The linguistic history of enslaved Africans in the United States is a testament to the oppressed people's rich cultural heritage and the resilience of African traditions in the face of the cruelest and most barbaric of conditions. Despite all odds, slaves were able to not only maintain the culture of a wide variety of countries and locales from Eastern, [...]
Sometimes there is just the perfect word or phrase for a situation. The wittiest of us seem to effortlessly come up with these in real life. Authors and screenwriters are in constant pursuit of them. But when just the right thing is said at the right time, audiences simply know it, and ultimately remember and cherish those words. Such [...]
The debate over what is a language and what is a dialect may seem like a linguistic issue best suited for the halls of academia, but the distinction actually has far-reaching real-world implications that can affect the welfare of millions of people worldwide. Anything as fluid and nebulous as language is difficult to classify, and linguists, researchers, and politicians [...]
When someone mentions Paris, you likely envision fashionable art museums, sidewalk cafes by the Eiffel Tower, maybe romance. Similarly, the name "New York City" probably conjures images of crowded subways, the bright lights of Times Square, and bustling city streets. But would we feel the same way about these places if they still went by their old names? Would [...]
Cultural differences are impactful because our instinctive "obvious common sense" can in fact be "complete nonsense" in a different culture. These differences are often hidden in plain sight, and rather than debating which is "right," the important thing is simply to recognize that they are there. Consider your initial reaction to the idea of a man eating chicken stew [...]
Food is a subject nearly everyone holds dear, but expressing our love of food in different languages is not so easy. Most people are proud of a particular food or dish from their culture, and eager to share it with a visitor. Similarly, most of us are excited to sample exotic new dishes or even try our hand at [...]
Language is one of our worldโs most powerful tools, and throughout history, governments and large organizations have used different forms of language planning as a way to control that power. In a broad sense, language planning is an organized effort by a major entity to change a societyโs language. These efforts can be, and usually are, done for the [...]
From the moment we learn to control our mouths, lungs, and vocal cords as infants, we yearn to speak. As babies, we babble and attempt to copy words, and with no formal instruction at all, we can typically grasp the basics of speaking in under a year and begin to communicate. Neurolinguists have shown that our brainโs superior temporal [...]
"What's in a name?" Shakespeare's Juliet famously asked. The answer, it turns out, depends entirely on where you were born. As a translation company, we work daily with birth certificates, marriage certificates, and name-change documents from dozens of countries. Few things make the diversity of human culture more visible than the documents people use to prove who [...]
Picture this scenario: A young German executive from a semiconductor manufacturer is sent to pitch a proposal to a high-level business partner in Japan. The German executive knows his companyโs products are superior, and he spends days preparing different documents, case studies, graphs, etc. as evidence. At the meeting he gives these mountains of handouts to the Japanese businessman, [...]
