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With the global economy crippled by a lack of confidence and capital, with lending and investment instruments dysfunctional from Budapest to Buenos Aires, and with companies indiscriminately slashing investments in foreign markets, it is not the time to shy away from making the right investments in non-English speaking markets at home and abroad. Global trade, which grew by 6% in 2007 and 2% last year, will fall by a dramatic 9% in 2009. These are WTO figures, and they are not insignificant. U.S. exports are not immune to this trend, but the dollar is still at a level that makes the cost of U.S. goods and services attractive to Europe and Asia. While pundits worldwide are busy analyzing the effect of the rise of the U.S. dollar against virtually all currencies (Euro, Yen, Yuan, Real, etc.) since August of last year, they forget that you still need 1.35 dollars to buy 1 euro, a level that is lower than the extreme 1.59 that was reached in June/July 2008 but still significantly higher than the 1.2 dollars per euro that was prevalent not so long ago...more

BEIJING, April 9 (Xinhua) -- For the first time in nearly 20 years, China will issue a modified list of simplified Chinese characters in an effort to further standardize a language used by billions around the world.

Wang Ning, vice director with the Institute of Linguistics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said Wednesday at a CASS conference on Chinese culture that editing of the new list had already been completed and changes would be published "very soon."...more

Portuguese spelling reform in Brazil
On January 1, 2009, Brazil started adopting the new spelling rules that were defined in the Spelling Agreement signed in 1990 by seven Portuguese-speaking countries. The purpose of the Portuguese spelling reform is to establish a single common orthography for all Portuguese-speaking countries. Grammarians estimate that the spelling reform will affect 0.5% of the Brazilian lexicon. There will be a 4-year transition period in which both spellings will be accepted in Brazil....more

Maria Paredes joined Agnew in February 2009 as our new Senior Spanish Language Translator and Project Manager. She is responsible for the linguistic and cultural quality of Spanish language translation, maintaining translation memory for key clients, and consulting on Latin American markets. Maria holds an MA Degree in Spanish Translations from Kent State University, a Licentiate's and BA degrees in Spanish translation from Ricardo Palma University, Lima, Peru.  Prior to joining Agnew, Maria was employed by ThinPrint, Inc. and Harville Migrant Health Clinic. We welcome Maria to the Agnew team.

 

Dave Rossi
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Paramount Recreation Group

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Harman International

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..."Over-simplification of some characters actually made them even harder to understand in some cases, which is the problem we are trying to address here," Wang said. She added, "The new list would involve a rather small number of changes to characters currently in use." The goal is to make them easier to learn.

While Ning did not give an exact date or specify how the list would be made available, Wang Dengfeng, vice director of the State Language Commission, confirmed the Ministry of Education was about to issue a revised character list in the near future.

The Chinese mainland first introduced simplified characters in 1956, although Taiwan and the then foreign-controlled southern regions of Hong Kong and Macao retained the ancient traditional characters. Simplified characters were created by decreasing the number of strokes to write. In 1986, the State Language Commission issued a list of 2,235 simplified Chinese characters to help standardize the written form of the language.

Not everyone is happy with the change.  Some Chinese people on the mainland have recently called for the restoration of traditional characters for the purpose of "cultural preservation."  Pan Qinglin, a political advisor from north China's Tianjin Municipality, submitted a proposal to the annual session of China's top political advisory body in March this year. Pan urged the country to abolish the use of simplified characters within 10 years saying they sacrificed too much "artistic quality." 

Both Wang Ning and Wang Dengfeng stress that the latest character modifications have nothing to do with restoring traditional characters. "Switching back to traditional Chinese characters means billions of Chinese would have to relearn their mother language," Wang Ning said. "I don't think there is any need to switch back to traditional Chinese characters, nor to make the current ones even simpler. Our top priority is to improve and standardize the simplified Chinese characters."

...Despite the fact that the spelling reform encountered strong resistance in Portugal, the Portuguese president ratified the Spelling Agreement in July 2008, although a commencement date has yet to be defined. Portugal is expected to make the transition over a 6-year period with an estimated 1.6% of the Portugal lexicon affected.

In the Microsoft Portuguese (Brazil) Style Guide, available for download from the Microsoft Language Portal, the topic Portuguese Spelling Reform contains a summary of the main spelling changes, a strategy for implementing the new spelling in Microsoft products, as well as recommendations on how to deal with controversial cases (points that are still obscure) and other special cases regarding Microsoft terminology.

Through the transition period, Microsoft will gradually adopt the new spelling rules in all its products. The upcoming Brazilian Windows® and Office versions will already follow the new spelling rules.

"What about the Office spell checker?" users in Brazil have been asking. Microsoft is currently updating the Office 2007 proofing tools (spelling and grammar checker, thesaurus, and hyphenator) with the new spelling rules, and these updates will most likely be released in the second half of 2009. Microsoft will also provide the updated version of the proofing tools for all future Office versions.

...When then Secretary of State Colin Powell originally instituted the program, it was affectionately known as MEET US (Middle East Entrepreneur Training in the U.S.). