Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Feb 8, 2012, 1:01 pm
A while back, we compiled five of the best TED talks on language that were available through TED’s website. Among the presentations was one by the popular linguist, Steven Pinker. Here’s the description we wrote about that talk: “Stephen Pinker gives viewers a crash course in simple grammar an...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Jan 31, 2012, 12:11 pm
I’m happy to announce that ALTA Language Services has been sold to its employees through a leveraged ESOP. In December, the company closed the transaction that acquired 100% of the company’s stock from the departing owners, Abe Revitch and Rosine Sauvage. In discussing the decision with Abe and ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Jan 25, 2012, 7:00 am
Beyond Words Language Blog readers might know ALTA primarily as a translation company, but we are also national leaders in the Language Testing sector. Our leadership in medical, government, and corporate language testing keeps us busy with interesting projects for clients and partners. In the last ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Dec 27, 2011, 10:32 am
After providing translation services for more than three decades, ALTA Language Services has developed a rigorous approach to ensuring translation quality. In 2011, we took our commitment to quality to the next level and applied for ISO 9001:2008 certification for our translation quality management ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Dec 22, 2011, 2:00 pm
A few weeks ago, one of the Russian adults that I tutor in English cheerfully opened her door to me with the words, “With Thanksgiving!” When she saw the bemused look on my face, she added very formally, “I congratulate you with the American holiday of Thanksgiving.” After I thanked her, I...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Dec 12, 2011, 11:26 am
In the days leading up to the massive protest at Moscow’s Bolotnaya (“Swampy”) Square, numerous blogs, tweets, and posts across the city called for a careful, civil, peaceful gathering of tens of thousands of Russians fed up with their government and electoral system. A common trope held that...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Nov 22, 2011, 11:28 am
November 21, 2011 For Immediate Release Global Success Centers Selects ALTA Language Services ATLANTA, Georgia – The Global Success Centers is pleased to announce that ALTA Language Services has been selected as its preferred translation services provider. ALTA Language Services is an Atlanta-b...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Oct 25, 2011, 2:30 pm
Modern English is threaded through with all manner of polite turns of phrase, evasive maneuvers, and superfluous tautologies. We do not ask a question; we ask if we may ask a question. We say “I’m sorry” when someone tells us that he has been sick, as if we had a hand in orchestrating the fl...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Sep 27, 2011, 11:29 am
Of the fifteen languages that the State Department has termed “critical needs” languages for national security or commerce, the popularity of Arabic among American students has shown the most marked increase. According to a 2010 report by the Institute of International Education, the number of ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Aug 30, 2011, 9:53 am
Crowdsourcing endangered languages is one way to preserve languages in peril of disappearing. Biagio Arobba’s website LiveAndTell, for instance, uses a social media interface to archive Native American languages. Still, other methods have recently been developed to catalogue and disseminate endan...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Aug 10, 2011, 11:53 am
Many young Americans experience their first taste of foreign cultures and distant lands while in college, taking a semester or year abroad to hone their foreign-language skills, broaden their cultural understanding, and, more often than not, party with the locals. Now, faced with a dearth of jobs at...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Jul 25, 2011, 2:55 pm
Over the past few years, we’ve written many times about endangered languages and highlighted specific ones like Mecanese and Shiyeyi. We’ve also discussed some staggering statistics: there are 538 critically endangered languages, 502 severely endangered, 632 definitely endangered, and 607 unsaf...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Jul 11, 2011, 10:50 am
In October 2009, we ran an article about the growing field of animal cognition and highlighted a research project on vervet monkeys. It appears that vervet monkeys have the ability to differentiate their calls to signify the presence of various kinds of predators. For instance, the call for "’Leop...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Jun 30, 2011, 10:12 am
I have to admit that I’m something of a technology skeptic—neither whiz nor victim and neither extolling the internet’s virtues nor pining for the days of a tech-free world. But, having started using Google Chrome (just a few years behind the times—case in point!), I browsed the "20 Things I...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Jun 15, 2011, 12:29 pm
Do you know your classical architecture? Can you glean "DNA" from the clue "Letters from your parents?" Does your knowledge flow seamlessly from ancient Greek philosophers to today's sitcom stars? If so, you may well be fluent in "crosswordese," a lexicon seldom used in day-to-day speech but one ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Jun 8, 2011, 10:49 am
As an American living in New Zealand, it took some time to fully adjust to the Kiwi lifestyle. Learning to drive on the opposite side of the road (or wrong side, as I like to refer to it) and acquainting myself with the long list of slang/colloquialisms has gone a long way in helping me get to know...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - May 25, 2011, 9:56 am
At the highest rung of the translation and interpretation ladder lies simultaneous interpretation—the kind practiced at a host of international organizations like the United Nations and European Union, as well as at most major global conferences. Simultaneous interpretation happens in real time, w...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - May 18, 2011, 10:27 am
When most people think of humor and satire, they probably don't turn to 1970s Bulgaria. But if you lived in the U.S.S.R. during that era, chances are high that you did. Deemed the capital of communist humor, Gabrovo, a town smack-dab in the middle of Bulgaria at the foot of the central Balkans, was ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - May 11, 2011, 10:34 am
