It should be a surreal scene, indeed, for the lads from Stockholm — playing in balmy temperatures in the dead of winter… playing Mexico in the United States… playing Mexico in a city where it has lost exactly once in 15 matches… playing in front of 40,000 rabid Mexican fans who sing the national anthem so loudly that it drowns out the music.

…Mexico soccer fans aren’t big on advance sales.

As of last night, sales were in the low 20,000s for a venue that can seat about 42,000 for soccer. And most U.S. sporting events will draw a walk-up ticket-buying crowd of a couple thousand, if that.

Not with the Mexican national team. The smallest walk-up crowd that local promoter Paul Mendes can remember for a Mexico game in San Diego is 9,000. Some were in the 15,000 drange. One year, Mendes says they sold 25,000 tickets in the 36 hours before kickoff.

“It’s cultural, and it’s very hard to change that,” said Alejandro Taraciuk, the director of international business for Soccer United Marketing, which owns the rights to Mexican national team games in the States. “The one thing Mexico fans want to see before they purchase tickets is that the ‘real’ players are coming, not a B team or a youth team. Once they see that the real players are coming, they start buying tickets in big numbers.”

A big marketing tool for promoters, then, is the images of Jared Borgetti and Pavel Pardo and the rest of El Tri’s regulars getting off the plane at Lindbergh Field last night on the evening news.

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OU Medical Center Staff Stepping Up Training, Recruitment Of Interpreters

The number of Hispanic patients at the University of Oklahoma Medical Center is increasing, and that has led to a rise in Spanish language translation services.

The number of Hispanic patients increased 12 percent between 2002 and 2003, said hospital spokesman Allen Poston. He said 2004 figures are not yet available.

Meanwhile, patients needing translation services increased almost 15 percent last year. The medical center averaged 985 interpretations a month in 2004 compared with 842 a month the year before, according to data compiled by translation coordinator Jorge Cure.

Cure said it is difficult to tell if the increase reflects a rise in the medical center’s Spanish-speaking patient load or the availability of more translators.

Hospitals receiving federal funds are required to provide free interpreters to all patients who need them, but there is no requirement for special training.

Many hospitals rely on in-house language banks that might include Spanish-speaking housekeepers or cafeteria workers. Others contract with outside businesses for translation services in person or by telephone.

Cure is trying to raise the bar at the OU Medical Center, where interpreter applicants must be fully bilingual with some knowledge of medical terminology. Those hired then go through a week of training to learn interpretation protocol, hospital policy and more medical terminology.

At the end of the training, they must pass written and oral examinations with scores of 90 percent.

Cure said he hopes the state Health Department will adopt a program like his to certify trained medical interpreters.

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A successful UND student and faculty exchange program is being honored today by an international nonprofit that tracks global education networks.

The Institute of International Education has recognized UND with an honorable mention as part of its 2005 Heiskell Awards for Innovation for UND’s joint business management initiative with the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology.

UND also recently hired its first Chinese Studies tenure-track professor and has added Chinese language instruction to its curriculum.

UND’s Executive in Residence program sends former business CEOs with experience in China to make contacts with American businesses in China, paving paths for students.

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Rupa Ranganathan’s job used to be a little easier. She is in charge of organizing Strategic Research Institute’s annual Hispanic marketing conference, held in Miami Beach every January for the past decade.

Back when the conference started, it was about the only one around. But today, thanks to the explosion of corporate interest in the Hispanic market, there’s a plethora of similarly themed pow-wows being offered around the country.

That makes a tad more work for Ranganathan.

”I do keep an eye on the competition,” said the senior vice president and ethnic strategist for the New York-based firm. “I study who’s coming to conferences and talk to them about issues and challenges. I read whatever’s written. I have to keep in touch.”

Multicultural and Hispanic marketing has been a hot conference topic since 2000, when the U.S. Census underscored that Hispanics were the fastest-growing slice of the population. And heavily Hispanic Miami, a favorite spot for confabs of any type in the winter, is especially popular for multicultural-themed events.

There are now so many of these conferences around the country that executives have to pick and choose which to attend.

