K12Translate Blog

Education Translation Trends

Maggie — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:44:49 +0000

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

Develop Strategies for Avoiding Translation Traps

Maggie — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:10:55 +0000

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

Russian Language Overview – Part II

Maggie — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:33:31 +0000

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

Russian Language Overview – Part I

Maggie — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:33:43 +0000

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

Lao, Tigrinya, Burmese Fonts – Oh My!

Maggie — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:49:48 +0000

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

Will ELL Students be Left Behind in the Race to the Top?

Maggie — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:30:10 +0000

Today is the last day to apply for Federal aid from the Race to the Top fund which has been put in place by the Obama Administration. There are approximately 4.3 billion dollars available for 40 states across the country to create innovative reform programs for their school districts. However, in order to qualify for a piece of the pie, states must take several definitive measures such as close failing schools, increase academic standards and evaluate teachers based on their students performance.

Knowing that there is a significant education gap between ELL and native English speaking students, does the Race to the Top program affect ELL students in a negative or positive manner? For instance, in the Hispanic/Latino community the education gap disproportionately affects Latino students. According to Arlene Hambrick, Ph.D., of the North Central Regional Educational Library, “By Grade 12 … 4 percent of Hispanic students reach the proficient level in mathematics, as opposed to the 20 percent of white students.” Would this statistic make schools with high ELL populations vulnerable to closure? Or would it serve as a catalyst in fund allocation to improve student performance?

A host of factors, from historical to cultural to financial, contribute to the unique experience of ESL and ELL families that impact their scholastic accomplishments. Unfortunately, all too often these details are overlooked within the education system at-large due to budget limitations. Would Race to the Top programs begin to address such questions as “What communications medium is preferred by ELL audiences?” and “What languages are they communicating in?” The answers to these questions will ultimately determine how school districts will engage their English Language Learning (ELL) students, decrease the education gap and ultimately improve academic achievement.

Keep Learning!
Maggie

K12Translate

Haitian Earthquake Disaster

Maggie — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:17:16 +0000

It is with a very heavy heart this morning that I read about the national disaster in Haiti. With tens of thousands of lives lost in the impoverished Caribbean nation, I am reeling over the devastation caused by the 7.3 earthquake. Approximately 850,000 -1 million people living in the United States are of Haitian descent and of those about ½ million speak Haitian Creole. My thoughts and well wishes go out to all Haitians and their families across the world today.

Sincerely,
Maggie

K12Translate

The K12Translate Family Expands as viaLanguage Acquires Planet Productions

Maggie — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:18:33 +0000

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

Budgeting for Education Translation: Sharing Documents across School Districts

Maggie — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:00:10 +0000

Sometimes it can really help to pool your resources and documents within your district or sister-education organizations. If several schools within your larger district send out the same document and only the school name or phone numbers change, consider translating a document to use as a template throughout your district. Setting things like the date and the teacher’s name within square brackets and letting your LSP (Language Service Provider) know not to translate this material can be a simple way to distribute translated material throughout the system.

Education budgets are sometimes not based on the calendar year, so it can be helpful to plan your year so that some material is translated in the calendar year of 2009 and some in 2010, for example. That way you can focus your funds on the times of the year when the most documents need to be translated (for example towards the end of the school year and Fall registration of each year).

With frequently limited funds to school districts these days, any money saved or stretched is welcome! If you have any innovative ideas about how to serve the largest portion of your ELL community with efficiency, please send your ideas to me at mnickles@k12translate.com.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate

Budgeting for Education Translation: Leveraging Past Translations and Maximizing Existing Translations

Maggie — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:21:29 +0000

Are there documents your school district uses that require small updates every year, but the majority of the text stays the same? For instance, does your district send out registration forms every single year in Spanish, Vietnamese and Russian but only the date changes? Or did your district spend $10,000 translating your parent handbook into five languages last year and only 25% of the content has been updated for the current school year? In that case, ask your LSP (Language Service Provider) to archive past projects for quick reference and use later. The next time the document needs to be translated, you’ll likely only have to consider minor revisions instead of the cost of translating the entire set of materials again from scratch.

Also, keep in mind that some web content, once translated, can be repurposed into documents for distribution many times over. Or, you may be able to locate translated information available by reputable sources online instead of translating directly from scratch. For instance, the California Department of Education publishes a clearinghouse of notification translations into several languages such as Spanish, Korean, Hmong, Chinese and Vietnamese. You might just find the translation you are looking for already online!

Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate