Category: News

06
Feb

How to improve & enlarge your vocabulary

Source: Guardian

Words define the shape and scope of our understanding. Learn a word such as “aglet”, the little plastic end to a shoelace, and you’ll be better able to recognise and enjoy something familiar and unremarkable. Learn the word “tarantism”, a disorder characterised by the uncontrollable urge to dance, and you’ll gain the ability to recognise and describe a trait in yourself or a friend. And, of course, words such as these are simply fun to know.

Learning vocab can, however, be tricky. If we don’t know the best way to retain new words, we can forget what we’ve learned.

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05
Feb

Is it time we agreed on a gender-neutral singular pronoun?

Some argue we need one gender for socially progressive reasons. Others simply want one to perfect their writing. But so far more than a hundred attempts have failed.

Language, like life, feels easier to deal with if we arrange it into binaries: Wrong/right; Gay/straight; Labour/Conservative. Terms lurking between the two poles are often unfairly maligned. We’re often wary of anything that is neither one nor the other: Justifiable homicide; Bisexual; The Liberal Democrats.

The same goes for him/her. We seem far more comfortable when people are either men or women. The reality is different. There are people who self­-define as neither, as gender-non­binary. To those who see gender as a construct, this makes perfect sense. But the English language fails to reflect it.

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30
Jan

A machine can learn to identify sign languages

While typing a message, the computer you’re working on identifies the language you use instantly. As part of his PhD project, Binyam Gebrekidan Gebre trained a computer program to perform the same trick on sign languages. Language recognition is the first step for automatic translations of videos.

To study sign languages – natural languages that use hands, facial and body movements to convey meaning – large data collections are needed. Transcription of videos is very time consuming though and therefore very expensive. The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen set up a project to automate sign language transcription.

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29
Jan

Will 2015 be the year of instant translation?

Back in November 2014, Skype launched a preview of Skype Translator, which will aim to provide real-time translation of conversations in over 40 languages. Hot on its heels, Google has now updated its own app to include an instant interpreting function using voice recognition, as well as an impressive translation feature which utilises a phone’s camera to automatically translate text viewed through the lens.

Long gone are the days of trying to decipher the unusual looking dishes on foreign menus – now all you have to do is hover your phone above the page and receive an instant translation. Here at Web-Translations, we’ve given the app a  quick road test using three major tourist preoccupations: warning signs, tourist information and those all important menus. Take a look at how we got on below.

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27
Jan

Linguist claims 90% of languages will be extinct in 100 years due to migration

By 2115 about 90% of the languages in the world will be extinct, according to the prediction of a linguist from an American university. This means that what would remain will be about 600 languages. The reasons given for the possible situation are the inability of parents to teach their native languages to their children and because of globalization, as cultures tend to be fragmented when people migrate to new lands. The prediction was revealed by Dr. John McWhorter, who is a music, philosophy and American studies expert at Columbia University.

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