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Getting a French-speaking audience to theaters in the United States to watch a post-World War II-era drama about a reform school isn’t going to make a movie distributor much money.

That’s part of the reason why “Les Choristes,” France’s current Academy Award hopeful for best foreign film, is coming out in this country as “The Chorus” and is being advertised as a universal feel-good story about how singing in a choir turns a group of troubled boys around. In Canada, where it was released a few months ago, it was “The Choir.” This fall in England it was “The Choirboys,” probably the closest to the original title, but perhaps not the most strategic choice for America.

“I’ve always been a fan of original titles,” says Gary Faber, vice president of marketing at Miramax Films, which is releasing the film here. “But this one was a simple decision. People couldn’t pronounce it.”

The last few years have shown that foreign movies, with the right combination of art, luck, and canny marketing, can make real money. Three years ago “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” made more than $128 million, rather surprising for a movie about a bunch of people fighting over a sword in medieval China. The same year, “Amelie,” about a French imp, pulled down $33 million. In 2002, Mira Nair’s “Monsoon Wedding” proved that a film primarily in Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu could still make $14 million. And this fall, “Hero” made $53 million despite being held for two years by its distributor.

To pull in those kind of numbers, you can’t rely on just the art-house crowd. You have to seduce viewers who generally stay away from subtitled movies. That means being both good and very careful when it comes to promotion. Depending on a film’s subject and its intended audience, trailers and ads play up its familiar or exotic aspects, even while downplaying the fact that viewers will have to read their way through it. This can involve completely wordless trailers, English-language voiceovers that aren’t in the films themselves, or print ads that create interest without implying anything too foreign.

It’s not so much about trickery — making the films look American so people won’t realize they’re going to be seeing a foreign film — as about getting audiences to long to see a film so much that they’ll go even if they have to read what’s being said.

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What makes a city international? Its people! The 2000 U.S. Census reports the foreign-born population of Marion County at 4.5 percent. Their number has increased 157 percent since 1990.

We are a composite of people from throughout the world. In fact, there are 129 languages other than English spoken in homes of Marion County public school students. International Baccalaureate degrees are offered at private and public high schools throughout the area, as are instruction in foreign languages and English as a new language.

The demand for English-language instruction for newcomers is on the rise in businesses and organizations. So, too, is the interest in learning Spanish. The city’s Hispanic population is projected to reach 24 percent of Indiana’s population by 2030.

Foreign-owned businesses employ 137,400 in Indiana, ranking the state 14th nationally…

It is as important today as at any time in the history of our city to build bridges of understanding. It makes good business sense to be a welcoming, open, international city…

Economic, cultural, social and political advantages will be ours to the extent that the world recognizes Indianapolis as an increasingly international, cosmopolitan and welcoming city.

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Deal to keep service for deaf, but some see need for Spanish translation

They flash a silent language for hours, never knowing who’s benefiting, if anyone at all.

The remarkable skill of these sign language translators, who convert fiery Dallas City Council debates and governmentese with their bare hands, are often wasted; and with it, tens of thousands of tax dollars, too.

While rendering an exact figure is difficult, the law of averages suggests that only a handful of sign-language literate, hearing-impaired residents each year sit through sparsely attended City Council meetings.

The signers’ translations go no further than City Hall’s council chambers. Dallas Community Television broadcasts council meetings, but sign language translators are never shown, rendering the feed useless to deaf viewers.

Then last week, without debate, the council unanimously approved a three-year contract worth up to $125,000 to continue the in-meeting sign language translation.

Meanwhile, Dallas’ Spanish-speaking population, tens of thousands of residents strong, receives no council meeting translation services – nothing in person, nothing via television or radio broadcasts.

No plans are afoot to expand city translation services to Spanish, although the new sign language contract provides for televised coverage of the sign language translators, Acting City Manager Mary Suhm said. Dallas routinely translates city documents into Spanish, provides 311 services in Spanish and features a Spanish-language version of its Web site, Ms. Suhm added.

The Dallas Independent School District has for years provided Spanish translations of its board meetings and many neighborhood gatherings, district spokesman Donald Claxton said. An on-site translator talks to audience members through headphones, he said.

