The Linguist

The Linguist 55,5

The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology

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A product recall in Dubai has highlighted the importance of accurate translation to the global food industry. Milka Oreo chocolate bars were recalled from stores in August after alcohol was wrongly listed as one of the ingredients. "Samples were tested and we found that there is no alcohol in the product. But the problem was a wrong translation of the product label," said an official from Dubai's Food Safety Department. The problem ingredient was "chocolate liquor", described as a semi-solid cocoa paste, which had been mistranslated in Arabic as an alcoholic drink. 6 The Linguist Vol/55 No/5 2016 www.ciol.org.uk NEWS & EDITORIAL Tokyo is making multilingual safety measures a priority ahead of the Olympic Games in 2020. Emergency response officials carried out an exercise focusing on the safe evacuation of foreign tourists during an earthquake. Assuming the 100 evacuees would have no knowledge of Japanese, they used portable translation devices that could translate into Chinese, English and Korean. Automated translation was also used to relay instructions in all four languages over a megaphone during the drill at the top of Japan's tallest building, Tokyo Skytree (pictured). "We have to take safety measures as we will be hosting people from around the world," said Governor Yuriko Koike. Nemeton's success in making Irish-language programmes – it provides channel TG4 with all its sports coverage and has just won Ireland's most prestigious marketing award – is a dynamic example of the business reach a minority language can achieve beyond its core market of speakers… [Founder Irial Mac Murchú says] "We have found that the language… gives us something unique that gets us noticed." 'Let Languages Shout Out your Business', 20/6/16 What the papers say… [Narguess Farzad at SOAS] believes that a surefire way to supercharge your learning curve is to follow the news in a foreign language… "A trick that I'd suggest," [business coach Jimmy] Naraine offers, "is that when you are walking on the street simply pull out your phone and pretend that you are speaking to someone on the other end. But, and here's the catch – just use this time to practise a foreign language." 'How to Learn a Language in Super-Fast Time', 6/6/16 In developing the script, [Director Mark] Osborne (with the blessing of Saint-Exupéry's estate) relied heavily on the first English translation of The Little Prince… The fox also asks the Little Prince to "tame" him, though this is an admittedly imperfect translation of the French verb apprivoiser. "That is a really beautiful word," Mr Osborne said, explaining that it has a set of special connotations in French. The verb does not simply mean "to domesticate" but instead suggests a process of gently forging a relationship. "I love that," Mr Osborne said, "because it's the biggest example of how difficult it is to translate." 'The Translation Challenges of "The Little Prince"', 5/6/16 The latest from the languages world Product recall after label error Multilingual evacuation drill prepares Tokyo for Olympics Infographic showing the estimated comparative costs of learning 28 of the world's languages, ranging from Indonesian – the cheapest at a predicted cost of £5,147 – to Korean, which was deemed the most expensive with a purported price tag of £41,155. The figures were worked out based on the expected number of hours study required for English speakers to reach "fluency", which varied from 600 to 2,200 hours, according to researchers for voucherbox.co.uk. © SHUTTERSTOCK

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