The research that they conducted examines how speaking two languages can have a profound effect on how the nervous system responds to sound. The scientific tests used 48 healthy student volunteers; 25 English only speaking and 23 bilingual (English and Spanish). The team monitored the brain response of these volunteers under two different sets of conditions using scalp electrodes to trace the patterns of brainwaves.

When the students were in quiet laboratory conditions both groups responded in a similar fashion. When the conditions changed to include distracting noise the bilingual students reacted in a far superior manner at processing the sounds; they could distinguish the important information from the background noise.  The data visibly showed that the bilingual students had heightened response in their brainstem in comparison to the non-bilingual participants.

Dr. Nina Kraus, a professor of neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern University and a part of this study team explains that “Because you have two languages going on in your head, you become very good at determining what is and is not relevant.” Their research on this project has “determined that the nervous system of a bilingual person responds to sound in a way that is distinctive from a person who speaks only one language.”

There have been similar side effects in the nervous system of musicians who spend hours practising with their instruments and these scientific studies reveal that they have a more resilient brain. This doesn’t just apply to multitasking and other recent studies on bilingual subjects also show that these skills can also ward off dementia. Keeping the brain active is just as important as looking after your body in a healthy manner and these studies further prove this.

Having the ability to speak and understand another language is not only good for cultural or business reasons then; it can also be a massive health benefit and give you bragging rights that your brain power is boosted by your second language skills.

This Northwestern University study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America and can be found here.

Shakespeare’s plays have been translated into a substantial amount of languages and this “Globe to Globe” event will show that no matter what language these plays are in the themes are universal. This is why Shakespeare’s material has endured centuries of performances in many different styles and cultures. Themes of love, loss, greed, revenge and war are not separated by language; these are human emotions and experiences that we all encounter in some respect during our life, no matter how big or small the scale. Shakespeare has captured all of these aspects in the different types of plays he wrote; history, tragedy, comedy and the problem plays (these would probably get called a ‘dramedy’ now). Even though they were written 400 years ago the themes are relevant today.

This festival will showcase how the Henry VI trilogy can be transformed from a depiction of English civil war into a new Balkan tragedy in Serbian, Albanian and Macedonian translations and performances. Some of the choices are rather poetic such as Julius Caesar in Italian set in a contemporary setting and The Merchant of Venice being performed in Hebrew by the Habima National Theatre. The National Theatre of China will be making their first trip to the UK with an adaptation of Richard III in Mandarin.

It is not just spoken word languages that are getting the translation treatment as Love’s Labour’s Lost will be acted out with British Sign Language. One other rather experimental take is with Othello which has been given a hip hop makeover. This may sound rather strange but the Chicago Shakespeare Theater has taken this tragedy and transformed it into an urban tale with original beats to accompany the words.

The scope of this project is huge but it demonstrates how something that can seem so rooted in British culture can be translated and performed by theatre companies from across the world. One tale that will be getting portrayed at The Globe and at the birthplace of William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon is Romeo & Juliet. At The Globe this will be in Brazilian Portuguese and at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon it becomes Romeo & Juliet in Baghdad. This second interpretation sees the play move from Venice to Baghdad with the strife coming from the Sunni and Shia conflict. This play will be performed in Arabic with English surtitles (subtitles to be displayed above the stage).

What this extensive festival reveals is that Shakespeare is a global cultural property that can mean just as much in the original English prose as it can in any language that is spoken across the world. The themes are universal and so translation allows these themes to be enjoyed in many different languages and performed to an audience on a grand scale.

For the complete Globe to Globe schedule including which plays will be performed in which language head here.

For more information on the World Shakespeare Festival head here.

En plus des sites internet de conseils sur la santé, ils travaillent aussi avec des produits liés à la santé et ils aident les entreprises à pouvoir toucher un marché mondial. Leurs sites internet couvrent vingt pays, dix langues et une variété de sujets liés à la santé.

Integro travaille avec Content Consultants pour fournir des traductions à la fois à petite et grande échelle. Nous les avons aidés à traduire du contenu en Français, Allemand, Chinois, Coréen, Arabe, Hindi et d’autres langues. Que ce soit des traductions à grand volume pour être utilisés en ligne, comme des sites internet entiers ou de grands nombres d’articles, ou des traductions rapides de courts documents, nous avons bâti une relation solide avec Content Consultants pour garantir qu’ils puissent offrir un service vraiment global.

