The European Union’s bill for translation will have to balloon by nearly 60 percent to over 1 billion euros a year to prevent the bloc from turning into a Tower of Babel after its eastward enlargement.

The European Commission said the annual cost of written translation was expected to grow to 807 million euros in the next few years from 549 million in 2003, when Brussels institutions already translated a staggering 1.3 million pages.

Expenditure for oral interpretation of 50-60 meetings held each day in Brussels is forecast to increase to 238 million euros a year from 105 million euros once the EU’s expansion to 25 from 15 members last May is fully digested.

The EU executive said the soaring bill was the price for ensuring a level playing field for all EU citizens, whose number grew to 453 million from 375 million.

The EU’s total budget is 105 billion euros this year, or about 1 percent of the bloc’s gross national income.

The number of official languages increased to 20 from 11 with the EU’s enlargement into mainly ex-communist eastern Europe. Bulgaria and Romania are set to join in 2007 or 2008, bringing two more languages into the club.

Read more

PhatWare Corporation, a leading provider of software products and professional services for mobile and desktop computers, announces the new version of PenOffice, handwriting recognition software for Microsoft Windows Powered Tablet and Desktop PCs. Some new features this improved version of PenOffice includes are: a customizable keyboard with 13 predefined layouts; Auto Corrector, which improves the quality of handwriting recognition; and support for multi-monitor systems.

PenOffice 2.6 is available in two editions: English and Multilingual. While both editions have the same feature set, the Multilingual Edition offers handwriting recognition in eight Western European languages. In addition to Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, the new version adds support for Swedish handwriting recognition.

Read more

The European Union is entering its first full calendar year with 25 Member States and 20 official languages. The scale of its multilingual regime makes it unique in the world, and to some the extra work it creates for its institutions may seem at first sight to outweigh the advantages. But there are special reasons for it. The Union passes laws directly binding on its citizens and companies, and as a matter of simple natural justice they and their courts must have a version of the laws they have to comply with in a language they can understand. Everyone in the Union is also entitled and encouraged to play a part in building it, and must be able to do it in their own language.
Incorporating nine new official languages – Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak and Slovene – into the system at one go in May 2004 was an unprecedented situation for the Commission, and its language services have had to adopt some innovative approaches to deal with the resulting challenges. Now that the initial dust has settled, the time is ripe for a review of the situation so far.

Read more

In addressing the seminar on “Combatting Islamophobia,” U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan called for the distinction of the politically-motivated violence from the religiously-motivated one.

“Islam should not be judged by the acts of extremists who deliberately target and kill civilians. The few give a bad name to the many, and this is unfair,” he said.

While addressing an audience of scholars, senior United Nations officials, and representatives from civil society organizations, Annan meant to address the Christian West at large. America in particular?

Read more

Fat Brazilians? In a body-conscious society whose gifts to global culture include the girl from Ipanema, the tanga bikini and Gisele Bündchen and other supermodels, the idea seems heretical. Yet a controversial government study released late last month confirms it: Brazil is experiencing an epidemic of obesity.

According to the report, conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics and issued right as summer arrived and people began flocking to the beaches in skimpy clothing, just over 40 percent of Brazil’s adult population is overweight. Overall, 1 adult in 10, or more than 10 million people, are obese, by international standards, compared with fewer than four million who were deemed to be undernourished.

Read more

With over 111,000 people arriving and settling, 2003-2004 saw the highest number of migrants and refugees coming to Australia in ten years, according to Australia’s Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (IMIA).

According to data released January 10, last year’s number was 20,000 more than in 2002-2003, and reflects a general trend for increased migration – in 1993-1994 just 70,000 settlers arrived in Australia. Furthermore, IMIA says that these figures do not include increasing numbers of people gaining permanent residency status, such as overseas students making onshore skilled migration applications.

With 18,000 British migrants to Australia last year, the UK contributed the most new arrivals, followed by New Zealand, China, India, South Africa, the Sudan and the Philippines. Over half the entrants (68,500) settled in the two most populous Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria, which contain the country’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne.

Read more

HMW Online, the Hispanic Marketing Source, has upgraded its Market Profiles section and expanded its geo-demographic population and household data from 21 to 40 selected DMA’s. HMW Online now provides the latest and most complete information including population, language, economics, origin and education. The information, prepared by Geoscape International, provides data for 1990 and 2000, and projections for 2005 and 2010.

Read more

The woman who led the way in fostering better German-American relations in the 1960s with the Kontakt program died Jan. 6 of natural causes in her home near Heidelberg, Germany.

A funeral for Jeanne Jones, 82, will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at the city cemetery in the town where she lived, Handschuhsheim.

Jones, who was also a public affairs specialist with U.S. Army Europe for about 30 years, was considered the mother of Kontakt, according to a statement issued by USAREUR. Kontakt clubs focus on bringing together American soldiers and local German citizens for cross-cultural activities. Jones wanted Germans and Americans to become better friends through cultural awareness, the statement said.

Jones was the original author of USAREUR Regulation 360-90, which covers Kontakt clubs in Germany. She also spearheaded the short-lived Cross-Cultural Program directly after the fall of the Berlin Wall that helped forge better relations between people living in the former East and Germans and Americans living in the West.

Read more

Rudyard Kipling’s famous line “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” no longer applies. Today, East and West are commingled, and in this country, the East is on the rise.

Take movies. American audiences are growing more familiar with movies from China, Japan and South Korea. Quentin Tarantino is planning a kung fu movie entirely in Mandarin, and Zhang Yimou’s stylized martial arts films like “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers” are popular across the country. Hollywood is remaking Japanese blockbusters like “The Ring” and “Shall We Dance?”

