The Peel District School Board has produced “Welcome to School Kits” in 26 foreign languages. The kits are available at all elementary schools and contain basic information for newcomer families enrolling their children in school.

The languages were selected in an attempt to reflect Peel region’s cultural diversity. Kits are available in Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Croatian, Farsi/Persian, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Serbian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, Urdu and Vietnamese

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It’s hard to tell now, but in the future, 2004 could be seen as one of the pivotal years in the history of Japanese cinema. This is not necessarily because of the quality of films released–and there were a number of great films–but because of hints of fundamental shifts in the industry and its relation to the global marketplace.

It is significant that the most successful film with Japanese actors in the domestic market this year was not even a Japanese-made film, but The Last Samurai. That was only one of a number of foreign-made films–most released in 2003 in the United States–that underlined the strong interest that exists in Japanese pop culture on a global scale

Heterogeneity and cultural border crossings can be a good thing, especially for a Japan that was long an exclusionary nation, but this trend is not exactly new. Independent filmmakers have been deconstructing the myth of Japanese homogeneity for over a decade…

What is different about the current internationalization is not just the watering down, the turning of cultural difference into commodities to consume, but–and this is probably the origin of those side effects–the fact it’s now taking place in the major studios. What these global institutional moves threaten to do is further distance the majors from the minors and further undermine an already unfairly hampered independent industry through the force of big capital, especially in television.

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Italy has taken another step forward in fostering good relations with emerging economic superpower China via a new program for academic cooperation, Italian media reported on Wednesday.

The Marco Polo program, sponsored by Italy’s powerful industrial employers’ association Confindustria, sets up a system for “stable relations” between Chinese and Italian universities.

The agreement is the fruit of Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi’s trip to the oriental country earlier in the month, which was aimed at promoting economic and cultural ties between the countries.

Marco Polo will provide a platform for the management of joint research projects.

Offices in both countries will also be set up for the coordination of academic exchanges involving researchers and lecturers – all of which will be supported by intensive foreign language instruction programs.

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IBMers sip spring water, wear suits and go on low-carb diets.

Workers at Lenovo, China’s biggest PC maker, favor fish head soup, open-collar shirts and smoking.

Lenovo on Dec. 7 agreed to buy Big Blue’s PC, laptop and notebook unit in a $1.75 billion deal. But in acquiring the unit — and 10,000 U.S. IBM (IBM) employees — Lenovo also is acquiring a very different corporate culture.

There’s been a growing number of Chinese giants buying key business units from Western firms.

Most analysts say such East-West marriages can work if parties address cultural or managerial issues quickly. And in a rapidly globalizing world, fusions between giants on opposite ends of the world may be the only way to go, they say.

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Lexicon Marketing, developer and marketer of Inglés sin Barreras, a video-based English learning program, has increased its advertising investment from $12.56 to $75.00 million in little over a year, and is now challenging the venerable Procter & Gamble for the top [advertiser in the Hispanic market] position.

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MTV Tuesday announced plans to add three new multicultural TV channels aimed at “super-serving” specific ethnic populations in the U.S.

MTV said its research shows ethnic populations in the U.S. are currently: “underserved by the media and there is a great appetite for local language channels amongst these groups. Many of these ethnic groups prefer speaking their home language, and are hungry for music and culture from their country of origin.” Additional ethnic channels are expected to follow.

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Funding cuts and changes in education policies have led to a sharp reduction in the number of Americans studying foreign languages at the same time the government and business are demanding more employees with language skills.

[The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages] quoted the American Council on Education as saying overall foreign language enrollment in U.S. higher education fell from16 percent of students 1960 to 8 percent in 2002.

“Fewer than 1 percent of American graduate students are studying languages deemed by the federal government to be critical to national security,” said Keith Cothrun, a German teacher and ACTFL president, at a briefing at the National Press Club.

A 2002 survey by Health Companies International, a research firm, showed that Americans business executives had the lowest average number of languages spoken – 1.4. In the Netherlands, that number was 3.9, followed by Sweden at 3.4 and Brazil at 2.9. Just above the United States at the bottom of the list of 18 countries were three other English-speaking countries: the United Kingdom (1.5), New Zealand (1.6) and Canada (1.8).

The U.S. government needs 34,000 employees with foreign language skills in 80 agencies, according to ACTFL. A 2002 Government Accountability Office study found that the Army had serious shortfalls of translators and interpreters in five of six critical languages – Arabic, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Persian-Farsi and Russian.

Web sites for the Transportation Security Administration, Homeland Security Department and a government-wide job site list vacancies in those categories that pay from $80,000 to $90,000 per year.

