NHS Lanarkshire have spent £545,000 translating English for foreign nationals during the past five years, according to a recent news in Wishaw Press.

For the previous 12 months alone, the local health board’s figure has soared to a whopping £157,000. Throughout the county’s three hospitals – including Wishaw General – more than 50 languages have been translated.

The languages that the health board have had to fork out for include Chinese, Cantonese, Punjabi, Polish and British Sign Language.

Across Scotland the NHS spent almost £4million on interpreters last year.

This represents the highest amount spent yet – with a five-year figure totalling more than £13million. Read more.

Translators Without Borders is an independent, non-profit association that since 1993 has been providing free, professional translations to humanitarian NGOs, enabling them to spend the saved funds in their field operations.

ProZ.com has been supporting Translators Without Borders both in the screening of their volunteer translators via the ProZ.com screening center and in the posting of translation jobs, but even more important is the contribution of ProZ.com’s community of translators.

Since there is no time for reviewing and no room for errors in the handling of emergencies, Translators Without Borders recruits only experienced and solid professionals able to do a good job each time. Approved applicants are asked to submit one or more test translations within the system.

Since the screening requirements for the Certified PRO Network are similar, members of the CPN are admitted directly as Translators Without Borders translators.

The level of activity has been increasing steadily. Some 40,000 words were posted in January. This number rose to 88,000 words during February and over 235,000 words were posted and accepted by volunteers during the first 24 days of March.

See: Translator T.O.

The finalists for the Best Translated Book Awards have been announced. Presented by 3 Percent, the translation-focused publishing house at the University of Rochester, the Best Translated Book Awards are now in their fourth year; for the first time, the winners will receive cash prizes.

There are ten fiction books and five poetry books on the Best Translated Book Awards shortlist announced Thursday. In fiction, three publishing houses have two finalists each: Dalkey Archive, New Directions and the New York Review of Books. Archipelago, Small Beer Press, Tin House and Yale University Press each have one book in the running.

With fiction and poetry taken together, there are works translated from 10 languages: four from French, two each from German and Spanish, and one each from Afrikaans, Albanian, Chinese, Czech, Japanese, Slovenian and Swedish.

The Best Translated Book Awards received a grant from Amazon to support prizes of $5,000 to be awarded to the author and translator of each winning book. The prizes will be awarded at a ceremony April 29 during the PEN World Voices Festival in New York.

See: Los Angeles Times

A first taste of an ambitious program was presented at the Academy of Athens recently. Academy member and author Thanasis Valtinos unveiled a new program regarding the training of young translators of Greek literature, the training, in other words, of people translating Greek works into foreign languages.

“When it comes to Greek literature, the big problem is for Greek works to go beyond local borders and get translated,” said Valtinos. “In order to achieve this, you need a number of top-level translators and we don’t have enough.”

The program has come together thanks to the Academy of Athens, the Kostas and Eleni Ourani Foundation and the Petrou Chari Foundation, while the National Book Center of Greece (EKEBI), the European Translation Center (EKEMEL) and the University of Athens will participate in the training of foreign students studying Greek literature and language. The program will further include funding for the translation of Greek works aimed at international publishing houses, though the amount of the annual funding which will come from the Ourani Foundation has yet to be determined.

The venture’s headquarters will be housed on the fourth floor of 9 Valaoritou Street and every bursar will receive a monthly stipend of 1,200 euros — the program will have a capacity of covering five to six bursars every year, with scholarships being renewed for a period of one to four years.

While the program is expected to launch in September, there are various questions which remain unanswered: Who will undertake the training and comprise the judging panel determining the final selection of candidates are but two. In the meantime, however, the announcement was met with a hopeful spirit. In the words of Valtinos, “these are tough times, but instead of complaining, we wanted to take this opportunity to act in a more positive way.”

See:  H KAΘHMEPINH

(CNN) — A Saudi Arabian novelist has become the first woman to win the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, which she shares with a Moroccan writer.

Raja Alem, a Saudi novelist who wrote “The Doves’ Necklace,” and Mohammed Achaari, a Moroccan poet and author of “The Arch and the Butterfly,” share the $50,000 prize, announced in Abu Dhabi on Monday March 13.

It is the first time the prestigious prize has been shared by two joint winners.

Read more here:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/03/15/arabic.literary.prize/index.html

No matter how well-prepared a country is, and no matter how advanced its infrastructure and technology, no nation could have anticipated the devastation wrought by the recent tsunami and series of earthquakes in Japan. In the race to respond to urgent needs in the aftermath of a disaster, communication across languages is critical.

When disaster strikes, there is always a need to communicate across languages both for internal and external purposes. Within a country’s borders, relief workers must make sure that critical safety instructions can be understood by members of linguistically diverse populations. Like many economic powerhouses, Japan is a “pull country” for immigrants. More than two million foreigners – hailing from countries like Brazil, China, Korea, Peru, the Philippines, the United States, and Venezuela – live and work on Japanese soil. Whenever a disaster takes place, individuals in other countries begin trying to reach their loved ones in the affected location, generating an influx of communications in other languages.

See: Common Sense Advisory

With a move to become one of the first countries to offer non-Latin language scripts in domain names, Qatar is pushing forward with efforts to help accelerate the development of e-services and e-commerce environments throughout the Arabic-speaking world. In February, the Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology (ictQATAR) announced that its website had became the first to use a Qatar-specific domain name in Arabic, with more Arabic domains set to be available for government entities and registered trademark holders starting in March, Global Arab Network reports according to OBG.

Read more here!

The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary is investigating a stabbing at Memorial University in St. John’s. Police say it happened around 3:00 Wednesday afternoon, during a fight at Spencer Hall. A 22-year-old man was taken into custody at the scene and subsequently charged with assault with a weapon, and aggravated assault. The man is being held in custody pending a court appearance Thursday morning. RNC Const. Suzanne FitzGerald says two men, both in their 20s, were involved. FitzGerald adds that the investigation has been complicated, due to the need for translators for the two individuals involved. She reports Memorial’s Division of English as a Second Language and the Association for New Canadians offered translators to assist officers during the interview process.

Read more here:

http://www.vocm.com/newsarticle.asp?mn=2&id=13170&latest=1

TAUS Data Association (TDA), a non-profit web-based platform for sharing language data, has made translation memory (TM) upload and download open for public users. Anyone in the world can download TMs at no cost as long as they also upload TMs. A user who wants to download more data than they have uploaded will be able to buy credit bundles. This new free public service will drive the adoption and improvement of machine translation (MT) technology. The TDA repository already contains 3.4 billion words in 320 language pairs of human-quality translations, an invaluable resource that has been in use by TDA members for over two years. By opening the platform to public users TDA aims to increase the volume of translated words in more languages and more domains, in turn creating greater benefits for members and new users.

TDA also aims to drive the global translation industry towards greater interoperability. Read full story.

See: TAUS

(RTTNews) - Four Afghan soldiers and a translator for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have been killed in a bomb attack in the central province of Logar.

The Afghan National Army unit was on joint patrol with NATO forces in Charkh district when a remote-controlled bomb exploded, a spokesman for the provincial Governor said on Wednesday. No ISAF casualties were reported.

Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

NATO plans to transfer complete military control of the country to Afghan forces by 2014, while the Obama administration announced plans to begin a “responsible, conditions-based” withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in July 2011.

Read more here!