What many Asian Americans once considered proprietary culture — kung fu, acupuncture, ginseng, incense, Confucian dramas, beef noodle soup and so on — has spilled irrevocably into the mainstream.

Three decades ago, who would have thought that sushi would become an indelible part of American cuisine? Or that Vietnamese fish sauce would be found on Aisle 3 of Safeway? Or that acupuncture would be accepted by some HMOs? That feng shui would become a household word? Or that Asian writers, especially Indian, would play a large and important role in the pantheon of American letters?

American pundits tend to look at the world through a very old prism — they associate globalization as synonymous with Americanization: i.e., how the United States influences the world. What many tend to overlook, in the age of porous borders, is how much the world has changed the United States.

Read more

LOOKING someone straight in the eye is bad manners for Ethiopians, but taking a pencil from a classmate without asking shows your friendship is close enough to do away with formality.

These are a couple of the ways misunderstandings can arise for the 150 Ethiopians now living in Tasmania.

It is up to cross-cultural workers such as Terhas Bayru not only to translate the language but also to explain cultural differences to both newcomers and locals.

Read more

In an interview with DW-WORLD, the president of Germany’s Bundestag, Wolfgang Thierse, stressed it was important for the Arab-Islamic world to open up to the West for the dialogue between the two to be really fruitful.

On Dec. 12, 2005 DW-WORLD’s Arabic Web site goes online. To mark the event, the editors spoke to Wolfgang Thierse, president of the German parliament, about the much-vaunted dialogue between the West and the Arab-Islamic world.

The interview comes at a time of intense debate in Germany about the integration of foreigners living in the country and the compatibility of Islam with European values.

Read more

The conference on Arab media in the information age concluded [in Abu Dhabi] yesterday with a clear message that the media should be given full freedom to carry out its duty in a balanced way.

The three-day conference, organised by the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR), focused on issues like how media is influenced by governments as well as by regional cultural considerations and the roles that these considerations could play both as a bridge and a barrier to cross-cultural understanding.

Media experts from around the world addressed access of information and control of media by political and commercial interests. They investigated whether the media can remain impartial in situations of war and crisis.

Read more

Leadership quality, customer focus and the unremitting pace of globalization are among the top challenges facing competitive organizations in 2005, according to a panel of eight business management experts interviewed recently by BetterManagement, the comprehensive Internet resource for decisive leadership.

“We asked thought leaders from around the world to describe the most significant challenges facing competitive organizations in 2005,” said Jeanette Slepian, President of BetterManagement. “The panelists agreed that globalization continues to radically transform the business environment. As a result, leaders everywhere face unrelenting pressure to achieve more with less, to maximize the value of customer relationships and to realize the full potential of human capital investments.”

John Brandt of the MPI Group predicted that managing globalization will continue to create headaches for corporations throughout the world. Relationships between stakeholders become more complex. Increased global trade often causes local problems, said Brandt.

Read more

New Yorkers who do not speak English face enormous problems communicating with medical professionals at the city’s private and public hospitals, a report released yesterday reveals.

Nearly 75% of the 51 hospitals surveyed by the city controller’s office failed to provide Spanish-language services to callers to one or more of the hospitals’ departments.

“Here in New York City, the world’s melting pot and home to over 2 million foreign-born residents, it is unconscionable that basic health care services remain out of reach for citizens who don’t speak English,” Controller Bill Thompson said.

According to the 2000 Census, nearly 40% of the city’s population is foreign-born, with 52% of those residents coming from Latin America.

“But while the face of New York is changing every day, our hospitals are trapped in an English-only time warp,” Thompson said.

Read more

There’s a difference between the pre-packaged Shanghai stir-fry vegetables in my refrigerator and a McDonald’s restaurant in Brazil.

On a trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last year, I visited Rocinha favela, one of the largest hillside shantytowns in the world. As I walked into the hillside community, surrounded by street children digging through garbage for their next meal, I noticed a McDonald’s restaurant on the corner.

The golden arches stood out amid the noticeable poverty of the community.

When I asked a resident about the presence of McDonalds, he replied that the favela residents pleaded for a McDonald’s restaurant because it made them feel connected to the rest of the city of Rio de Janeiro, and by extension, to the global community.

The golden arches symbolize inclusiveness in commercial society. Attached to the brand McDonald’s is a particular idea of modernity and development. Rocinha favela residents desired to participate in a global culture that eats McDonald’s hamburgers.

Suddenly, the difference between the pre-packaged Shanghai stir-fry vegetables in my refrigerator and the McDonald’s restaurant in Brazil is obvious.

When I take my Shanghai Stir-Fry vegetables out of the microwave and savour the exotic flavouring, I do not feel a part of Shanghai culture. By contrast, a McDonald’s hamburger carries a symbolic value to a low-income Brazilian. The hamburger symbolizes inclusiveness to a global consumer culture that can afford to purchase a hamburger.

The food we eat not only contains nutrients and minerals to keep our bodies healthy but also contains a psychological element, reflected in how we perceive our economic status in the world.

Read more

I spent the first eight years of my life in the United States, where I was born. The next eight years were spent in Venezuela, my father’s native country. While living in Venezuela, I witnessed the arrival of Burger King. The Venezuelan fast food chain Tropi Burger or any of the local Cuban hamburger joints served better tasting burgers than Burger King’s, which tasted like they had been shipped down from the United States frozen (presumably because they had). But there was something special about eating at Burger King. It was American. Same goes for chocolate. I grew up on some of the best milk chocolate in the world in cacao-producing Venezuela. Nowadays, Venezuelans are eating American chocolate and the founder of Tropi Burger brought T.G.I. Friday’s and Benihana to Venezuela. Why? Because they’re American.