Les projets spécifiques sur lesquels nous avons travaillé comprennent des eventails médicaux, qui contiennent tous les termes et phrases qui peuvent être pertinents dans une variété de langues, afin que les infirmières, les sage-femmes, les docteurs et les dentistes puissent être mieux équipés pour communiquer. Un autre projet consistait à traduire des messages SMS en Hindi, pour l’un de leurs clients, pour communiquer avec les mères de famille en Inde sur des sujets de santé.

En plus de leur fournir des traductions, nous les avons aidés dans le processus de recrutement pour des correcteurs à l’étranger. Nous avons aussi fourni des recherches culturelles et des services de localisation, en garantissant que le contenu que leurs éditeurs avaient écrit soit applicable aux pays qu’ils ciblent.

« L’équipe d’Integro a été déterminante dans le développement de l’aspect international de notre société. Ils sont rapides, précis et très serviables. Nous nous fions à leur savoir et à leurs conseils que ce soit lorsque nous avons affaire à du texte médical qui exige une traduction minutieuse et précise, ou lorsque nous étudions des CV de correcteurs chinois. Nous contrôlons nos autres sites en langues étrangères très souvent et cela passe par un très haut niveau de correction et une révision culturelle du contenu. Nous savons que nous pouvons faire confiance au travail que fait Integro. Et nous savons aussi que s’ils peuvent résoudre un problème pour nous, ils le font. »

 

Vous pouvez en savoir plus sur Content Consultants et sur leur travail à : www.contentconsultants.co.uk

When the Voyager Interstellar Mission was launched in 1977 the Cold War was still in full swing and space exploration was still a high priority. Fast forward to now and that war is over and other more bloody battles have taken its place. Space travel is no longer a priority, nor does it have the same rock star status that it once did back when Voyager 1 and 2 launched and NASA’s funding has recently been reduced in some areas.

These cut backs may impact on future projects but Voyager is still going strong and is continuing on the mission “to extend the NASA exploration of the solar system beyond the neighbourhood of the outer planets to the outer limits of the Sun’s sphere of influence, and possibly beyond.” The primary objective was to explore Saturn and Jupiter and Voyager 2 is still the only spacecraft to have visited Neptune and Uranus.  They are both transmitting their discoveries through the Deep Space Network (which sounds so sci-fi), yet it is what they took with them from Earth that also holds our interest.

Both Voyager 1 and 2 carry a 12-inch gold plated copper disc that is referred to as the Golden Record; these contain sounds, pictures, music and greetings from different cultures to any potential extraterrestrials that may find the spacecraft. It is essentially a time capsule for space and tries to represent the planet Earth through what they deemed back in 1977 to be important audio and visual elements.

There are spoken greetings in 55 languages that begin with “May all be very well” in Akkadian; this language was spoken in Somer about 6000 years ago. The last of the messages is “Best wishes to you all” and is in Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Most of these recordings are variations of this theme with the odd exception; in Amoy (Min dialect) part of the message asks “Have you eaten yet?” and the Swedish message goes into more specific detail about the speaker;  “Greetings from a computer programmer in the little university town of Ithaca on the planet Earth.” Most of the translations stress the idea of peace; perhaps one too many sci-fi movies have been watched, though it is never a bad thing to get this message out before they come for all our water (or what other reason they need to come to Earth).

If they have trouble translating any of these languages then there are other sounds to communicate who we are and what our planet is about, including the sounds of whales, thunder and birds.  They also thought that an alien life form might be interested in human sounds such as laughter. The songs range from classical pieces by Beethoven and Bach, to Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and pieces from countries such as Peru, India, China and Japan.

If the records are found by extraterrestrials how will they play them? Each has instructions in a symbolic language that indicate how the record should be played, here’s hoping they have a suitable turntable for it. If the mission was to be launched today would they be filling up iPads with a huge amount of data to explain who we are? There is definitely something wistful about this Golden Record ever being played, but as the Voyager mission travels further into the unknown and unexplored there is still hope that we will find out the answer to “are we alone?” and this could all occur thanks to a the spin of disc.

