Google updates its Translate service

Google has updated yet another one of its products to work better on Apple’s iPhone. On Thursday the company launched a new version of its Translate service that lets anyone convert their native tongue into one of the other 23 available languages.
The service has been reworked mainly to appeal to travelers who don’t want to [...]

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UK: Interpretation costs by police have more than doubled in the last five years

Interpretation costs by Norfolk police have more than doubled to £360,000 in the last five years it has emerged. Rises in immigration numbers for the county have led to extra support services needed, the Evening News can today reveal.
In 2002 to 2003 Norfolk Constabulary spent £152,339 on translation and interpreter fees and interpreter expenses.  [...]

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FireFox to be translated

South Africa’s Rhodes University and Uganda’s Makerere University are coming together to translate Mozilla’s FireFox Internet browser into Uganda’s mostly spoken language, Luganda.
The University has organized a two-day workshop that will be held at the Makerere University on Thursday and Friday. Software experts from South Africa and Uganda and well as top Luganda linguists will [...]

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The best on-line translation services?

With the U.S. dollar’s decline, buying American-based products online just got a lot cheaper for the rest of the world’s slew of Internet shoppers.
Internet users outside the U.S. now account for 80 percent of the world’s online population, with rapidly developing countries experiencing double-digit growth rates year-over-year, reports comScore Networks Europe. Right now, those international [...]

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First Neanderthal genome completed

A 38,000-year old bone has yielded the world’s first complete Neanderthal mitochondrial genome sequence, offering a tantalising glimpse at the genetic changes that separate humans from Neanderthals, which split some 600 millennia ago.
The mitochondrion – a structure often dubbed the cell’s powerhouse – contains a mere 16,565 DNA letters that code for 13 proteins, whereas [...]

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Translations for Dissidents

On Thursday, the eve of the opening of the Beijing Olympics, the PEN Center will present a night of readings dedicated to dissident Chinese writers. The event is the culmination of an eight-month campaign, “We Are Ready for Freedom of Expression.” The project is an appeal to the Chinese government to release 45 writers and [...]

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Windows Live Translator now integrated into Office

Office document translation (updated)
Windows Live Translator is now integrated into Office!  One of the top features that our users ask for is simple integration of translation into Office, to translate a document quickly.  The feature is really easy to use, and you can translate a block of text or an entire document, from within Office.
We [...]

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China’s Competition Law: all documents must be translated into Chinese

China’s publication of threshold figures for competition clearance is welcome. But most of the draft law’s clarity has been left out.
The final implementing regulations for concentrations under the new Anti-Monopoly Law were published on Sunday and comprise five articles. A draft was published in March that had 19 articles.
“We have five very short articles that [...]

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South Africa: Refugees translate in the absence of interpreters

More than 200 refugees and asylum-seekers arrested for camping by the roadside last week may have had their charges dropped, but they were not freed. On Wednesday, the men appeared in smaller groups so they could fit into the public gallery in Court D at the Krugersdorp magistrate’s court, until all 204 had been informed [...]

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UNESCO and the protection of indigenous and endangered languages

Message from Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People.
The International Day of the World’s Indigenous People 2008 is a fitting occasion to celebrate the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly last [...]

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