“There’s someone at every meeting using it,” Mr. Claxton said.

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Tennessee banks that delay development of a marketing strategy to reach Hispanic business owners risk losing access to the fastest-growing market segment in the state, says a report by MBA students at the University of Tennessee.

For six weeks last fall, 13 teams of students researched the existing data on the state’s Hispanic business community and interviewed hundreds of Hispanic business owners across Tennessee.

The purpose of the project, which was sponsored by First Tennessee Bank, was to find the best time to launch a Hispanic marketing strategy and what banking services should be included.

“Interestingly, all of the teams came back and said the same thing: Now is the time to jump. This is a rapidly growing market segment looking for financial services,” said Sarah Gardial, associate dean for academic programs and a professor in the Department of Marketing and Logistics.

The student reports also emphasized the need for banks to invest in hiring bilingual tellers and loan officers, as well as to develop Spanish-language materials.

But Gardial called that the “low-hanging fruit” of the research project.

“The real insights of the research is the desire of the Hispanic market to build relationships with financial service providers,” Gardial said. “It boils down to one word – community. If the Hispanic community feels they are being supported by a financial institution, they will support the institution.”

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An increasing number of national students are preferring private schools to government schools to the extent that about 30 per cent of the students enrolled in the various private schools in the country are originally from the UAE. According to official figures, out of an estimated 290,072 private school students, around 50,000 are UAE nationals.

When your favourite No. 1 newspaper asked a cross-section of the national population for the reason for their choice, a majority of the parents responded that they want their children to acquire sound communication skills in English.

When lack of proficiency in English — both written and spoken — is pointed out as one of the reasons that hamper the career prospects of many UAE nationals, parents believe that providing their children with quality education will help them overcome the shortcoming.

Among their reasons for opting against government schools are better quality of English teaching and scope for cross-cultural interaction in private schools that will widen their horizon of thoughts and enhance their communicative skills. Mostly preferring the American or British curriculum, parents are willing to shell out a chunk of their income, even when free education is available in a government school.

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Last year, leaders from business and government agencies met in Maryland to address the extraordinary demand for employees who speak foreign languages. You can bet they weren’t looking for French or German speakers. They need Mandarin, Korean and Arabic.

So while educators seriously debate whether sign-language classes should count as a foreign language, as The Times reported last week, they bypass the real issue: Tant pis, American public schools are desperately behind the times when it comes to teaching languages. With few exceptions, they offer the same European triumvirate as 50 years ago — Spanish, French and German — and start teaching languages far too late.

The big three account for 94% of all students learning a foreign language, according to a 2002 report by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Add Latin and Italian and it becomes 98%. Practically no one is learning languages from Asia, Eastern Europe or the Middle East. Salaam, or in its cousin language, shalom, anyone?

Linguist Benjamin Whorf wrote nearly a century ago that culture shapes language. Thus, through studying language, students gain insight into another way of thinking. Language skills lead to better-paying jobs and, in poly-cultural L.A., help us all communicate better, ja?

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The Census Bureau projects that Hispanic population on the U.S. mainland will grow to 103 million by 2050, more than double the present population of 40 million Hispanics. On the contrary, in just half a century, the population of European Americans is expected to decrease by 19%. That might explain why expansion strategies for stateside banks are tightly focused on reaching Hispanics. According to market researcher Simmons Inc., there is an even more attractive factor defining the future of the banking sector around the demographic issue. The researcher estimates 56% of the nation’s Hispanics have never had any kind of bank account. Hispanics’ wealth and population rising three times faster than the U.S. average translates into a whole new universe of business opportunities for the industry. According to research group Economy.com, that new universe is worth $200 billion in new business over the next decade.

This new business isn’t concentrated solely on individuals; the Hispanic-owned firms in the U.S. also are expected to grow 55% to 3.2 million by the year 2010. Total revenue for Hispanic-owned firms will increase by 70% to more than $465 billion in the same period, according to estimates by HispanTelligence.

