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Should I select Traditional or Simplified Chinese for my translation?

Monday, March 7th, 2011


When it comes to Chinese it is important to understand that there is a distinction between the spoken and written forms of the language. There are dozens of dialects in China but the most widely spoken ones are Mandarin and Cantonese. Neither of these dialects have any direct connection however, to written Chinese which has two main writing systems itself, Traditional and Simplified. A Mandarin speaker for example may write in the Traditional or Simplified script. Interestingly enough, it is not uncommon for people who cannot communicate verbally in Chinese to be able to understand each other through writing. Knowing the spoken dialect is therefore not enough information to be able to define the written dialect that a target audience will use.

Chinese is one of the oldest written languages, dating back thousands of years. The most important and impactful change to the written Chinese language took place in 1956 when the government introduced the Simplified Chinese script in an effort to promote literacy throughout the country. As its name implies in this new script the characters were simplified by reducing the number of strokes.

If it is not possible to ask the audience which written Chinese they require or use, the best indication is likely to be the geographical region where the target audience lives. The table below summarizes the written and spoken preferences of each major Chinese territory:



Age is another factor to consider when deciding which script to use. The aging population tends to write in the Traditional script. For Medicare documents and other medical forms geared toward this population it is recommended to use Traditional Chinese. Currently the majority of Chinese in the U.S. use Traditional Chinese, but this trend is shifting towards Simplified Chinese. If your target audience is younger, or has more recently immigrated from China, it may be more appropriate to choose Simplified Chinese which is now taught in most Chinese schools.

If you’re still not sure whether your translation should be into Traditional or Simplified Chinese talk to your LSP. Your provider can give you some samples of Traditional and Simplified text which you can show to your audience to determine their preference.

Keep Learning!

Isabel
K12Translate

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The K12Translate Family Gives Back

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010


All of us here at K12Translate and the viaLanguage family believe that ensuring language access through translation is really about building community. That’s what effective communication makes possible. I guess you could say we sort of have a community-minded focus just by virtue of the work we do.

So, it would just seem to make sense that we feel a natural desire to give back. And I wanted to take this post to applaud all the people in the K12Translate family, and beyond, who find the time and make the effort to give back during the year. Cheers to all of you!

Are you looking for some philanthropic ideas for your company? Here are few organizations and efforts we support:

  • Humane Society – One paid day is donated to each employee to support their favorite non-profit organization. The company also offers an annual team volunteer opportunity. This year it’s the Humane Society—because pets are also part of the community!
  • Operation Cornbread – We support Sisters of the Road Café in Portland, Ore., as part of that organization’s annual matching program, Operation Cornbread, which keeps food coming to the needy during the peak summer months.
  • Annual Translation Grants - We offer in-kind translation grants for organizations reaching out to limited English proficient (LEP) communities, both Healthcare and K12.
  • Heifer International – We provide annual support to a needy family by purchasing and donating a cow. Learn more about this unique program in an earlier post by viaLanguage.

As the Oregon Lottery once said, though I paraphrase, “Your odds of winning are 550,000 to one—significantly higher than if you don’t play.” And it’s the same with making a difference. Act and you can help.

Keep Learning & Keep Giving Back!
Leslie
K12Translate

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Perhaps PPS Can Be a Lesson to All School Districts

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010


I came across an interesting story right from K12Translate’s home state (and city!) of Portland, Oregon. As reported by KATU News, a local Latina activist by the name of Marta Guembes went undercover to investigate Portland Public Schools’ progress in communicating with non-English speaking parents.

Just last year, PPS was required by the state Department of Education to improve communication with non-English speaking parents in order to meet state and federal laws. With 10 percent of the PPS parent population not speaking English, and over 72 languages represented, Guembes set out to see if the district was making strides towards better communication with these populations.

Guembes, undercover as a Spanish-speaking immigrant, called 85 Portland schools over two days. As you can read in her report, the results were not favorable as over one-third of the schools called provided no assistance or information to her, simply responding with “no español.” The remaining schools, according to Guembes, did “not meet the protocol” either.

