Trusted Translations, Inc. has become actively involved in the fight against childhood cancer by supporting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.  Spanish Translation US, a division of Trusted Translations, Inc., is particpating in the efforts to help St. Jude.

St. Jude “Chocolat au Vin” Gala

Trusted Translations, Inc. is proud to support St. Jude with its inaugural “Chocolat au Vin” event featuring Tony Bennett and Honorary Chair, Kristin Davis, to be held in NYC on May 28, 2009.    Trusted Translations’ CEO is the founder and Executive chair of this red carpet event to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.   “The St. Jude Chocolat au Vin Gala, A Deliciously Decadent Evening of Dancing, Desserts and Dreams” is the first of a series of events expected to raise millions over the next several years. 

For more information on the event, please visit:

http://translation-blog.trustedtranslations.com/translations-support-st-jude-2009-05-22.html

Translation for St. Jude Initiative

In conjunction with this event, Trusted Translations will launch the “Translation for St. Jude” initiative.  This nationwide initiative will entail Trusted Translations, Inc. donating 5% of all proceeds from new translations projects from participating organizations. 

To learn more about this initiative, please visit:

http://www.trustedtranslations.com/translation-for-st-jude.asp  

Ipod Translator

The Apple Ipod has taken the world by storm and, along with its sibling the Iphone, become the must have accessory for the 21st century. Each new Ipod has brought along a fresh idea, be it video capabilities or an insanely compact size. It has been heralded for much more than its entertainment capabilities, with advocates claiming that its large memory can be useful in everything from learning to diagnose heart murmurs to getting into shape. Duke University went as far as to issue a 20gb Ipod to all incoming freshmen. With all of these applications, surely there is something for translators, right?

Of course. And believe it or not, the most highly touted Ipod translator comes from the US Army. Vcommunicator Mobile has been used in Iraq for several years now and provides loads of options for communicating in Arabic and Kurdish. Phrases such as “May I see your ID?” are spelled out phonetically so that they can be read aloud, or for the US soldier with an imperfect Arabic accent, the phrase can be played over a mini-speaker to everyone in the immediate vicinity.

Although the details have yet to be ironed out, the translator (interpreter?) will soon be made available to tourists, businessmen and other foreign travelers who need to communicate in another language.

Twitter, tweet and tweak your heart out globally now with a number of new products and services. If you have not yet heard, Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows people to stay connected, and according to the New York Times, Twitter is “one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet.” Friends keep in touch with friends, companies keep their clients up to date on their business, and there is even a President Barack Obama Twitter, which, along with a Youtube channel and MySpace page, is part of the “WhiteHouse 2.0″ initiative (this will also coincidentally be translated soon). So evidently it’s huge in the U.S. But what if you want to twitter in Spanish? Or twitter in French?

As with any translated material, you can translate Twitter into any language with a human translation or a machine translation. Businesses that plan their twitter announcements in advance can send out to have a set of tweets translated for their multilingual markets. There are also of course programs that function as an automatic Twitter translator, but with an already condensed text space and a language of its own, this inevitably leads to garbled translations. Machine translations of tweets have proven to be nearly incomprehensible and much of the “wit” disappears into thin air.

So regardless of whether you want to twittear in Spanish or send out a gazouillisin French, human translation is your best bet for a Twitter translator. And to keep up to speed on the happenings at Spanish Translation, you can now follow us at http://twitter.com/TRANSLATION_

George Bernard Shaw once said that “England and the United States are two languages separated by a common language,” and in the Canterville Ghost Oscar Wilde stated, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.” I don’t know who was first, but it’s the same idea. And what should we say about the Spanish spoken by Mexicans, Uruguayans, U.S. Spanish-speakers, Spaniards, and so many others “separated” by this wonderful language? The variations in each region can shock visitors that thought they knew “Spanish.” And even native Spanish-speakers can be surprised to find that they don’t know exactly what’s being said or sometimes find themselves in a very awkward predicament when the word means one thing in their home country and something completely different in another…
In addition to the glossaries we’ve assembled and those that I recently wrote about, there are resources that can help translators, travelers and anyone who wants to learn about the differences between the different flavors of Spanish. First, we have one that I’ve mentioned before, the Diccionario de jergas de habla hispana, where you can search for all of a word’s variants or how it is said in a certain country (21 countries are listed). Its authors welcome contributions and say that it includes “those special expressions that are so typical of the Spanish spoken in each country and turn duller neutral Spanish into something vivid and animated…”
Another site, a bit more specialized, is the Diccionario argentino-español (para españoles,)” which according to its author, aims to “restore virtual lexicographical order to the linguistic disarray existing between Argentina and Spain.” It is an interesting compilation of “problem words” that are used differently in different countries.
There are also glossaries of terms from Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, the Canary Islands, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador. And there are certainly more to come.

The idea of machine translation was introduced to the general public on the 7th of January, 1954. The project was a collaboration between the University of Georgetown and IBM, who provided a model 701 to serve as the “brain” for the translation. The machine was fed over 60 relatively simple sentences in Russian and provided a fairly accurate English translation. Keep in mind that this experiment took place at a  time  when computers were just being introduced to the world and were frequently called “robots” or “giant brains,” so the results were astounding and in some circles, frightening.

Here is an example of one of the more general translations:

Russian: “Mi pyeryedayem mislyi posryedstvom ryechyi”

English: “We transmit thoughts by means of speech”

So why did the scientists and linguists choose Russian into English? Perhaps this next example will make things a little clearer.

Russian:  “Dyinamyit pryigotovlyayetsya xyimyicheskyim protsyessom yiz
nyitroglyitsyeryina s pryimyesjyu yinyertnix soyedyinyenyiy”

English: “Dynamite is prepared by chemical process from nitroglycerine with admixture of inert
compounds”

Cold War, here we come.