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For the first time in history, Muslims are building large and growing minorities across the secular Western world–nowhere more visibly than in Western Europe, where their numbers have more than doubled in the past two decades. The impact is unfolding from Amsterdam to Paris to Madrid, as Muslims struggle — with words, votes and sometimes violence–to stake out their place in adopted societies.

Disproportionately young, poor and unemployed, they seek greater recognition and an Islam that fits their lives. Just as Egypt, Pakistan and Iran are witnessing the debate over the shape of Islam today, Europe is emerging as the battleground of tomorrow.

By midcentury, at least one in five Europeans will be Muslim. That change is unlike other waves of immigration because it poses a more essential challenge: defining a modern Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization. The West must decide how its laws and values will shape and be shaped by Islam.

For Europe, as well as the United States, the question is not which civilization, Western or Islamic, will prevail, but which of Islam’s many strands will dominate. Will it be compatible with Western values or will it reject them?

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Paciano Pedro, a new immigrant from Mexico, has a severe language problem. Not only does he not speak English – he can barely speak Spanish.

The South Bronx man is fluent only in Otomi, an ancient, indigenous language spoken in remote mountainous villages in the southern Mexican state of Veracruz.

Pedro’s face may blend into New York’s fastest-growing Latino population, but he is part of a new wave of Mexicans who speak only Mixtec, Nahuatl or Otomi.

Mexican Consulate officials estimate that 40,000 non-Spanish-speaking Mexicans have moved to the city in recent years to work at car washes, corner markets and restaurant kitchens.

The majority of them are fluent in Mixtec, said Gaspar Orozco, the Mexican consul for community affairs.

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Emmy Award Winning TM Systems, developers of the industry’s only “end to end” language translation, dubbing and subtitling system, has added MTV Networks Latin America, headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida, to its growing list of international language localization users.

The TM Systems technology will offer MTV Networks Latin America the ability to subtitle all of its broadcast material, to and from any language, with the efficiency of a digital, fully integrated system that brings a greater flexibility, increased continuity, expedited completion time and greater overall accuracy.

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The issue of Western misperception of Arabs and Muslims was the subject of a singularly realistic debate this week at the headquarters of the Arab League.

Meeting under the title, “Euro-Arab Dialogue: The image of Arab-Islamic Culture in European History Books”, representatives of the Arab League, UNESCO, the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (ALECSO), the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (IESCO) and the Council of Europe debated the misrepresentations of Arabs and Muslims in European countries. The international conference concluded that European culture contained an “erroneous image, if not images”, not just of Arabs and Muslims, but also of Arab culture, Muslim civilisation, and above all, of Islam as a faith.

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English remains the language of choice among the children and grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants, a new analysis of census data shows.

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Bangalore, the capital of India’s technology sector, has become one of the world’s fastest growing software hubs, offering foreign companies a winning formula comprised of a large number of skilled software engineers at a very cheap price. The combination of quantity, quality and low cost is so attractive that Israeli companies should start preparing themselves for a reality in which it won’t be economical anymore to keep some of their activities in Israel.

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Big laughs erupted in Buenos Aires, as moviegoers heard a local radio sportscaster’s voice dubbed in as one of the animated characters in “The Incredibles,” the latest Disney/Pixar hit, reports Wailin Wong in a Dow Jones Newswires dispatch. The locally familiar voice was that of Matias Martin, in the role of “the villainous Syndrome,” as voiced by Jason Lee “in the original version.” Not only did Sr. Martin lend his well-recognized sportscaster’s pipes to the part, but also “some of his trademark sports expressions and inside jokes about co-hosts.” He actually was just one of a number of local actors, singers and other celebrities cast in the Argentine version of the film, and “throwing round local slang and referencing Buenos Aires locations.”

This extra Argentine effort was a first for Disney, which “began dubbing specific versions of its films for Mexico, its fifth largest market,” only two years ago. The studio also began dubbing “two additional versions in ‘neutral’ Spanish, one for Central America — including Colombia, Venezuela and Peru — and another for the Southern Cone countries of Argentina, Uruaguay, Paraguay and Chile.”

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Hat tip: Going Global

Raising the level of internationalization of universities is not merely the current consensus among schools; it has also become one of the standards by which colleges are assessed, to the exclusion of all other subjects. More and more schools and departments are now teaching specialized courses in English. But many students are calling foul. They feel that not only does this approach do nothing to increase their English proficiency; it may also prevent them from mastering professional knowledge. It is, they claim, a case of putting the cart before the horse.

To keep pace with “globalization”, and to attract foreign students at the same time, in recent years the [Taiwanese] Ministry of Education has encouraged and assisted universities to teach more courses in English.