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Bilingual tots and the language of smell
Not many parents in Israel make the choice, but a few send their kids to Arabic/Hebrew bilingual preschools. The World’s Jerusalem correspondent Matthew Bell is one of them. His son is about to enroll in a preschool where Hebrew and … Continue reading
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Translating disaster and disastrous translations
In this podcast, Carol Hills and I pick a few stories that had previously passed us by. We dust them off and turn them into out Top Five Language Stories of the month. 5.Translating Iceland’s economic collapse into English. Iceland … Continue reading
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Translators working overtime, silverfin aka Asian carp, and counting in Chinese
Translators are proving their worth twice in this week’s podcast: in New York, where they’re helping elderly Russian speakers fill out forms from the US Census Bureau; and in Louisiana and Mississippi where they’re interpreting for Vietnamese-American fishermen whose livelihoods … Continue reading
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A language speed-dater gets serious, and a cross-dressing, cross-linguistic singer
A language-learning marathon is over, as the author of a blog called 37 Languages decides which language to learn for real. The first time I talked to Keith Brooks he’d speed-dated 13 languages: he read up on each one, learned … Continue reading
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Census-taking, volcano-pronouncing, and why Thais win at Scrabble
The U.S.Census Bureau is firing on all linguistic cylinders to ensure that non-English speakers are counted in this year’s census. It has been getting the word out via ads, PSAs and handbills translated into 28 different languages (compared to 17 … Continue reading
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An American family, an Indonesian tribe, an oral language and its first book
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Google’s humanoid translator, accent phobia, and misleading job titles
In this podcast, our monthly top-five roundup of language stories: 5. Why Google Translate rules (and why human translators shouldn’t feel threatened.) Google, as we’ve come to expect by now, does things differently. And that includes translation. We tend to … Continue reading
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Street names, Bible translators and locavore language
When it comes to naming a street, you can go with the bland: Bella Vista Ave. Or not: Mugabe St (which has been among several contentious new street names under consideration in Durban, South Africa.) In the Palestinian city of … Continue reading
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Swearing in Irish, storytelling in Scots, and rapping in Khmer
Two takes on the Irish language: one from Patrick’s dad, who was a schoolboy in the early years of Ireland’s independence, when studying Irish was an exercise in nation-building. Then, an interview with Manchan Magan who made a TV series about traveling around Ireland speaking only Irish. Next, we hear from Alexander McCall Smith: his latest offering in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series is a children’s book in the Scots language. Finally, hip-hop artist Boomer Da Sharpshooter who grew up speaking English but now raps in Cambodia’s main language, Khmer. Continue reading
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Moorish grafitti and texting in Yiddish
The Alhambra in Grenada, the crowning glory of Moorish Spain, has more than 10,000 prayers and poems in Arabic inscribed on its pillars and walls. We hear about an effort to decipher and catalog the inscriptions. It’s not the first … Continue reading
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