Thanks to the 2000 census, everyone in business knows the nation’s Latino population has become a hugely important market. The Latino base is growing in immigrant enclaves like South Gate and, increasingly, cities and towns far from traditional Latino destinations, including metro Atlanta.

The challenge is reaching this complex audience.

The nation’s Latino population remains little understood and little seen by much of the United States. While the country is 12.6 percent Hispanic, a large portion of the population is heavily concentrated in the West, especially states on the border with Mexico.

Georgia’s Latino population is about 5.3 percent.

By 2020, however, Latinos are likely to be 17.8 percent of the U.S. population. And Latino culture will continue to become a bigger influence on overall pop culture.

Latino spending power is huge: $700 billion in 2004, according to HispanTelligence, a research firm. That total is expected to grow to $1 trillion by the end of the decade.

Felipe Korzenny, founder and director of the Center for the Study of Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University, said the U.S. Hispanic market is already the second-largest in the world, after Mexico itself.

“And they have more buying power than the gross domestic product of Mexico,” he said. “Just think about that.”

Read more

A London Business School survey of over 100 CEOs found strong demand for MBA graduates with global awareness and experience. “For our end-users,” the report found, “global business is more than a political discussion point, marketing mantra, or corporate aspiration; it is a burgeoning day-to-day reality.” In response to this market demand and increased interest by its students, American Graduate School of Management (AGSM) is introducing an International Option to its Executive MBA Program.

Read more

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has a brilliant–and very helpful–ability to identify the patterns at the heart of the most complex world situations, without losing the human voices of the people involved. Over a dozen years after its publication, From Beirut to Jerusalem remains one of the most valuable accounts of Arab-Israeli relations, and in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he redefined how we thought about the new forces of globalization and the old ties of nation and tradition (and, along the way, introduced the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention,” which pointed out that no countries that both had a McDonald’s had ever gone to war with each other). Like most of us, he spent the first years of the new millennium focused again on the Middle East, where it seemed as though the main drama of the age was being played out. But a visit to Bangalore, India, in early 2004 made him suddenly aware that the real story was happening on the other side of the globe, as the vast and ambitious populations of India and China began to enter the global marketplace as full-fledged participants, taking advantage of systems of communications, production, and distribution that can connect the entire globe instantaneously. “The world is flat,” he realized, and he immediately knew he had to write about it. In an email and phone exchange between Seattle and the various stops on Friedman’s travels, Amazon.com senior editor Tom Nissley asked him to explain just what has made our world flat, and what that might lead to.

Read more

Deborah Adler, a 29-year-old graphic designer whose ClearRx prescription-packaging system debuts at Target pharmacies May 1 avoided using the word “once” on the label, since it means “eleven” in Spanish. Prevention, after all, is the best medicine. Better safe than sorry!

Speaking of “International by Design”, look for an e-book bearing the same title by Nancy A. Locke to be pubished in 2005 by Multilingual Computing, Inc. which “will explore the language of design and the ways to ensure it speaks to mulitlingual, multicultural audiences”.

Tom’s done it again! If you’ve read The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, you know all about the keen insights of Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas L. Friedman. In The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Tom once again brings to light the plain truth about globalization. Read it and discover for yourself where we’re headed. Overlook it at peril of obsolescence.

Also by Thomas L. Friedman: From Beirut to Jerusalem (winner of the National Book Award) and Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism.

Saturday, April 16, 2005, I had the pleasure of speaking to an audience of my esteemed colleagues at the American Translators Association Translation Company Division 6th Annual Conference in Philadelphia on Targeting and Profiling Customers and Vendors Online. Download Targeting and Profiling Customers and Vendors Online.ppt.

The idea of promoting cultural diversity around the world sounds reasonable enough. It recognizes that everyone profits from the free flow of ideas, words and images. It encourages preservation of, say, indigenous traditions and minority languages. It treats the cultures of rich and poor countries as equals. And, most topically, it offers a healthy antidote to cultural homogeneity.

Try turning this seemingly straightforward idea into an international treaty, however, and things soon become complicated. Since October 2003, the 190 members of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization have been working on what is provisionally called the Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expression. It is meant to be approved by consensus this fall, but don’t count on it. There is still no agreement on the convention’s final name.

That, though, is a minor issue compared with more fundamental differences. Led by France and Canada, a majority of countries are asserting the right of governments to safeguard, promote and even protect their cultures from outside competition. Opposing them, a smaller group led by the United States argues that cultural diversity would best flourish in the freedom of the globalized economy.

A fresh bid to break the deadlock is under way at the headquarters of Unesco in Paris, where delegates and experts are wrestling with hundreds of proposed amendments to the convention’s first draft. Yet the more they advance toward concrete definitions, some delegates believe, the less likely they are to reach consensus.

The reason is simple: Behind the idealistic screen of cultural diversity, weighty economic and political issues are at stake.

Read more

Miami-based Bela Broadcasting, a Spanish language television programmer and independent station operator, purchased former NBC affiliate KMOH-TV last month from Gannett Communications for $5.25 million to tap the growing Hispanic market in Las Vegas as well as Phoenix.