As early as 2009, Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia projects the purchasing power of U.S. Hispanics will reach the trillion-dollar mark because in 2003 purchasing power was already $653 billion larger than Mexico’s Gross Domestic Product. This aggregate income will be spent, saved, and invested, all of which will spur demand for checking accounts, consumer credit, mortgages, and investment services.

Many industry analysts believe more than half of all U.S. retail banking growth will originate from the growing Hispanic market. TowerGroup, a research and advisory firm that focuses on the global financial services industry, estimates up to 70% of the growth for U.S. financial services between 2003 and 2008 could come from the Hispanic market alone.

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When language has to be learned with a conscious cognitive effort we talk about language learning, which is, in a way, an unnatural way to learn a language. Language exposure is restricted to specific hours on specific days; learning is conscious and usually requires serious cognitive effort, mainly focused on learning about the target language. When the learner leaves the class, there is little or no exposure to the target language. When English is learned in Turkey, Israel or even in Norway, this is usually what happens.

Clil programmes, whether they are extensive or limited, aim at causing language acquisition to take place (the natural way) in a foreign setting (which would usually require language learning) by teaching in the target language, thus creating a target language environment within the environment of another language. This is, as I see it, an attempt to transform an unnatural way of learning a language into the natural way of acquiring languages.

The research literature presents evidence in favour and against Clil, but what do students think? They are, after all, the ones who need to experience the gains and the losses.

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Bonne Année! Chestita Nova Godina! Glückwunsch zum NeuJahr! Are we confused yet? Are we suffering from paralytic monolingualism?

If so, take heart. You’re not the only one. Those of us past the age of 25 really struggle with any language other than English.

The younger generation — high schoolers and younger — are enjoying more world language classes than ever.

They are studying Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, Korean, Japanese in addition to the standard Spanish, French and German that we older folks had access to during our teens.

To celebrate this important change, thanks to an initiative sponsored by Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Thad Cochran of Mississippi, language education programs throughout our country are celebrating 2005 as the Year of Languages (YOL)

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Bill Conerly, a construction director in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., says his crews are “a well-oiled machine.”

Watch them put together a house, and you’d never imagine that some can communicate with each other only through the foreman. But 25 percent of workers in the DiVosta division of Pulte Homes, Conerly’s employer, are native Spanish speakers and 10 percent primarily speak Haitian Creole.

Pulte faces labor shortages in some of the trades, said Kathy McGuire, its director of human resources in Palm Beach Gardens. Without Spanish and Creole speakers, she pointed out, “I wouldn’t have enough people to build my houses.”

With immigrants filling gaps in an aging work force and U.S. firms expanding to serve customers around the world, a babble of tongues is now heard in offices and at job sites across the country. The 2000 Census found that 47 million people, or 18 percent of the population, did not speak English at home — up from 32 million, or 14 percent, in 1990.

The situation poses challenges for employers, who may need to change time-worn habits of interaction, translate written materials into other languages or pay for classes for managers and employees.

But there are advantages as well. Veterans of multilingual work forces say the range of national origins not only makes companies more effective in serving customers and business partners around the globe, it makes them more interesting places to work.

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”I’m there just to interpret, not to give advice,” said Valdez, guest relations representative at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. ”Translating medical terminology can be a tongue twister.”

Without her help, health-care providers and Spanish-speaking patients with limited English proficiency would be at a loss for words.

Patients at other U.S. hospitals aren’t as fortunate. Fewer than a quarter of these facilities are staffed with skilled interpreters, the journal Pediatrics reported in 2003. And most of them don’t have adequate training.

The good news is that hospitals, social service agencies and interpreter associations are taking steps to improve the numbers. They are determined to launch, sustain or expand interpreter services for an increasingly diverse pool of patients.

Almost one in five people, or 47 million of those age 5 and older, spoke a language other than English at home in 2000, up 15 million from 1990, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Meanwhile, the number of Spanish speakers surged 62%, rising from 17.3 million in 1990 to 28.1 million in 2000.

”The need for interpreters in the health-care setting is high,” said Elaine Quinn, administrator of cross-cultural programs at the Texas Department of State Health Services in Austin

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