Now we at K12Translate are big fans of school districts in any state, and we truly understand and appreciate the many barriers there are to providing language access to increasingly diverse student and parent populations. With budgets drastically shrinking, and classrooms rapidly growing, achieving this is challenging at best. But with a bit of planning and the right translation tools and teams, not being another lesson like PPS is possible, and very worth it.

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

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Improving Educational Outcomes for English Language Learners

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010


With many states facing dramatic increases in their ELL populations, The Working Group on ELL Policy, a team of leading ELL researchers and policy experts, has published a report on how to best keep pace with the growing needs of English Language Learners. Focused on improving educational outcomes for ELLs, the report is aimed to inform lawmakers who are discussing reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind.

The report offers recommendations to improve five key areas of ESEA, making the new policy much more comprehensive than it is today. The proposed changes not only emphasize access to high-quality teachers for ELLs, but also suggest backing schools’ efforts to teach bilingual education. The report recommends that the amount of time it takes ELLs to learn English should be taken into account, therefore allowing the students to have adequate time and resources to develop proficiency and academic progress. It is also suggested that states should employ consistent identification and classification of their ELL students, as well as the length and type of services for them.

With increasingly diverse student populations growing faster than ever, it may be time to revisit our policies to ensure the best strategies and educational opportunities are available for our English Language Learners.

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

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Cultural Competence is Key to Fighting Childhood Obesity

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010


Childhood obesity is growing at an alarming rate, currently affecting one in three of the nation’s students. Unfortunately, this epidemic is disproportionately high among Hispanics, bumping the rate of obesity to nearly two out of three children in certain student populations.

As reported by KVUE News Washington Bureau, First Lady Michelle Obama has launched her “Let’s Move” campaign in an effort to help schools fight this epidemic. Keeping the high rates of childhood obesity amongst Latinos in mind, the campaign’s first meeting focused on culturally-specific solutions for this community.

With staple foods in the Latino diet that may not math up with that of Westerners, the task force acknowledged the value in culturally-attuning their dietary recommendations. One solution, as put forth by Ian Smith, founder of The 50 Million Pound Challenge, was to make a culturally relevant food pyramid using items that commonly exist in many Hispanic cultures.

Another example, as showcased by our parent company, viaLanguage, involves producing culturally resonant health program materials as they did for the Health Plan of San Mateo. By adapting the program’s word-find puzzles and children’s melodies like “Baa, Baa Black Sheep” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” the end product was made much more culturally meaningful. Click here to read the entire case study.

Changing any child’s diet is not an easy task, but by incorporating culturally familiar foods, activities and lessons, your efforts will hold a lot more weight in helping the Latino youth maintain theirs.

Keep learning and stay healthy!
Leslie
K12Translate

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Education Translation Trends

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

I’d like to extend a special thank you to all who participated in K12Translate’s recent Education Translation Trends Survey. We’ve tallied the results and I thought I’d share some of the highlights with our readers. Of course, you can download a free copy of the entire report here: Translation Trends Report

It may come as no surprise that communicating with and engaging limited English speaking students, parents and communities amidst shrinking budgets is the top concern for school districts in the 2010-2011 school year. Yet despite nearly half of the school districts reporting that limited budgets are their largest challenges in serving their ELL communities, 44 percent expect to see a decrease in the federal Title III funding that helps them serve these special populations.

Nearly 90 percent of districts reported that they regularly use the Internet for parent-student communications. However, despite nationally reported growth in social networking, only 12 percent of districts said they used sites such as Twitter and Facebook to build the home-school connection.

Read the entire report to see what your other districts are doing to reach their ever-growing LEP/ELL student and parent populations. Click here to download report.

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

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Develop Strategies for Avoiding Translation Traps

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010


Among the myriad challenges facing the nation’s school districts is the mounting costs of their multilingual communications. Yet with over 20% of the U.S. population speaking a language other than English, ensuring that your school’s information be made available in a language your students and parents understand is critical. The high amount of information, forms and permissions that schools distribute often present a challenge to these non-native English speakers. And unfamiliarity with the American K-12 system can equally impact the ability of LEP/ELL parents to fully participate in their child’s education.

