"There is more to life than increasing its speed."Gandhi
This week, we're supporting Portland's DoveLewis Emergency Animal Hospital - thanks to our friend Shevonne S. for the excellent suggestion! DoveLewis is the Pacific Northwest's only nonprofit, 24-hour emergency and ICU animal hospital. On average, they treat over 12,000 animals each year.
Here's an interesting evolution of the English language: Schoolchildren in Baltimore are substituting the gender-neutral "yo" for pronouns like "he" and "she." Code Switch, a group of NPR journalists that focuses on the frontiers of race, culture, and ethnicity, has the full story.
Our challenge for the week of May 20th: Can we find better focus through a ten minute walk? Leo Babauta’s excellent book Focus suggests the idea of a refocusing ritual - a small break in the everyday routine that can be used to shake away distractions and re-energize for the next project. One idea is a short walk to clear the head, enjoy the fresh air, and get the blood circulating.
The Telegraph reports that a new phonetic writing system has been developed by a trilingual investment banker. Jaber George Jabbour launched the Spell As You Pronounce Universal, or SaypYu, project last year, as an attempt to make the irregularities of the English language at least somewhat less bewildering for a new English speaker.
This week, we're supporting Room to Read - thanks to our friend Karen B. for the excellent suggestion! Room to Read envisions a world in which all children can pursue a quality education, reach their full potential, and contribute to their community and the world.
The fine folks at Forbes have put together an excellent compendium of tips for better business writing - and since they've been in the business of writing about business since 1917, we're pretty sure that they know what they're talking about.
Our challenge for the week of May 13th: Can we create more space in our workdays through silent meditation?
Ha! We had to link to this Atlantic article for its hilarious title: "How to Tell Charles Dickens's Prose from Every Other Dead White Guy's." Seriously - that's a crash course in how to write a catchy, intriguing title. The body of the article is actually pretty interesting, too.
This week, we're supporting The Gentle Barn - thanks to our friend Benjamin G. for the wonderful suggestion! Founded in 1999, The Gentle Barn is a six acre ranch in Santa Clarita, California that heals and rehabilitates abused farm animals, then invites at-risk youth and vistiors with emotional and physical challenges to bond with them.
Our challenge for the week of May 6th: Is it possible to only keep five things on our desks?
This week, we're supporting Autism Speaks - thanks to our friend Felicia M. for the great suggestion! Founded in 2005, Autism Speaks has grown into the world's leading autism science and advocacy organization, dedicated to funding research into the causes, prevention, treatments, and a cure for autism; increasing awareness of autism spectrum disorders; and advocating for the needs of individuals with autism and their families.
...and folderol, codswallop, and flapdoodle too! We loved Louie Castoria's recent article in the Half Moon Bay Review that suggests that "the poverty of modern English comes about through homogenization." In other words, we've settled too often for the lowest common denominator when being descriptive, instead of reaching for more unique terms or phrases.
What is true growth? Growth is a process that ultimately results in us becoming that which we always knew we were, but doubted we might ever become. It feels both familiar, yet scary all at the same time. It is the process of releasing the old and being open to the new.
First, a disclaimer: We're not actually offering to proofread or copyedit any potential bank robbers' stick-em-up notes. Of course not. We're just pointing out that, no matter what profession you might be in, proofreading and editing services can really come in handy. So, with that out of the way...
This week, thanks to a great tip from our friend Chuck B., we're supporting Ohio City Writers (OCW). OCW is a Cleveland-based non-profit creative writing center that helps elementary and high school students hone their writing skills. Ohio City Writers builds alliances with members of the local writing, journalism, arts, and music communities so that students may benefit from the guidance of accomplished and passionate writers.
WorkAwesome recently put together this list of six simple proofreading hacks and we thought it was worth sharing! We're not sure that we agree that proofreading is boring -- some of us here at Verbal Ink really enjoy it! -- but we definitely agree that it's an essential part of writing.
Linguist Geoff Nunberg recently took a look at the words we use to describe tragic events. Two words - "horrific" and "surreal" - stood out. Why have these two words become the go-to terms for newscasters and eyewitnesses? Why do they carry more weight than similar words like "scary" or "horrible?"
