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What is Scandinavia exactly? Technically, Scandinavia consists of the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The name Scandinavia originally referred to Scania, a former Danish region that is now part of Sweden. The popular usage of the term in these three countries became a unifying concept in the nineteenth century. In 1839, after a…
International Translation Day is celebrated every year on September 30 on the feast of St. Jerome, the patron saint of translators. Saint Jerome (347–420) was a Catholic priest, theologian and historian. He is best known for his translation of most of the Bible into Latin (which became known as the Vulgate). International Translation Day was launched in 1991 by the FIT, the International Federation of…
It was a wandering French geographer with a vision of language as a unifying and deeply generative cultural influence who coined the term “Francophonie” (French-speaking world). His name was Onésime Reclus, a 19th century booster of French culture and language who traveled widely and wrote books primarily about the French colonies in Africa. His vision…
Pablo Chang-Castillo is an entrepreneur with a free spirit and an enterprising and disciplined work ethic. The Founder and CEO of Chang-Castillo and Associates, Pablo was seemingly born into the translation and interpretation business. His last name alone, a hyphenated amalgam of China and Latin America, needs no embellishment as an emblem of diversity and…
A country dotted with castles amid forests, Germany is picturesque and saturated with history. While Germany is known for its precision, organization and orderly diligence, German literature and music are also filled with deeply romantic yearnings. Beethoven’s triumphant “Ode to Joy” from his 9th Symphony, written after he became deaf, communicates a dawning and resilient…
Brazilian, European, and African Portuguese, while all the same language, have each been forged by unique historical forces. Languages contain history, the effects of cultural movements, the explosive narrative of political upheaval as well as the geological and biological influences of location. Population movements are legible within syntax and heard in pronunciation. Brazilian and African…
The Korean peninsula is a challenging topography of height and depth with caldera lakes and rugged mountain peaks, a landscape that has cradled a unique language isolated from other language families, a language with no known, verifiable genealogical or “genetic” relationship to any other language – a language isolate. Korean is that language, with hidden…
Russia is a huge, wildly vast and ambitious country that has impacted world history continuously with its magnificent literature, political intensity, and continuing economic transformation. Torn between an unrepentant and authoritarian oligarchy and vital yet volatile market forces inspiring an emerging generation of entrepreneurs, Russia is struggling to strut upon the world stage as an…
Originating from the Latin spoken in the streets of the Roman Empire or “Vulgar Latin”, Italian is anything but vulgar to the ears of English speakers or to anyone who discovers the alliteration and beauty of its lyrical cadences. A language of aural beauty, providing aesthetic pleasure, Italian was forged by Tuscan poet Dante Alighieri…
Slightly larger than the continental United States, Brazil is a vast country with epic beauty and immense natural resources. It is also the birthplace of the Girl from Ipanema, the archetypal beauty whose winsome walk has charmed many as she saunters along that shimmering beach so memorialized in song. Certainly she is symbolic of Brazil’s…