So how can schools ensure effective communications that truly reach their growing LEP populations? What can be done to keep translation quality high while staying within budget? As part of our free webinar series at K12Translate, we are offering an installment that directly addresses these issues. Titled “Avoiding Eight Translation Traps: Planning Multilingual Communication for Your District,” the webinar will take place 11:30 a.m. (PT) on April 6th and will explore a range of strategies for responding to today’s changing K12 environment.

We hope you can join us for this webinar!

Click here to register

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

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Russian Language Overview – Part II

Thursday, February 18th, 2010


Today Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once part of the USSR, where it was widely taught in school. However, younger generations may not be fluent in it, because Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. It was also widely taught in Asian countries such as Laos, Vietnam, and Mongolia due to the Soviet influence, and is still used as a lingua franca in Afghanistan by various tribes.

Sizeable Russian-speaking communities also exist in the U.S. (especially in large urban centers such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago.) According to the United States 2000 Census, Russian was reported as the language spoken at home by 1.50% of population, or about 4.2 million, placing it at #10 of languages spoken in the United States.

When translating into Russian it is important to know your target audience and where they are located to reach them effectively. For example, when deciding how to communicate with immigrants from the former USSR, Russian should be your first choice because Russian was the official language. However, for many immigrants, Russian is not their native tongue, but rather their second language. This includes Ukrainians, the largest non-Russian ethnic group of the former USSR. Even though both languages are written in the Cyrillic alphabet and are similar, they are not mutually understandable. Belarusian is between the two and is often understood by both Russians and Ukrainians.

Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate

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Russian Language Overview – Part I

Thursday, February 11th, 2010


Today I want to write about a language that is very close to my own heart considering I spent my entire undergraduate career studying it. This beautiful, complex language is Russian and has led to my personal love affair of the literature and culture. Russian is the most widely spoken language in Europe and the most widespread of the Slavic languages. It is the first language to about 145 million people worldwide and the second language to an additional 110 million.

Russian is the official language of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan as well as one of the official languages of the United Nations. It belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages including English, French, and Irish, respectively.

Russian is written using a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet, consisting of 33 letters. Setting up Russian documents as Word files and as content on websites requires some preparation and knowledge of Cyrillic typesetting issues. Using standard Windows-based Unicode fonts and choosing Cyrillic encoding does the trick for Russian text in most cases. There are certain Unicode fonts for Windows that contain correctly addressed Russian characters, e.g. Arial, Courier, Tahoma, Times and Times New Roman. Please keep in mind that Cyrillic will not display correctly if Unicode fonts are not used. If you ever have any questions about the written language you should always feel free to ask your Language Service Provider who can guide you through the unique Cyrillic typesetting issues.

Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate

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Lao, Tigrinya, Burmese Fonts – Oh My!

Thursday, February 4th, 2010


Having worked in the field of education translation for the past decade, I have witnessed the rise of multilingual technology in leaps and bounds. Gone are the days when bilingual parents would handwrite informative memos and translate parent newsletters for ESL communities. Instead, school districts work hand-in-hand with professional native speaking translators who specialize in cross-cultural communication, English Language Learning (ELL) education and cutting edge technology.

One component of this technology is working with foreign language fonts. At the most basic level, fonts are stylized typefaces of an alphabet, character set or script. In order to print a document correctly, the fonts used within the document need to be installed on your computer. Most computers already come equipped with “system fonts” which are commonly used fonts including those of the more popular languages like Chinese or German.

However, historically, many languages of limited diffusion such as Armenian, Khmer/Cambodian or Urdu have not been as widely accommodated in the world of multilingual fonts. You may require very unique fonts that need to be purchased when working with these languages in conjunction with certain programs or even require a language specific operating system. In order to avert any surprises at the end of an education translation project, I highly recommend proactively discussing any font requirements that you may have with your Language Service Provider (LSP). Your LSP should also be able to advise you on the best fonts to be used for a project and also provide you with a printable Portable Document Format (PDF) that has embedded fonts within the document.

Keep Learning!
Maggie

K12Translate

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