English English is spoken by some 380 million people as their first language, including 231 million in the US and about 60 million in the UK. As many as 1 billion people use it as a second language. While English is only the 3rd largest language by the number of native speakers (after Mandarin Chinese…
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When you hire a new employee, it’s easy to weed out the unqualified from the qualified during the interview process. Why? Because nobody knows your business and your area of expertise like you do, and you can spot incompetence a mile away. When you are interested in hiring a professional language services provider, such as…
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The smartest way to build a solid business relationship with an overseas client is to use professional translation and interpretation services. Nonetheless, there is significant benefit to learning a foreign language; even knowing a few phrases can go a long way in developing a business relationship. Certainly the best language services firms pride themselves on…
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Looking for the Best Holiday Gift Ever? How About a Second Language! Tired of all the “things” littering your family members’ Holiday Wish Lists? Sometimes, you have to be your own Santa Claus (otherwise known as Papa Noel, Babbo Natale, Father Christmas…), take over the gift giving reigns and get that list under control. Sometimes,…
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Google Translator is an incredible tool for a “quick and dirty” translation, but it completely lacks cultural and linguistic nuance. Automated language translation tools – or even fluent but non-native translators can take a website or document and smear it with proverbial mud. If your current language service does not have the cultural knowledge…
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Kicking off the holiday season, the American Thanksgiving occurs on the fourth Thursday of November. Its origins go back to the fall of 1621, when Pilgrims celebrated their first successful wheat crop. The holiday has since evolved into a day in which families gather around a feast of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin…
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Our previous blog post discussed how the English language started spreading around the world, reaching a peak with the rise of the British Empire. However, it was not the only language to develop in the colonization era. So what can explain the unique international status of the English language? Linguistic Globalization Some suggest that English…
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A Few Facts About English Arguably, English is the world language, spoken by some 380 million people as their first language. More than half of these (231 million) live in the United States, followed by some 60 million in the United Kingdom, the birthplace of the English language. Estimates of second language speakers vary greatly,…
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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…
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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…
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