If you’re thinking about immigrating to the U.S., you’ll need to inform yourself well. There are numerous sites that provide interesting facts, suggestions and comments on everything that makes up the American culture and the American way of life (at least from an immigrant’s point of view….) The w...
Many companies are starting to see the Hispanic market in the U.S. as an opportunity for them to increase their business. Regardless of the industry, the Hispanic community has become a mayor consumer force. And although only 1% of websites are translated into Spanish, this is likely to change soon. Hilton Hotels, for exa...
The Top 100 Language Blogs 2010 competition just announced the winners. This year’s competition received close to 500 nominations, and Spanish Translation Blog made it to the top 100! Thanks for voting! To see the complete list visit Top 100 Language Blogs 2010...
The U.S. book publishing industry is a $27 billion a year business and consists of approximately 2600 companies. There are 6 large publishers (all in New York), 3,400 medium-sized publishers and 86,000 small/self-publishers in the U.S. Four of the U.S. conglomerate publishers are foreign owned. Although the publishing indu...
Spanish is becoming increasingly more common in the U.S., stimulated by an increasing growth of the Hispanic population. Many Hispanics, even those fluent in English, want to maintain their cultural identity by continuing to learn and speak Spanish. Finally, there is a growing group of English-speaking, non-Hispanics who ar...
According to a study conducted last year by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), commissioned by the Latino Business Chamber of Greater Los Angeles (LBC-GLA), Hispanic-owned businesses are the key to creating jobs and income in the U.S. economy. The LBC-GLA is a non-profit organization created in 2008 to gath...
Dora the Explorer in the 2010 Census campaign The tasks related to the 2010 Census in the United States began on April 1 with the questionnaires that were sent by mail. Efforts will continue until late July with door-to-door visits to those who do not return the questionnaire. The official census website contain inform...
Hispanics are now the largest U.S. minority, comprising 15.1 percent of the total population. The Census Bureau estimates that approximatley 30.2 percent of the population (132.8 million people) will be Hispanic by the year 2050. That means that one third of the population will be Hispanic. How Does the Census Data Benefit ...
What is Plain English? Plain English (sometimes referred to as plain language) is a style of writting that is simple and direct. It “emphasise clarity, brevity and the avoidance of technical language”. Why Plain English? “Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any other document (or any part...
In 40 years, the United States will be the country with the most Spanish speakers in the world. It currently more people speak Spanish than in Spain or Argentina, and only second to Mexico in quantity. Immigrants from 20 countries converge with different versions of Spanish and, according to experts, comprise the most im...
According to the 2000 census, over 21 million people in the United States have limited English proficiency (LEP). Nearly 28 percent of all Spanish speakers in the United State fall into this category. This language barrier can be a serious disadvantage in providing quality health care. It can affect an LEP patient’s acces...
We may like or hate it, but this phenomenon is among us. And I’m not refering to Spanglish, but specifically to Reggaeton. The truth is that this musical style is strongly associated with not just one country’s or region’s culture, but throughout Latin America. Whether it “represents” us or no...
A dictionary is a simple tool which helps us with the pronouciation, spelling and grammar needed for correct and effective communication. A glossary is an alphabetical list of technical terms in some specialized field of knowledge. The list below are helpful resources for general and specialized terminology in English and ...
“Spanglish” is the title of the 2005 comedy starring Adam Sandler (John), Tea Leoni (Deborah) and the Spanish actress Paz Vega (playing a Mexican housekeeper, named Flor), in which the characters come to understand each other without words. According to the executive producer of the film, in which an American ma...
For those businesses that want to test the potential of their products or services with the US Spanish market, those ready to employ a more proactive approach, or those fully committed to their Spanish speaking consumers, I recommend translating part, if not all, of your website into Spanish and developing a search friendly...
I recently wrote about the growing Spanish market in the United States and prior to that I discussed the intent of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE) to improve Spanish use in this country. I also commented on the mix of English with other languages spoken in the film “Code 46“, which [&he...
The current population is estimated to be 6 million. However, the United Nations expects this number to increase to 90 million by the year 2025. And the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion in 2050. According to UNESCO data, there are approximately 400 to 500 million Spanish speaking people in the world. ...
The Hispanic population is a consumer segment that is growing faster than any other minority group in the United States. Already many businesses are starting to implement new approaches and strategies to target Hispanics. And yet there is no one “Hispanic market”, even if language unifies U.S. Hispanics. This i...
A colleague of mine sent me the link to a site called Forvo, which I found very interesting. According to the website, Forvo is the largest word pronunciation dictionary in the world. Ask for that word or name, and another user will pronounce it for you. You can learner how to pronounce in over 220 […]...
Tips for interpreters What is interpretation? In a nut shell, interpretation is “oral translation”. That is, an interpreter is responsible for transferring someone’s oral discourse into an equivalent discourse in a different language. By definition, translators are interpreters -although a good interpreter, besides ha...