For more information on the Voyager mission head to the NASA site here.

A new book by Michael Erard entitled Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners explores the idea that there are people who learn multiple languages not just for vocational reasons such as translation services but also for fun. A polyglot is someone who can use several different languages and when you can use more than six you are known as a hyperpolyglot.

Michael Erard travelled the globe to discover what kind of people have harnessed the ability to learn multiple languages. Erard hasn’t just looked at the present but he has also looked to the past to see what previous bilingual individuals were like. Babel No More also investigates what the limits of the human mind are when it comes to this learning process; is there a cut off point of how much you can know? Why are there certain people that can learn languages quickly?

David Green who specialises in bilingualism at the University of College London spoke to the BBC about what attributes might make a good language learner. Surprisingly it doesn’t only apply to those who learn at a younger age and that “Being immersed in a language is important. Personality is a contributing factor too – not being able to tolerate feeling foolish from making inevitable errors will make learning a new language a difficult process.” Green also believes that 50% of US citizens in the next 10 years will be able to speak both Spanish and English and that migration will be a major factor in the rise of polyglots.

Environment is definitely a key factor in this learning process and being able to translate the meaning and sounds of words is important. Depending on how similar the language is to a the native tongue of the learner also influences the ease of learning; for example the closet language to English in terms of sound, vocabulary and sentence structure is Dutch. The five hardest languages for a native English speaker to capture are Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and Korean and it is easy to see that this is down to the very different structure and alphabet.

The reasons for learning all of these languages can vary greatly and as Erard discovered some do it purely for fun and a challenge. You can of course make a career from being bilingual and this can be integral for many businesses. It is vital in this digital age that global reach is aided by technology, but this can also require certain elements of translation from company to company; a polyglot or even a hyperpolyglot would be especially useful in this scenario.

If you do want to be the ‘greatest living linguist’ you will have to surpass Gregg Cox who is the current Guinness Book of Records holder of this title. Cox is an American who has taken formal examinations in 64 languages and unofficial examinations in another 16. He can speak both modern and ancient languages though it is unclear if any of the different Star Wars/Star Trek dialects are amongst these (there is another Greg Cox who does write Star Trek novels however).

Being able to speak or understand more than one language is an accomplishment and it would seem that there are many individuals who enjoy the challenge of becoming fluent in multiple languages. The realm of hyperpolyglots is a fascinating one and reveals how vast the human brain can be when it comes to learning and speaking many different languages.

GlassGuard® first approached Integro as they were planning to expand their operations further and step up their marketing activities across Europe.

In the first instance, we supported GlassGuard® with small ad-hoc translations into French. As their faith in our abilities was established, they engaged us to rework the non-English content of their website and began working with us more and more.

Our translators were able to apply local knowledge to help hone the marketing message, advising on cultural and linguistic modifications to meet the new target audiences in other countries.

GlassGuard®’s expansion into Spain was extremely successful, and faster than anticipated. Once Spanish distributors had been identified, the Integro team translated the entire GlassGuard® website into Spanish, alongside a broad range of marketing literature aimed specifically at the Spanish market.

In addition to the actual translation, we have produced a fixed terminology base for GlassGuard®, so that they can be sure of consistency throughout their translation in the future.

”We first approached Integro with some ad-hoc translations but we now regard them as a valuable part of the team. We use Integro to translate our press releases and marketing material. Integro’s understanding of our business and market is excellent. They are able to provide us with consistent, reliable and accurate translation on a timely basis.”

Stewart Damonsing, Marketing Manager

You can see GlassGuard®’s site at www.glassguard.co.uk and www.glassguard.es

InterGlobal first approached us in search of a telephone interpreting solution. They had some in-house interpretation capacity, but as they were expanding to sell policies in more and more countries, they had identified the need for a reliable telephone interpreting service.

We met with InterGlobal to demonstrate Integro’s On Call system to them and they found it was perfect for them. We adapted the package to meet their needs, including our online interface for extremely smooth access to interpretation.

On the back of the successful implementation of telephone interpretation, we have gone on to work with InterGlobal to provide assistance to their claims handlers. In dealing with international claims for medical treatment, the team were constantly dealing with invoices, prescriptions and the like in other languages.

