English is a second language for a number of major league baseball players. So naturally, interpreters have come to play an important role in helping players with limited English skills carry out their athletic duties.

In the medical field, document translation is highly complex. As with any type of translation, translators must be excellent writers in their native language(s), and possess a near-perfect understanding of the linguistic and cultural nuances of the languages they translate from.

Summer is travel time, and trips to far-away locales are increasingly frequent. For many Americans, “going abroad” used to mean a trip to Mexico or Europe. Now, trips to China, Thailand or Egypt are becoming part of the travel experience for young and old alike.

Foreign languages are still electives in most US school systems, and college students may find it impossible to get into the foreign language classes they want to take. And while the European Union has set a goal for its young citizens to be trilingual, in the US it takes heroic scheduling sacrifices to be able to study two foreign languages at the same time.

Beyond interpretation and foreign language skills, there is another language-related issue of crucial importance in medical settings: making sure that doctors and staff possess the necessary language skills to practice in a country’s primary language.

Wikipedia offers free information to Internet users all over the world. But for the moment, according to Wikipedia’s statistics, only 10 languages boast over 500,000 articles: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian.

According to a study released in June by Fleishman-Hillard International Communications in conjunction with Harris Interactive, the Internet is the most influential form of media. It often determines consumers’ purchasing behavior, yet marketers still have not fully harnessed its power.

Language translation applications are widely available for smart phones, but other, separate tools exist, from phrasebooks to hand-held “talking translators.” As summer travel season is in full swing, I decided to check out some online audio files used to demonstrate the quality of these machines.

Even after writing this blog for over four years, I am always discovering amazing online resources – and they aren’t always new, either.

Just about everything can take place online, including old-fashioned Oxford-style debates. The subject, or resolution, posed this week by The Economist in its weekly debate feature is:

A post from the Portugal Magazine UK blog explains the significance of Portuguese in the world today:

So far, Spanish-speaking teams have dominated this year’s World Cup. Four of the eight teams in the quarter-finals were from Spanish-speaking nations: Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Spain. Two of the four, Spain and Uruguay, remain.

At the University of Irvine, certified language interpreters can now work from a single location, carrying out their job through remote video. Their presence is rolled into the hospital room in the form of a computer on wheels. The connection offers excellent image quality as well as real-time sound.

In its “Manifesto for Translation Studies,” the University of Texas at Dallas spells out the benefits of translation in very precise terms. Here are some extracts: