Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Google just announced a new tool that will help us search the web in languages other than English. If you use Google search in any of the non-English languages that Google supports you should see a small icon which when clicked on, should pop-up a small keyboard in that language. There is also a poll [...]
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
My friend Lena always says she wished she had taken advantage of my fluency in Spanish to learn the language while we were roommates, since as a doctor in the USA she is constantly running into patience who have a hard time explaining their medical needs in English. Well I may not be in the [...]
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
Mi Vida Loca is a web based tutorial created by the BBC to help you learn Spanish. The lessons consist mainly of videos that will teach you key phrases for specific situations. The videos include a local host who takes the viewer out. During the duration of the video can turn the subtitles, in English [...]
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
I just received an email with a call for simultaneous interpreters – English/Arabic to translate at IFLA‘s annual conference, which will take place in Gothenburg, Sweden, August 10 – 15, 2010. The title for the upcoming conference is “Open access to knowledge – promoting sustainable progress.” Here is the description for the position. As the [...]
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
The MLA created a database that maps out languages in the USA with information originating from the 2000 census. The site allows you to “build” maps according to language and which reflect information of the entire country, or each individual state. You can chart out information on these maps by percentages, counties, or zip code [...]
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
Sometimes is seems like all my friends are trying to learn or improve their Spanish, which I love, and encourage as much as I can. So here’s a tool that might help you all! El Castellano.org is a site that tries to gather web resources that will aid in learning Spanish, both the European and [...]
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
WorldLinQ is a site created at Queens Public Library which gathers a wide range of useful websites in a variety of different languages. The site offered link to public websites offering information on news, education, recreation, health, science, and a variety of other topics. The site connection you to relevant links in a multitude of [...]
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
World Book and Copyright Day (what a mouthful) is a yearly event to commemorate Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, and the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, all major figures in world writing (and I wonder where the women are…). Legend says that all these great men died on April 23, 1616, although more accurate calculations [...]
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
The European Digital Library project has been working since September 2006 on creating a portal to gather digital collection from National Libraries around Europe, including Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Sweden. Europeana, as the site has been named, will be part of the will include material from the European Library (without [...]
Friday, February 1st, 2008
This morning on NPRs Morning Edition I heard a fascinating story about schools in Tucson that are trying to address both the high rates of Latino student dropout from school, and the lack of bilingual interpreters in the city. The school is beginning to harness these children’s language skills by training them to be simultaneous [...]