They needed reliable translation quickly to be able to process the claims. Having got to the bottom of the claims departments needs and challenges, we put together a large team of translators around the world and provided specific training to help them work in the medical insurance field. We are now able to offer a tailored rapid document translation service that meets the precise needs of InterGlobal’s claims department.

Working in close partnership with InterGlobal has enabled us to ‘think outside the box’ to deliver specialised services to meet their needs, giving them a significant and unique competitive edge in their industry.

“Thanks to Integro On-Call, InterGlobal Assistance can communicate in any language and act promptly with confidence globally; thereby meeting our prime objective to provide a high level of service to all of our clients 24 hours a day.”

Derek Stroud Group Operations Director, InterGlobal Assistance.

www.interglobalpmi.com

In reaching out to a global market, Brandbank needed demonstration versions of their complete online interface in French, Dutch, Polish and Slovak. They also had a tight deadline – so needed a large volume of very specific translation in a short timeframe.

The challenge in this type of project is that there are a lot of ‘techie’ terms and jargon, and words are often used out of context. The only way to deliver high quality translation in these instances is to ask a lot of questions and have an easy flow of communication with the client.

Having worked with a translation company that hadn’t grasped the complexity of their project, someone recommended Brandbank try Integro.

So how did we deliver? Well, we took it seriously and went about it properly. We weren’t afraid of the fact that it was complicated (in fact, we quite like a challenge). We broke it down for them and tried to take as much of the stress off their shoulders as possible.

With our translation team around the world, we were able to process a huge amount of work in a short period of time – and the results were excellent.

“Integro took a lot of pain away from our translation process. We have a range of technical files that needed to be complete and they were able to handle any format we delivered to them which saved us a lot of time. They took care to make sure that the context was correct, asking all of the right questions. They were under pressure with our tight timescales, but the deadline was met and the quality remained high – thank you Integro.”

Edward Johnson – Project Manager

www.brandbank.com

As well as health advice websites, they work with health related products and help companies reach out to a global market. The websites they write content for span twenty countries, ten languages and a broad range of health related topics.

Integro works with Content Consultants to deliver translation on both small and large scales. We have helped them deliver content in French, German, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi and other languages. Whether it is large volume translations for online use, such as complete websites or large numbers of articles, or urgent short document translation, we have built a strong relationship with Content Consultants to ensure that they can offer a genuinely global service.

Specific projects we have collaborated on include their medical ‘fans’, which contain all the terms and phrases that might be relevant in a broad range of languages, so that nurses, midwives, doctors and dentists are better equipped to communicate. Another project involved the translation of text messages into Hindi, for one of their clients to communicate about health issues with mothers in India.

As well as providing this type of translation, we have supported them in recruitment process for oversees editors. We have also provided cultural research and ‘localisation’, helping to ensure that the content their editors have written is applicable in the countries they are targeting.

“The team at Integro  have been vital in developing the international aspect of our business. They are fast and accurate and very helpful. We rely on their knowledge and advice  whether we are handling  very medical content that needs careful and accurate translation, or looking at CVs of Chinese editors. We audit our other language sites regularly and that involves very high level proofreading and cultural review of the content. We know we can trust the work Integro does for us.  And we also know that if they can solve a problem for us they will.”

You can find out more about Content Consultants and their work at www.contentconsultants.co.uk

Despite the black cloud of recession hanging over the country; the UK still has the third-largest stock of inward and outward foreign investment according to research commissioned by the CIA at the end of last year. Foreign business is clearly still a vital component of the British economy, and even in times when money is tight, good translation is a worthwhile investment. Research from the European Commission found that 82% of consumers were less likely to buy goods online if a website was not in their native language. This is also the case globally, as research firm Common Sense Advisory found 72.4% of consumers were more likely to buy a product with information in their own language.

Ultimately these statistics show that people will not invest money in what they do not understand, whether they are making a straightforward individual purchase or trading with another business. Even countries with a high number of fluent English speakers, which only comprises 25% of the global market, give significant preference to doing business in their own language. The Common Sense Advisory found that even in countries with high English acceptance, such as Sweden, 80% of business buyers bought in their own language, demonstrating the vital importance of apt, culturally relevant translation.