This week, Verbal Ink is giving back to the American Red Cross as they respond to the marathon bombings in Boston. The Red Cross is providing food, water, emotional support and spiritual care services to the injured, their families, and emergency responders. Emergency response vehicles are mobilized and more than 100 trained workers are providing support and comfort.
Moist. Nougat. Cornucopia. It's not a pile of Milky Ways in the rain a la 'Macarthur Park.' Instead, these are just some of the words that can trigger the phenomenon known as word aversion. What's word aversion? Per Slate, it's a strong reaction triggered by the sound, sight, or thought of certain words.
This week, Verbal Ink is supporting the American Cancer Society - thanks to our friend Kris M. for the great suggestion! For nearly 100 years, the American Cancer Society has worked relentlessly to save lives and create a world with less cancer and more birthdays. Together with millions of its supporters worldwide, ACS is helping people stay well, helping people get well, finding cures, and fighting back against cancer.
The Economist reports that the European Union spends around €300m each year on translating treaties between the EU's twenty-three different languages. Three of the languages - English, French, and German - tend to be spoken in most meetings; the other twenty are less common.
This might explain why so much of today's advertising copy feels exactly the same: Lifehacker reports that there are five words in the English language that are incredibly persuasive. Here they are:
This week, Verbal Ink is supporting Meals on Wheels - thanks to our good friend Peggy W. for the excellent suggestion! The Meals on Wheels Association of America (MOWAA) is the oldest and largest national organization composed of and representing local, community-based senior nutrition programs in all 50 states.
John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia University, makes the bold claim in this TED talk that texting shorthand is something new and special. In fact, he goes so far as to claim that it's a new form of speech, which is "actually a miraculous thing." ORLY?
A recent article in Forbes discussed a study that Grammarly conducted on one hundred native English speakers' LinkedIn profiles. Each person in the study had worked for no more than three employers during the first decade of their career. Half had been promoted to director level or higher during that time period, and half had not. The results are quite interesting:
This week, we're supporting Colorado's Mental Health Partners - thanks to our friend Sarah for the great suggestion! Mental Health Partners began in 1962 as a clinic, received non-profit status in 1964, and was federally designated as a comprehensive community mental health center in 1971.
We'll admit that Google Translate can be useful for simple, literal translations that don't require much in the way of parsing meaning or context. Turns out that spammers find it to be a useful tool, too! CRN reports that spammers are using Google Translate to hide links and avoid triggering spam filters.
Oh sure, everybody knows that you can use transcription to capture class lectures, make sense of market research, and earn great search results for podcasts and video presentations. Aspiring filmmaker,s take note: Transcription can also be a useful tool to capture all of the brainstorming and storytelling that takes place when creating a movie. See, for example, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
This week, Verbal Ink is supporting the Emergency Family Assistance Association (EFAA) - thanks to our friend Lisa D. for the great idea! Since 1918, EFAA has been the community safety net for families who have nowhere else to turn when they can't meet their basic needs.
The Huffington Post recently compiled a great list of reasons why every American should learn Spanish. We're inclined to agree - after all, Spanish is the second most spoken language in the U.S. Plus, from a purely selfish perspective, it would make it easier for us to find more amazing Spanish language transcriptionists to add to our team.
This is one of our all-time favorite news items from America's finest news source, The Onion. Perhaps we should have waited to post this one until April 1st, but we did think it was pretty funny that some of what follows doesn't look too much different from some of the computer-based translation results that we've seen...
Full disclosure: None of us at Verbal Ink are true oenophiles - sure, we can appreciate how a good glass of wine complements the flavors in a meal, but we'd be hard pressed to describe the overtones of musk, vanilla, and tobacco, or the hibiscus notes in an otherwise oaky cabernet. Trying to accurately describe wine is a difficult task in English, so we can empathize with the connoisseurs that are attempting to describe it to a Chinese populace that doesn't recognize many of the fruits used as adjectives.
This week, we're supporting the National Kidney Foundation - thanks to our friend Heather T. for the excellent idea! The National Kidney Foundation, a major voluntary nonprofit health organization, is dedicated to preventing kidney and urinary tract diseases, improving the health and well-being of individuals and families affected by kidney disease, and increasing the availability of all organs for transplantation.