The British company Education First has compiled a worldwide English Proficiency Index (EPI) in conjunction with the Cambridge University Research Centre of English and Applied Linguistics. The index collected data from 2.3 million adults who took free online English tests over a period of 3 years. ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - May 5, 2011, 10:26 am
Unless you’re a translator, lawyer, scientist, or priest, you probably don’t speak or hear Latin very often. It’s not that the language has lost its significance for contemporary society — it would be very difficult, perhaps even foolish, to make such an argument. During the past decades, th...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - May 3, 2011, 9:25 am
For centuries, linguists have examined a host of components within language to attempt to trace its roots and place its origins. While language is nearly as old as the people who speak it—or at least began to emerge some 50,000 years ago when human beings dispersed from Africa and spread throughou...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Apr 27, 2011, 10:24 am
In 2009, the BBC released an excellent one-hour special on the topic of language. The program, called Why Do We Talk?, was produced for the BBC’s Horizon series which explores scientific issues and their effects for the future. Below, you’ll find the complete program, featuring the likes of scie...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Apr 20, 2011, 10:43 am
This installment of the Beyond Words' feature Endangered Language Watch—in which writers discuss languages at risk of extinction around the world—will focus on the Macanese language. Macanese: A Chameleon of a Language Imagine a people whose native language combines Malay, Sinhalese, Cantonese...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Apr 5, 2011, 2:14 pm
It is an unfortunate fact of the profession that translators and interpreters seldom receive the respect they deserve. Beginning interpreters and students are expressly forewarned to never kowtow to employers and to never — never — fetch a cup of coffee or a stack of documents. The implication i...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Mar 30, 2011, 12:17 pm
The following recordings will guide you through American English pronunciations of U.S. states and cities. You can listen to the phrases directly on our website or download them for later playback on any standard MP3 compatible device. Listen, repeat, and practice!   Alabama | AL Alabama is a s...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Feb 15, 2011, 2:20 pm
Yesterday was Valentine’s Day — a holiday both loved and hated the world over. If you happen to belong to that latter camp of haters, you might be excited to learn about the ancient Greek festival that Valentine’s Day replaced. Observed between February 13th and 15th, the Lupercalia festival o...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Feb 14, 2011, 10:54 am
It seems as if foreign language films are the talk of the town this awards season, and for good reason—for the first time in ages, foreign films are being recognized in the United States as some of the most important films being made today. Foreign films, foreign languages, and foreign directors a...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Dec 30, 2010, 2:01 pm
As the end of a year approaches, you can always count on two seasonal mainstays: gross amounts of food and gross amounts of lists. The prior usually come in differing shapes, flavors, and textures, while the latter mostly always resemble each other thematically. You’ve probably read at least one �...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Dec 28, 2010, 12:19 pm
As the semester draws to a close, it may be beneficial to look at one of the most relevant elements of any career — and one that has been on every one of my classmates' minds for some time: salary. While translators and interpreters are no starving artists, all but the most prominent ones cannot b...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Dec 6, 2010, 12:26 pm
The holidays are often a time of overindulgence, especially when it comes to food. From Thanksgiving through New Years, Americans tend to stuff their faces with holiday mainstays. But it’s fair to say that a plate topped off North Dakota won’t look like one topped off in Alabama. Southern food h...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Nov 19, 2010, 12:38 pm
The weekends are often a time of culinary decadence—a respite from the long working week, at which time many people celebrate with candlelight, nice dinners, wine, etc. Some of us, though, aren’t so different from Clarence Worley in True Romance, and when we’re done with the week’s struggle,...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Nov 17, 2010, 1:59 pm
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has annually hosted its World Languages Day since 2002. Now in it’s 10th year, World Languages Day continues to serve as a celebration of multiculturalism and language learning for students of all ages. UW-Madison officials expect upwards of 6000 Wisconsin high ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Nov 12, 2010, 10:53 am
Spinning Languages is a monthly feature by Beyond Words that highlights albums from around the world. This month we're showcasing three great albums from Nicaragua, Turkey, and Brazil. This month, Nicaragua’s Perrozompopo is offering his Grammy-nominated album as a free download! And, as usual, y...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Nov 10, 2010, 11:39 am
An interpreter typically works in one of the two primary modes of interpretation — simultaneous and consecutive. Simultaneous interpretation involves an interpreter listening to a speech and reproducing it in the target language in real time as the target audience follows along with the aid of hea...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Nov 8, 2010, 9:49 am
Dictionaries, in print or online, rarely make the news. Arguably, these books and internet databases once represented the most solid and universally accepted of language, but this seems to have changed drastically this year. Look no further than Aleksandr the Meerkat, an outstanding fictional mamma...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Nov 3, 2010, 12:48 pm
Only a few days have passed since Halloween, but some of you might already be reaching for the last few sweet treats in your (or more likely your child’s) candy bag. Among all the delectable chocolates, hard candies, and gelatinous goodies, you’ll surely find some form of corn syrup residing in ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Oct 28, 2010, 10:27 am
Around this time every year, a significant proportion of the American public (and perhaps even the international community) undertakes the admirable task of scaring its pants off. From haunted houses, to ghost tours, and horror films, the Halloween season is teeming with intimidating entertainments....
