I just wanted to share some exciting news … our parent company, viaLanguage, has just acquired one of their long-time strategic business partner, Planet Productions, Inc. It’s very exciting news and we couldn’t be happier to welcome them into our viaLanguage family!

Our brand-new e-Learning and web-based training “sibling” will operate as the subsidiary viaLearning. The addition promises to be huge as it expands K12Translate’s aim to support school districts and educational institutions as they look to train their dispersed staffs and educate parents and the community.

Planet brings with them expertise in instructional design and creative multimedia development. This combined with our technology, cultural adaptation and translation services will equip us to offer solutions that enhance our K12 clients’ training and education needs like never before.

Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate

If your school district receives funds and grants to make sure material is translated to serve Limited English Proficiency parents and students, it makes sense to focus your attention and translation budget on the languages that are spoken the most in your district in order to make the best use of those funds. A good rule of thumb when considering languages you should translate into is whether or not there is a population of 5% within a community. Look at the demographics of your community so that you concentrate on the top two or three immigrant and refugee languages that are most represented in your area. If one of these languages is Spanish, for example, even though there may be many countries represented in your immigrant population, it can save money to translate material into a neutral form of Spanish instead of translating the material twice into “Mexican Spanish” or “Cuban Spanish”, for example.

Keep in mind that the demographics of your community might suddenly change during the year due to such factors as an influx of new refugees who may require Somali translation or Burmese translation. If you budget for a few different languages, you will be able to switch the focus to another language if a population grows. If a population happens to decrease, you could use the extra budget allotment to providing more in-depth translated information to another population instead.

Keep Learning!
Maggie