This week, we're supporting the World Wildlife Fund - thanks to our friend RuAnn K. for the great suggestion! The world's leading conservation organization, WWF works in 100 countries and is supported by 1.2 million members in the United States and close to 5 million globally. WWF's unique way of working combines global reach with a foundation in science, involves action at every level from local to global, and ensures the delivery of innovative solutions that meet the needs of both people and nature.
We'd always assumed that the Eskimo language didn't actually have fifty words for snow - that it was a cutesy bit of folkloric hokum, long since debunked (specifically, by GK Pullum's The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax essay). Turns out that it may actually be true!
This week, we're supporting Doctors Without Borders - thanks to our friend Kristine W. for the excellent suggestion! Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971.
Per a recent article in The Telegraph, some languages are much easier to learn than others. There are two reasons for this: first, English is linked to many other European Germanic languages; second, the English language has absorbed thousands of words that originally came from Latin or French.
In honor of Valentine's Day, here's how to say "I love you" in one hundred different languages. Whether you're single, in a relationship, or "it's complicated," there's one thing we can agree on: the green conversation hearts are totally disgusting!
This week, Verbal Ink is supporting TreePeople - thanks to Douglas F. for the excellent suggestion! TreePeople is an environmental nonprofit that unites the power of trees, people, and nature-based solutions to grow a sustainable future for Los Angeles. Simply put, their work is about helping nature heal our cities.
Short Circuit's Johnny 5 notwithstanding, computers can't yet use or understand slang terms. Fortune magazine recently spoke with Eric Brown, the research scientist that works as the "trainer" for the Watson supercomputer. As you may recall, Watson won a million dollars on Jeopardy back in 2011, handily beating his human competitors.
Just a quick heads-up to our readers that Verbal Ink's Jenni will be one of the contestants on Wheel of Fortune this evening. Since the show was pre-taped, we already know how it turns out... and it's a mighty tough clue!
This week, we're supporting UNCF (United Negro College Fund) - thanks to our friend Joan B. for the great suggestion! UNCF is the nation's largest and most effective minority education organization. They provide operating funds for 38 member historically black colleges and universities, scholarships and internships for students at about 900 institutions, and faculty and administrative professional training.
OK, this book sounds right up our alley! Idiomantics: The Weird and Wonderful World of Popular Phrases, by Philip Gooden and Peter Lewis, is "a unique exploration of the world of idiomatic phrases."
OK, this is incredible. A team of genetic scientists has stored audio information in synthetic DNA, in hopes of finding a feasible solution to longterm data management. Along with a text file containing all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets, a PDF of Watson and Crick's 1953 paper describing the structure of DNA, and a color JPEG, the researchers stored an MP3 containing a 26 second excerpt of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech as actual DNA.
This week, we're supporting Children's Miracle Network Hospitals - thanks to our friend Shannon H. for the excellent idea! Since 1983, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals has raised more than $4 billion, most of it $1 at a time.
The Commission Générale de Terminologie et de Néologie strikes again! The French government office, which works to keep the French language from being watered down with - quelle horreur! - English terms, has banned Twitter's hashtag. Their replacement? A new term, "mot-dièse," which literally translates to "sharp word."
Here's an excellent translation fail - Harvard geneticist George M. Church was quoted in the UK's Daily Mail as looking for an "adventurous woman" to serve as a surrogate mother for a "cloned cave baby." That sounds mighty adventurous, indeed... but Church never actually said anything of the sort!
This may be the only time that Verbal Ink endorses the use of poor grammar - New Scientist reports that new research suggests that using incorrect grammar in one's passwords may actually make those passwords more difficult to guess. Per the article, a new password-cracking algorithm developed at Carnegie Mellon University was able to solve long passwords which, as a phrase, make grammatical sense.
This week, we're supporting Oxfam America's efforts to create lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice - thanks to Rich L. for the excellent suggestion! An international relief and development organization that works with individuals and local groups in 94 countries, Oxfam saves lives, helps people overcome poverty, and fights for social justice.
We'd be remiss if we didn't post CDZA's video, in which they translate the lyrics to the 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air' theme through 64 different languages via Google Translate.
The Utne Reader just published a fantastic article on crowdsourced microtasking (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk) and the many ways that this new type of outsourcing devalues workers. New to microtasking? Here's the quick explanation: Small, repeatable tasks are posted online and outsourced to anonymous workers. The workers complete the tasks at their home computers and are then paid a few pennies for each finished job.
Design student Pei-Ying Lin has created a fascinating project, The Unspeakableness. The project, which investigates the essence of human emotions, aims to serve as "...a stepping stone to discover mysterious qualities of the unspeakableness between human emotions and communications." The part of the project that we're most interested in is The Untranslatable Words Database.
This week, we're giving back to the Natural Resources Defense Council - thanks to our friend Lynn M. for the great suggestion! NRDC's purpose is to safeguard the Earth: its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends.
Climate change is having a negative impact on various species and places; bull trout, sea turtles, and grizzly bears are threatened by global warming. One unexpected result of climate change: losing language. One geologist suggests that the ancient Sumerian language may have been killed off by a 200-year-long drought.
There are 23 officially recognized languages in Europe, more than sixty indigenous regional languages, and many more non-indigenous lanaguages that may be spoken by non-native communities. So it stands to reason that almost all Europeans must be able to speak more than one language, right?
This week, we're supporting the Girls Empowerment Network (GENaustin) - our thanks to friend Caroline B. for the great suggestion! Originally called The Ophelia Project, GENaustin was created in 1996 by 12 concerned mothers raising adolescent girls in Austin, Texas.
Mathematicians at the University of Vermont have discovered that English is an optimistically biased language. When assistant professor Chris Danforth and colleagues began their experiments to evaluate the emotional significance of English words, their assumption was that the majority of words would be neutral, with an equally-weighted number of positive and negative valences.
If it's a new year, it must be time for Lake Superior State University to release their list of banished words! And sure enough, on New Year's Day, 2013, LSSU issued the 38th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse, and General Uselessness.
Or, more specifically, how different languages represent laughter in blog posts, emails, and instant messages. This article from The Atlantic highlights the words and numbers that various cultures use to express laughter on the Internet. To be clear, this isn't a look at of the formal translations of the word laughter (e.g., risotadas, rire, or risata). Instead, we're learning about the informal equivalents of American LOLs, lulz, and hahahahas.
This week, we're starting 2013 by giving back to Habitat for Humanity - a hearty "Auld Lang Syne!" to our friend Kevin C. for the great suggestion. Since its founding in 1976, Habitat for Humanity has helped to build or repair over 600,000 decent, affordable houses, serving more than three million people worldwide.
Happy 2013, friends! Here's how to say "Happy New Year" in 34 different languages...
A Montreal-based ice cream parlor has received repeated threatening visits from official language inspectors. The inspectors are, and we promise this is not a joke, concerned about the use of English words like "sprinkles" and "brownies" on the menu. Before we dish up this story, we should explain the Office Québécois de la Langue Française (OQLF).
This week, we're supporting the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) - a tip of the hat to Ashley S. for the excellent suggestion. The first humane society to be established in North America, the ASPCA was founded by Henry Bergh in 1866 on the belief that animals are entitled to kind and respectful treatment at the hands of humans, and must be protected under the law.
New York City is home to around 800 different languages, making it a linguist's delight. New research suggests that it's also one of the best places to find the last speakers of some of the most endangered languages. Anthropologist and linguist Mark Turin, Program Director of the Yale Himalaya Initiative, has the full story.
This week, Verbal Ink is giving back to The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) - thanks to our friend Tamra A. for the suggestion! UNICEF works in 190 countries and territories to save and improve children's lives, providing health care and immunizations, clean water and sanitation, nutrition, education, emergency relief and more. The U.S. Fund for UNICEF supports UNICEF's work through fundraising, advocacy, and education in the United States.
Here's one of the stranger stories from the Wall Street Journal: The Cyrillic alphabet contains two letters, e and ë. The dots over the letter - technically known as diacritics, or umlauts à la Mötley Crüe - have separate pronunciations (yo versus ye); they also have a fascinating backstory. See, the letter ë was invented in the late 1700s to reflect colloquial pronunciation - sort of the lesser, or vulgar, version of the letter e.