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Oct 25, 2010, 12:03 pm
Episode 14: The Language News Report Welcome to ALTA’s Beyond Words Podcast. Our podcasts provide listeners with the latest language news, language-related interviews, and language lessons that can be applied to real-world situations. They’re always brief, always informative, and always entert...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Oct 21, 2010, 12:31 pm
Recently, RIDE Solutions, a department of the Roanoke Regional Planning Commission, posted an interesting article summing up the issue of language in transportation planning. As a basis for discussion on the topic of transportation and language, Jeremy Holmes cites several articles (all of which hav...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Oct 19, 2010, 1:24 pm
So far during classes, every day has proven more challenging and eye-opening than the last. While I’ve found the teaching of interpretation to be more practice-based, translation studies have involved more than their fair share of theory. People have been translating texts for as long as they�...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Oct 15, 2010, 7:00 am
Since 2007, bloggers from around the globe have come together one day a year to post about the same issue in the hopes of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers, and the event’s aim is ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Oct 14, 2010, 8:27 am
Now Playing, a monthly feature by Beyond Words, highlights some of the best foreign films currently playing at the theater. American attendance at foreign language films dropped exponentially during the last decade, with foreign film ticket sales accounting for less than 1 percent of business at th...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Oct 12, 2010, 12:11 pm
The Celtic language native to Scotland, Scottish Gaelic, is part of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages and developed out of Middle Irish. Spoken by a mere 1.2% of the Scottish population, Scottish Gaelic is most commonly heard in the Outer Hebrides, an island chain off the western coast of ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Oct 7, 2010, 1:35 pm
Every year the Nobel Prize in literature is awarded “to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency” by the Swedish Academy. Considered to be the most prestigious award in literature, this year’s prize was given to Peruvian ...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Oct 6, 2010, 11:54 am
The announcement this week of findings regarding a previously unknown language has shaken up the field of linguistics. During a 2008 National Geographic expedition in India’s remote Arunachai Pradesh region in the Himalayas, two researchers discovered an unrecorded language they identified as “...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Sep 30, 2010, 4:44 pm
Spinning Languages is a monthly feature by Beyond Words that highlights albums from around the world. This month we’re showcasing three great albums from Nigeria, Laos, and Brazil. You can order all of them directly from the excellent music store Other Music. Enjoy these tunes! Various Artis...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Sep 30, 2010, 1:13 pm
Every year on September 30th, the world pauses momentarily to celebrate the vast contributions of its translators. International Translation Day began in 1953 when members of the International Federation of Translators (FIT) decided their profession deserved a day of recognition– and rightly s...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Sep 28, 2010, 1:19 pm
It’s that long-awaited time of year — the temperature’s beginning to drop, the leaves are starting to shift colors, and you might even be trading in your shorts for pants on the weekends. Summer is officially over. To commemorate the seasonal change, we’re looking back at so...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Sep 27, 2010, 10:01 am
AID Atlanta has been saving and transforming lives since 1982. The agency was founded as a grass-roots response to the devastating and fatal impact of HIV/AIDS on the Atlanta community, and it’s now the largest most comprehensive AIDS Service Organization in the Southeast United States. The mi...
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Jonathan W. posted an article on Beyond Words: ALTA Language Services Blog - Sep 23, 2010, 5:30 pm
ALTA Language Services, Inc. (ALTA) is an independent firm recognized as a leader in language services and language testing in the United States. Currently, ALTA is seeking native to nearly native Spanish linguists, preferably with a strong degree of familiarity with the Interagency Language Roundta...
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