Six Degrees of Watson
For those of you who haven’t seen or figured it out, I was on Jeopardy!. Won twice and made a tidy sum (enough to buy the dining room set my husband told me pre-show was too expensive, put some hardwood floors in, and go to the Inn at Little Washington, plus put an equal amount of money from these purchases into the bank). Having said that, Watson — and Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter — would have smushed me. Like a bug. Apparently, though, New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt managed to survive against Watson for quite a while (though he …read more
Sandra Alboum to Speak at NCATA Annual Meeting
The NCATA (National Capital Area Chapter of the American Translators Association) board and committee chairs have been hard at work for almost a year on the group’s rebranding. They now have a new logo and this week expect to hire a website developer for a completely new design and lots more on-line directory functionality. NCATA has also just been incorporated in Washington DC to address the ambiguity about their legal status which has existed since their founding 30 years ago. On Tuesday, March 15, NCATA will be holding their annual meeting from 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. at the Goethe …read more
Newsletter Recap
Our February newsletter went out yesterday via email to some of our favorite people. Did you miss it? Did we miss you? Please make sure to sign up on the website to receive the monthly publication. We’ll also send you special offers and discounts– and you’ll look like quite the hero to the CFO at your organization! In the meanwhile, go ahead and read the newsletters you missed here. We know it’s a guilty pleasure. We promise we won’t tell anyone. And if there’s something specific you’d like to see addressed in a future newsletter, drop us a line. We’d …read more
Sandra Alboum Mentioned in Washington Post Article on Machine Translation
This may be the only time that I am happy to be associated with Machine Translation (MT). Here is a link to an article from today’s Washington Post on the subject. Obviously, Alboum & Associates believes in real humans and only uses sentient beings to work its magic. However, I was mentioned in this article today by Konstantin Kakaes (at the very end). As they say, any press is good press, so I’ll take it!
Happy International Mother Language Day 2011!
First some facts: about half of the 6,000 or so languages spoken in the world are currently under threat. Over the past three centuries, languages have died out and disappeared at a dramatic and steadily increasing pace, especially in the Americas and Australia. At least 3,000 tongues are endangered, seriously endangered or dying in many parts of the world. According to recent estimates, very few people speak most of the 6,000 known languages around the world. Half of today’s languages have fewer than 10,000 speakers and a quarter have fewer than 1,000. That is one of the reasons why today …read more
Beam Me Up, Scotty!
Scottish TV, or STV as it’s known, is reporting that the world’s first (and maybe only) English < > Glaswegian interpreter, Jonathan Downie, has never been hired for a job. It’s amazing to note this, since the Glasgow accent and the terms they use are notoriously tricky for outsiders to decipher. Just check out this hilarious video from the British show “Outnumbered”.
Organdonor.gov Relaunch – Spanish Site Coming Pronto!
There are 110,296 people waiting for an organ transplant in this country. 18 people die each day waiting on the list. And one organ donor can save up to eight lives. These amazing– and sobering– statistics can all be found on the newly designed website for Organdonor.gov. Alboum & Associates is proud to have collaborated in this excellent endeavor by providing the Spanish translation for the site. This portion of the site will be visible in the next few weeks. Congratulations to the Department of Health and Human Services for providing this valuable service, and thanks to Crosby Marketing for …read more
This Translator’s Number is Up
How do you a translate a poem that includes not only words that rhyme, but also numbers, and the numbers correspond to the letters of the words and add up to a special total that has to be maintained? With a calculator, of course. It took Long Island University professor Gregary Racz six weeks to translate twelve very dense lines of the “Profećia alfabético-numeral” (“Alphabetical-Numerical Prophecy”), by Uruguayan poet Francisco Acuña de Figueroa, from Spanish into English. The hard work paid off, though: it earned him the American Translator’s Association Alicia Gordon Award for Word Artistry in Translation, which recognizes …read more
The Risks of Being an Interpreter on the Front Lines
A moment of silence for a NATO interpreter who was killed when a pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up in southern Afghanistan on Monday. The bombs were detonated at a customs house in the city of Kandahar during a visit by NATO troops. You can read the full story here.
Saluting our Linguist
Congratulations are due to our wonderful translator and interpreter, Ben, who can be seen working in this video that appears on Sohu.com (which is China’s answer to Yahoo). Participating in this conference on tobacco use and control are Professor Yang Gonghuan, Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control for China and Director of the China Tobacco Control Office; Professor Jonathan Samet, Director of the Institute for Global Health and Flor L. Thornton Chair of the Department of Preventative Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California; and Professor Xie Zhiyong, China University of Political …read more