When we write about audio transcription, it's usually in the context of transcribing MP3s or cassettes into Word documents. For John Barstow, audio transcription was a little bit different - because none of those things existed. Barstow was a schoolboy who copied a patriotic tune between the pages of his math exercise book in 1777. The math book is stored at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American Histoy; the tune, titled "The Amaricans Challings" (i.e., "The Americans' Challenges"), is bloody and brash.
We've known for a while now that Google's free translation service is... well, you get what you pay for, right? In a fairly serious example of this axiom having real-world consequences, the Copenhagen Post reports that Copenhagen police have admitted to wrongly confronting a Kurdish man accused of financing terrorism with a text message that had been improperly translated by Google Translate.
This week, thanks to a recommendation from our client Eric N., we're supporting The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. Since its founding in 1951, the Conservancy has protected more than 119 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of rivers worldwide.
Way back in 2002, UBS World Report presented a statistical summary that showed that the Bible had been translated into at least 392 different languages or dialects. One of the most recent translations to arrive is that of the Jamiacan Patois New Testament. First proposed by English teacher Faith Linton in the late 1950s, the Bible Society of the West Indies has just published print and audio versions of Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment.
Have you ever thought that the dictionary would be better if it was missing a few words? Maybe wanted to trim out a couple of phrases that you really don't like? Apparently, you're not alone - the dictionary world has been rocked by linguist Sarah Ogilvie's claims that Robert Burchfield, the late editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, expunged words from the OED.
This week, we're supporting South Park Inn's work to help the homeless population of Hartford, CT - thanks to Amy L. for the great suggestion! South Park Inn provides temporary and long-term housing, supportive services, and solutions advocacy for the homeless, and helps nearly 1,500 people every year.
Happy Translation Tuesday! We're pleased to report that 1,000 year old jokes that have been translated from Arabic to English are still kind of funny. Emily Selove, of the University of Manchester, recently translated an 11th century book written by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, a revered Muslim scholar. Somewhat surprisingly, the book turned out to be a satirical guide that explains how to crash parties.
This week, we're supporting Washington Trails Association (WTA), the voice for hikers in Washington state - thanks to Katie D. for the great suggestion! WTA's mission is to preserve, enhance, and promote hiking opportunities in Washington state through collaboration, education, advocacy, and volunteer trail maintenance.
New research from the Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, reveals that a 22-year-old male Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) born and raised in captivity, spending intensive amounts of time exposed to human speech from trainers, veterinarians, guides, and tourists, seems to have been imitating Korean speech sounds for eight years.
This week, we're giving back to Feeding America, the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity. Feeding America's mission is to feed America's hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage the country in the fight to end hunger.
A couple of months ago, we posted about Australian neuroscientists that are working to translate emotions into music. Now, researchers in China are using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in tandem to translate the brain's electrical impulses into music.
Our transcriptionists hear all sorts of accents during the course of a normal work week - everything from Californian dudespeak to Jamaican patois. Now, researchers from Queen Mary University of London have discovered that humans aren't the only mammals to have regional accents.
This week, Verbal Ink is donating to Wounded Warrior Project - thanks to Jordan F. for the suggestion! Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) serves military service members who incurred service-connected wounds, injuries, or illnesses on or after September 11, 2001 and their families.
When it came time for the team of lexicographers at Oxford University Press USA to pick the word of the year, the choice was obvious: It had to be GIF, the verb. Other contenders included "Higgs Boson," "superstorm," "Super PAC," and "YOLO."
Researchers at the University of Chicago have completed a 37-year project to compile a Demotic Egyptian to English translation dictionary. What's Demotic Egyptian? The common language of Egyptians from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 500. Demotic was used in everyday Egyptian documents and letters, said Janet Johnson, a University of Chicago Egyptologist. The researchers compiled the words in the dictionary from Demotic on stone carvings, papyrus and broken fragments of pottery.
It doesn't look like this is still an active competition, but a few years ago, the Ultimate Typing Championship was held to "identify and award the fastest typers around." The winner, Sean Wrona, earned $2,000 and was crowned Ultimate Typing Champion.
