sacheri’s novel La pregunta de sus ojos (The Question in Their Eyes). The movie is based on the flashback of Benjamín Espósito, a federal justice agent who becomes entangled in the investigation of a woman who is raped and murdered in her house in Buenos Aires. Set in the mid-1970s during a time of political upheval, the story also revolves around Espósito’s love and his determination to write the events into a novel. For the ending you’ll just have to watch the film. (source IMDB)

The Milk of Sorrow

Again, from South America, The Milk of Sorrow is a Peruvian film directed by Claudia Llosa. It addresses the violence toward women in recent Peruvian history. Set during the 1980-1982 uprising of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in the Andes, the film explores the trauma experienced by the women raped by members of the Maoist group. The film is an attempt to catalogue and explore trauma and testimony and relies heavily on contemporary psychoanalytical trauma theory, including that of Jean LaPlanche and others, and posits that trauma is passed from the raped mothers to their newborn babies through the act of breast feeding. Already the film has received the prestigious Golden Bear award and FIPRESCI Prize from the Berlin Film Festival. (source IMDB)

Un Prophète

From Europe, Un Prophète and The White Ribbon received nominations. Un Prophète is the French selection and is directed by Jacques Audiard. The film follows the life of Malik El Djebena who is sentenced to prison for six years. Although he is originally illiterate, he learns how to read and write under the tutelage of a Corsican Mafia group and through various missions and murders he eventually gains independence from the Mafia. The film already holds the Grand Prix Award from the Cannes Film Festival, Best Film Award from the London Film Festival, and Prix Louis Delluc, a French film award. (source IMDB)

The White Ribbon

Das weisse Band (The White Ribbon), on the other hand, is the project of Michael Haneke, an Austrian filmmaker. The movie is set in the village of Eichwald, Germany, between 1913 and 1914 (the eve of WWI) and follows the lives of the Protestant villagers ruled by a puritanical pastor. Strange things begin to occur in the village and the tension between local leaders — the pastor, the baron, the schoolteacher, and midwife — heightens as strange and brutal events occur. At the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d’Or and FIPRESCI awards and later the FIPRESCI Grand Prix award for best film of the year. At the European Film Awards, the movie took home Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenwriter. Regarding the Academy Awards, there has been some tension due to the fact that the film was submitted by Germany although the writer-director is Austrian. (source IMDB)

Overall it looks like the competition is going to be stiff in the Foreign Language category and I can’t wait to find subtitled copies of the films.

Related Articles

Foreign Language Film From A to Z
Beyond Words contributors list their all time favorite foreign language films in this alphabet meme style post.