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
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/182280
NEWS & EDITORIAL EDITOR'S The latest from the languages world Miranda Moore Vol/52 No/5 2013 OF STEvE CADMAN, 'SENATE HOuSE, uNIvERSITy Raising children bilingually has not been easy and, although my daughter had some passive skills, she spoke very little Spanish at the beginning of the summer. Five weeks in Mexico has changed that, giving me a palpable reminder of the incredible capacity children have for learning languages – 7 being the apparent 'optimum age', which has certainly been our experience (my four-yearold son returns to the uk wilfully monolingual). Adults, too, can achieve great results when immersed in a foreign language and culture, as John Evans testifies on pages 20-21. Not every child has this opportunity, yet the school experience could be much improved to enable them to utilise their capacity for learning. A flexible curriculum is an interesting idea but guidelines, support and training for teachers are clearly necessary, and I am less optimistic that this will be forthcoming than our contributor, Dr Shirley Lawes, who explores the issues in more detail on pages 8-10. Also in this issue, we continue our series looking at challenging physical conditions for interpreters – this time in the medical field (p.12); learn about a challenging mission to support interpreters working with victims of people trafficking in Romania (p.16); and join the debate on the impact of crowd-sourced translations on professional linguists (p.14). Freelance translators often send me their Cv and I am not always able to reply (when looking for work it is important to check that you are emailing the correct person). Worryingly, I have just received two that are clearly fraudulent, and identified as such by gmail. This scam is growing and we offer guidance on how to avoid it on page 10. LONDON', 20/10/2005 vIA FLICkR (CC By-SA 2.0) LETTER All change at language institutes Two of the uk's key language and culture institutes have been affected by changes to the School of Advanced Study (SAS), following the Hefce funding review in early 2013. Both the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies (IGRS), and the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA) have been renamed to reflect changes to their scope and remit. On 1 August, the IGRS became the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR) and the ISA became the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS). Part of the university of London, the SAS comprises 10 institutions and is primarily funded through Hefce (the Higher Education Funding Council for England), rather than via tuition fees. Chaired by Professor Edward Acton, the review panel recommended that funding continue at the current level subject to substantial structural changes. The IMLR now has a wider remit, including a national research role, with the aim of 'facilitating, initiating and promoting dialogue and research for the Modern Languages community'. On the other hand, the remit of the ILAS has narrowed to focus on Latin America and the Caribbean; the study of North America will no longer be supported. The IMLR will be launched officially on Saturday 7 December with talks on the theme of 'Post-National Modern Languages?'. For further details see http://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk. SENATE HOUSE: University of London headquarters, where SAS is based (above) Facebook moves into translation Facebook has bought the speech-to-speech translation app company Mobile Technologies in a move that could enable the social networking site to provide voice searches in multiple languages as well as the real-time translation of posts. Facebook currently offers some translation using Microsoft's Bing, but with Apple and Google investing heavily in speech recognition, it is keen to be able to compete. Mobile Technologies is responsible for the Jibbigo app, which enables instant voice and screen translations in 25 languages. Announcing the move, Tom Stocky posted on the site: 'Although more than a billion people around the world already use Facebook every month, we are always looking for ways to help connect the rest of the world as well.' OCTOBER/NOvEMBER The Linguist 5