This week, Verbal Ink is giving back to Venice Family Clinic - a tip of the hat to Daryn E. for this week's suggestion. Founded in 1970 by Phillip Rossman, MD, and co-founder Mayer B. Davidson, MD, it has grown from a small storefront operation into the largest free clinic in the country, with eight sites in Venice, Santa Monica, Mar Vista, and Culver City.
It's Election Day, so we're taking a brief reprieve from Translation Tuesdays to ponder this very important question: Do astronauts floating around in zero-gravity still get a say in the country's future? It turns out they do. For several years now, adventurers aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have been able to cast their votes via encrypted email.
This month, the American Literary Translators Association held its annual meeting. The topic? "The Translation of Humor, or, the Humor of Translation." Jascha Hoffman covered the event for the New York Times in Me Translate Funny One Day as the translators mulled over comedic tone, laughed about deliberately skewed translations, and debated whether it's really possible to translate a joke.
The New York Times reports that an economist for the US Treasury recently found a historical, and previously unknown, treasure: a transcript of the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that set the foundations of the modern international monetary system. Kurt Schuler, a Treasury Department economist, was browsing uncataloged material in the Treasury's library when he found the document, which has been described as "the economists' equivalent of a Bob Dylan fan finding unknown lyrics."
This week, Verbal Ink is giving back to Project Vote Smart - thanks to Natalie S. for suggesting them!
The Wall Street Journal recently posted a great article detailing the difficulties of creating translations of film dialogue for subtitles. The author, Anthony Paletta, captures a key point about all forms of translation: Even the simplest line requires finesse and understanding of the original language and of English. Another quote from the article that make it clear why machine translation isn't a good option for anything beyond very simple projects:
Here's an interesting video from CBS This Morning that looks at how regional accents - Midwestern, Brooklyn, etc. - are merging into a standardized American accent. Mo Rocca reports...
The Washington Post reports that, even though the closed captioning said differently, the Dalai Lama didn't curse as part of his closing remarks. At a Brown University event, a comment by the Dalai Lama was mistaken for a profanity by the person transcribing his remarks.
This week, Verbal Ink is supporting Boston Children's Hospital – thanks to Alice H. for the suggestion!
This week, Verbal Ink is giving back to PoundHounds - a tip of the hat to Judith K. for the suggestion!
The Engineer Online reports that technology that translates sign language into text is being developed by scientists at Aberdeen University. The software application is claimed to be the first of its kind in the world, and will theoretically bridge the gap between sign language and other forms of communication. When completed, the Portable Sign Language Translator (PSLT) will work as an app on laptops and smartphones, harnessing those devices' cameras to convert visual cues into text. Very interesting!
This week, Verbal Ink is giving back to Downtown Women’s Center - thanks to Chris W. for the suggestion!
Congratulations to Amy D. from Allentown, PA – she’s the winner of the Verbal Ink Tattoo Translation Sweepstakes. Amy won a $500 Amazon gift card and a $500 donation to Habitat for Humanity, one of her favorite charities. A big thank-you from Verbal Ink to everybody that entered the translation sweepstakes!
Musician and composer Clotilde Arias, an immigrant from Peru living in New York City, won a competition that was sponsored by the State Department and the Music Educators National Conference. The competition asked musicians to create an original Spanish translation of the national anthem that could be sent to U.S. embassies in Latin America and shared with Latin American embassies in Washington. For her efforts, Arias received a contract that paid her $150. The fascinating full story can be read here: Washington Post: Smithsonian Features Spanish Translation of National Anthem.
This week, Verbal Ink is giving back to Susan G. Komen for the Cure - thanks to Jennie V. for the suggestion!
Our 2012 Verbal Ink Transcription Services Scholarship winner, Aida Villareal-Licona, has settled into her freshman year at Scripps College! Here’s a brief update from Ms. Villareal-Licona:
Another fascinating use for transcription - the Ur Digitization Project is attempting to transcribe thousands of documents related to the excavations of the ancient city of Ur. The excavations, which took place in the 1920s and '30s, were a joint expedition of the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the British Museum, under the auspices of the the Iraqi Department of Antiquities. Documents to be transcribed include field notes, letters, sketches, and reports. The project is funded by the Leon Levy Foundation and conducted by the original excavating museums in Philadelphia and London.
