What language tells us about the roots of the stone age diet | David Shariatmadari Next month, the UK’s first paleolithic restaurant will open in London. The paleo, stone-age or caveman diet has been around in various forms for decades. But it harks back to a much earlier time, when our eating habits were supposedly in line with our evolution, before agriculture came along and made us civilised but unhealthy. One of the best TEDx talks I’ve watched is an efficient debunking of the stone-age diet by Christina Warriner. Things we know about our ancestors generally come from two sources: their own accounts, and the things they have left behind. Strangely enough, though, there’s another line of inquiry available. It’s all thanks to a painstaking technique called the comparative method. With a highly technical understanding of sound change, and collections of thousands upon thousands of cognates, whole words, and then large vocabularies of unrecorded languages have been revealed. This, of course, takes us back quite a long time. My list is highly selective.
Et si on signait ? - Jonathan Promoting Visual Literacy Visual literacy is a 21st Century Skill that requires students to interpret, use and create media in ways to encourage critical thinking, decision-making, communication and learning. With easy access to copyright-friendly digital images and a growing number of web 2.0 resources for manipulating them, it's certainly worth offering students the option of conveying a message visually. Let's take a closer look at one way to design effective learning experiences to promote visual literacy.It's always a good idea to start with an Essential Question to drive the learning experience. Students can work in pairs or individually to create images that answer the question visually, then all of the work can be published online for an engaging culminating activity to allow students to share knowledge and develop a deeper understanding of the whole.BigHugeLabs is a good web 2.0 resource to start with.
Languages and translation - Resources for translators, interpreters and language learners Signs & Symbols LANGUAGES ON THE WEB - THE ONE AND ONLY WEB SITE TO LEARN FOREIGN LANGUAGES ONLINE Marketing is becoming more and more competitive as companies scramble | Aussie Translations-A leading translation agency in Australia Marketing is becoming more and more competitive as companies scramble to get their message across to potential customers overseas. Sometimes, companies fail to use the right marketing translation services to do a culturally aware translation for them, resulting in anything from incomprehension to derision, depending on the error. It seems as if the potential for errors in marketing translation is greater than with many other types of translation. There have been a number of blunders over the years that have probably been remembered by the companies that made the mistake more than the people who read them. Another slogan, used on a t-shirt in the USA, designed to advertise a t-shirt design company, was marketed amongst the large Spanish speaking community in the US during the Pope’s visit. Maybe these companies are remembered more than companies which produce perfectly good translations, but whether their products sell well is another matter.
Do you intend selling your goods in Australia? | Aussie Translations-A leading translation agency in Australia Do you intend selling your goods in Australia? Marketing is all important for any company anywhere and the greater the competition, the more you need to market your own brand. Any company that considers expansion into an overseas population is faced with the task of getting its message across in another language, as well as another culture. Sometimes, tried and tested language translation isn’t enough. There have been a lot of marketing translation blunders over the years which should serve as a warning to any company that wants to market their goods and services outside their own country. There are many examples of these sorts of errors and they should make any company wanting to sell their products overseas hurry along to a NAATI translation service to do their marketing translations for them. The point is that if it’s easy for big companies who have the money to get their products translated effectively to make mistakes, it’s just as easy for your company to make them, too.
Portuguese, Sinhalese, Senegalese........How About Legalese? | Aussie Translations-A leading translation agency in Australia Sometimes it seems that legal documents are written in their very own language. The terms and jargon used are found nowhere else or at least have a specuifc contextual meaning. No wonder that legal document translation services have to use translators that not only understand the languages they are translating, but must be familiar with the legal terminology used in both countries as well as familiar with the legal systems, too. That may seem a tall order, but when you need to translate your legal documents it will be vital that you get it right.Legal documents may include any of the following: application letters; birth, marriage and death certificates; business contracts; commercial documents; contracts and agreements; deposition documents; infringement cases;judicial transcripts and statutes and litigation materials, just to name a few. Many of these legal documents are complex and are probably some of the most difficult documents to translate accurately.
Speed and Accuracy Must go Hand in Hand with Legal and Business Document Translation | Aussie Translations-A leading translation agency in Australia Speed and Accuracy Must go Hand in Hand with Legal and Business Document Translation When business, and particularly legal documents, must be translated there is almost always a need for timely delivery. Businesses as well as many individuals work to a schedule. Delayed manuscripts and document handling may mean a contract lost. At the same time, business and legal documents must be translated accurately. The conclusion is that anyone who needs this sort of document handling must choose the best translator to do the work for them. Translators need to be particularly proficient at their work in order to achieve the double requirement for a speedy turn-around time as well as accuracy. The professional legal translator must be not only part legal scholar but also part detective as well as a proficient linguist in the languages required. In many cases a totally literal legal translation of documents may not be possible.
Why Translation is Important to Africa? | Aussie Translations-A leading translation agency in Australia Better access to effective document translation or legal translations across Africa could save lives and improve the welfare and well-being of millions of people in that continent according to a new study that has been done by Common Sense Advisory who has completed the study for an organization called Translators without Borders. According to the study, better access to translation services could mean improvements in the present yawning gap in information inequality in Africa as well as have long lasting effects on the health and safety of Africa’s citizens by improving economic development and political stability. The survey analyzed responses from a total of 364 translators from some 269 African languages in 49 different countries. A spokesman for Translators without Borders said that the results of the survey confirmed what the NGO had expected from its own experience in Africa. Africa is a huge continent with a population of nearly one billion.