With Hispanics comprising 26 percent of the valley’s 1.7 million people and spending about $33 million weekly on goods and services, the latest entrant to local Hispanic media further demonstrates the demographic shift in the local market. It’s a shift that has forced advertisers and their agencies to accommodate the swelling niche by servicing it.

While KMOH and Bela are hoping to cash in on advertisers’ needs by betting that the local Hispanic population is large enough to support a station that specializes in family and children’s programming, the new owners have numerous steps to take before capitalizing on their investment.

Read more

Lawmakers in new European Union member country Estonia have got bogged down when ratifying some pieces of EU legislation because of poor translation, a press report said Monday.

“Theres a huge web of problems in connection with translating (EU laws),” Rein Lang, chairman of the Estonian parliaments European affairs committee, said in the Eesti Paevaleht daily Monday.

“The government has to make sure the English and Estonian-language versions of the laws are identical.”

The ratification of several EU acts has stalled in the Estonian parliament because of mistakes spotted in their translation, which has resulted in the documents having to be retranslated.

Officials have said the quality of translation has been patchy because of the huge amount of acts that needed to be translated before May 1, 2004, when Estonia joined the EU.

More than 100,000 pages of text have been translated, often under pressure of very tight deadlines, said Hille Saluaar of the Estonian Legal Language Centre.

Today, with Estonia a member of the EU, most translation work is being done in Brussels.

About 100 translators have moved from Estonia to the EU institutions in Brussels, causing a shortage of translators at home in the Baltic state.

Read more

English just about remains the prevalent language online, but making sense of some sites is tricky unless you’ve taken the time to learn a new language.

However, technology is on hand to help out with those moments when you find material online, in books and magazines or from far-flung friends or family that has you reaching for the language phrasebook.

Alternatively, there may be an important document from Europe or further abroad that you need to respond to quickly. Fear not, as the internet provides online language translators. It can even help you get on with things when you’re abroad if you have access to a handheld computer and know where to look.

Fishing for meaning
Babel Fish is the most famous online translator. Its name is taken from the novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, who in turn borrowed it from the Bible. The Babel Fish lived in people’s ears and translated languages from all over the universe into English for the book’s hero.

Surprisingly, given its reputation as the original translation site, Babel Fish seems to have been slightly outdone by an upstart. Once again Google’s translation service picks up where others have left off and, although it makes no great strides toward perfect English, it does at least manage to pick up on some of Babel Fish’s omissions…

Online translators should not be relied on to provide the exact meaning of foreign words and phrases, but they can give a good idea of the gist of the meaning and when the alternative is knowing nothing at all, it’s not exactly a risk.

Web of words
Many sites also provide the option to translate an entire web page from its native language into English. Altavista and Google both have a section where a web address can simply be entered into a box. From there it will automatically take you to a version of the site where all block text has been translated.

Again, expect varying results from this method and be aware that text in images will not be translated. The good thing about this is that any links you click on while looking at the translated site will also be translated into the language you requested.

If you’re looking for something a little more accurate, it is possible to buy software that considers the nuances of words and grammar to give a much better translation.

Try Systran as a starting point. The company provides the software that powers the Altavista site but also offers professional translation tools to home users. However, the company warns in its promotional literature that this software is mainly for getting the gist of what a document is trying to say and if you want to read or publish in any higher quality then a good degree of user input may be required.

Babylon Software also offers translation tools for Windows…

A roving eye
There may be times when it is essential that you get a very accurate translation of a foreign document but you don’t want to fork out huge amounts of money on software that may not necessarily provide you with the perfect answer.

Sometimes having a human eye run over it is the only possible alternative.

Don’t worry if you don’t know anyone that speaks or reads Japanese, Arabic or Spanish, because there are websites that can provide you with this service at a reasonable price. One reliable site is TransAction which does the whole thing online if you wish, including getting a quote and receiving and delivering the requested documents.

You may think that to get a foreign document translated you will first have to type in all the text for the software to analyse, along with all those unusual grammatical and punctuation marks. Not so, as a scanner and optical character recognition software can take the strain here.

The software recognises the shape of letters by scanning them in; each scanned letter or symbol is then converted to the character, number or symbol it represents. Occasionally it will mistake a letter, especially if the print quality of the document is poor but this can be solved with a bit of common sense and a spell checker.

Of course, the optical character recognition software has to feature support for the language you want to translate from. Readiris Pro… recognises 104 languages while FineReader… understands up to 107.

Verbal dexterity
If you find yourself dealing quite a lot with foreign documents or speaking to people from other countries online, you may decide that you’re ready to take the plunge and learn the language. If so, there are numerous pieces of software that can help you out.

Linguaphone courses now come on CD-ROM and as downloadable software…

Wordace (available at Amazon) is another useful tool as it helps the user get to grips with the complexities inherent in speaking like the natives, as well as having hundreds of thousands of word translations and verb conjugations, some of the building blocks of language.

If you’re simply looking for useful phrases to help you get around when you’re in a country, try Phrasebase. It’s a simple-to-use site with a whole range of phrases in many languages that have been categorised into easy to understand areas. Simply click on an area, find the phrase you’re looking for and away you go. It’s much cheaper and easier than buying and using a phrasebook, if you have online access while you’re away.

You can also buy software for handheld computers that contains hundreds of useful phrases for holidaymakers, and many will actually read out the translation so you can perfect your pronunciation and impress the locals with your efforts. Mobilearn covers French, German, Italian and Spanish…

Handy tools
If you’re staying in a foreign country, accessing the internet may not be as easy as it would be at home. Even then, would you know how to ask where the nearest cyber-cafe was? At such times, having a handheld PC with translation software installed may be the perfect solution.

One company that specialises in such software is Ectaco. It provides a range of different applications that can be used on your Pocket PC, Palm and even some advanced mobile phones.

You can even purchase software that will take a phrase you speak, translate it and then speak it back to the person you are talking to. However, this is expensive and for less… you can get a more basic phrasebook with translation capabilities.

If you’re looking to keep costs down, there are some free versions available. One example is Pocket Translator from Innersky for Pocket PCs. The website provides easy-to-follow instructions to get it up and running. But as with most things, the free versions won’t provide the same depth or ease of use as those you pay for.

Everything becomes clear
If you’re simply looking to find a way to read foreign text, and all you need to know is the basic gist of what’s being said, then the internet is the perfect place to start looking. There are lots of online translation tools that can change a slab of text, or even an entire foreign website, into English but don’t expect to understand everything that comes back using this method.

If you’re looking for more detailed translation, expect to pay for it. Generally, the better the quality of translation, whether through software or translation services, the costlier it is.

Read more

Of course, Linguistic Solutions breaks down language and cultural barriers through translation, interpretation, foreign language instruction and cross-cultural training.

International cultures: Globalization and the offshoring of jobs to foreign countries require that we learn to work with and understand international cultures. The “American way” won’t always bring success in how we run our business or in how we develop and nurture our relationships.

Read more

The pace of change in China during the last 15 years has been extraordinarily fast; the pace at which its literature reaches us in translation, shamefully slow. Chinese dissident writer Ma Jian is known in the English-speaking world for his award-winning travel memoir of rural China in the 1980s, Red Dust.

Since the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong in 1997, he has been living with his partner and translator in London. The Noodle Maker, the first of Jian’s novels to appear in English, is set soon after the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, already ancient history to today’s young entrepreneurs, artists and university students.

Reading The Noodle Maker has some of the blurred effect of a time-lapse photograph — it is a hard-hitting satire of a cultural moment that has come and gone. Only a reviewer intimate with today’s China could judge to what extent its critique is still sharp.

Read more

Audiofy Corporation, a premier digital audiobook publisher, today announced a venture with Heinle & Heinle, the former owners and publishers of the Pimsleur Foreign Language Series. As part of this venture, Audiofy will operate the popular www.pimsleurdirect.com site as an e-commerce site for the sale of Audiofy’s Pimsleur Bookchips.

Audiofy also announced the availability of its popular audiobook products through new channels, including Amazon and www.bookchips.com, Audiofy’s new ecommerce site.

“We’re excited to be delivering Pimsleur foreign language instruction and Soundview’s bestselling audiobook management summaries to a broader audience,” said Peter D. Nalle, Audiofy’s CEO. “The Audiofy platform takes these premium products and makes them easier to use, wherever you are.”

Audiofy’s Bookchips are specially formatted SD Cards that allow customers to listen to their audiobooks on most devices that have an SD Card slot, like PCs, PDAs and smartphones. The Audiofy Player provides customers without those devices with a simple and satisfying way to listen to Bookchips. The inexpensive, pocket-sized player is easy to use, whether you are driving, commuting, exercising, or just on the sofa in your living room. All Audiofy products comply with the Audiobook Compatible standard established by the Audio Publishers Association and the Consumer Electronics Association.

Read more

Note: I personally use and recommend the Pimsleur language instruction program.

Increasingly, writers, readers and publishers are turning to literature as a bridge between cultures, particularly Western and Arab societies estranged since Arab extremists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

This in turn is driving a boom in translation.

Those involved in the push say the American University in Cairo Press is an inspiration.

AUC Press has been publishing Arabic literature in translation for 20 years – its backlist of some 100 novels represents one of the largest collections of modern Arabic literature in English in the world.

Its latest offering is The Yacoubian Building by Al Aswany, a bestseller since it appeared in Arabic in 2002.

It’s a provocative survey of the social and political pressures of the present that have many Egyptians looking nostalgically to their more tolerant and hopeful past.

Al Aswany says it may help the world understand the political stagnation and corruption that leads many Arabs to extremism and violence.

Read more

A strong trend toward globalization of major museums is emerging as the 21st century unfolds with institutions establishing branches in their home countries and abroad or planning to do so in the near future.

Read more