This week, Verbal Ink is giving back to amfAR - thanks to Christopher H. for the suggestion!
In an attempt to woo the 64,000 Hmong-Americans in the Minneapolis-St.Paul area, McDonald's recently posted Hmong language billboards advertising their breakfast offerings. Unfortunately, the translation was missing a few spaces, turning the original statement into a confusing puzzle for both English and Hmong speakers. The billboards have since been corrected, with a better translation that more accurately reflects the intent of the original pitch. Thanks to TwinCities.com for the original article!
We'd love to help David Byrne with the transcription component of his lyrics-writing process - check out this quote from his new book, How Music Works:
This week, Verbal Ink is giving back to Rails-to-Trails Conservancy - a tip of the hat to Ardina G. for the suggestion!
No, New Zealand isn't actually going to "welcome the opportunity to cooperate with the US in the next conflicts." But, that's what an incorrect transcript of a conversation between New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested. The actual phrase in question? "...[W]elcome the opportunity to cooperate further, in that context..." The US State Department has since corrected the error, which it blamed on heavy wind noise. Of course, we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that Verbal Ink's team of awesome transcriptionists can tackle even the poorest audio recordings and heaviest accents! Read more about the Clinton press conference transcription errors in the New Zealand Herald online.
This week's charity is Carolina Youth Development Center - thanks to our friend Catherine K. for the suggestion!
Verbal Ink offers translation services for over twenty different languages, but we're not yet able to translate emotional impulses into music. Click here to read about the Australian neuroscientists who are!
This week's charity is Heifer International - thanks to our friend Elizabeth B. for the suggestion!
This is interesting: The California State Assembly recently approved Senator Alex Padilla's Senate Bill 1233, which would require that all ballot initiatives and petitions be translated in all languages covered by the Federal Voting Rights Act. If approved by the Senate, translation would be required for the Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, and Tagalog languages.
This week, Verbal Ink is supporting Pajama Progam – thanks to our friend Joe E. for the suggestion!
Here's another wonderful way that people are using transcription - preserving the Hawaiian language. Over 6,500 volunteers worked to transcribe 15,000 pages of Hawaiian language newspapers so that they could be searchable online. One of the biggest takeaways from the article is that "no computer software is precise enough to handle the Hawaiian language." Verbal Ink gently points out that no computer software is precise enough to transcribe the English language either... Click here to read the full article.
This week, Verbal Ink is supporting Community Animal Rescue & Educational Shelter (CARES) – thanks to our friends Jeff and Meghan for the suggestion!
This week, Verbal Ink is supporting Special Olympics – thanks to our friend Barry S. for the suggestion!
This week’s charity is Seattle Children’s Hospital – thanks to our friend Roger M. for the suggestion!
Why do we need translation services at Verbal Ink? Here’s a great example of a Google Translate epic fail, as relayed by Haaretz.com.
This week's charity is City Harvest - thanks to our friend Carol S. for the suggestion!
We just learned about the Spacelog project - transcripts of early missions to outer space posted for public reading on the Internet. This is super cool, and a great example of why transcription is so helpful. More info at www.spacelog.org - enjoy!
Popular representations of scientists render them dry and humorless. They have surprised us again—rebelling against “the man” with Comic Sans font! Read more here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/07/do-you-use-the-comic-sans-font.html
In which one of our favorite philosophers, Alain de Botton, presents his ideas on success, failure, and work. Great stuff!
Nearly half of the world's 7,000 languages are endangered and at risk of vanishing within the next 100 years. The team behind the Endangered Languages Project hopes to keep this from happening, by serving as a hub for language research, linguistic documents, and - hopefully - revitalization possibilities. Verbal Ink currently offers translation services for fifteen different languages, and is eagerly looking forward to supporting the remaining 6,985!
Verbal Ink is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2012 Verbal Ink Transcription Services Scholarship: Aida Villarreal-Licona from University High School in Tucson, Arizona. Aida's essay stood out for its wit, passion, and poise, and truly captured the many ways that language has added meaning to her life. With Aida's permssion, we're delighted to provide an excerpt of her scholarship essay here: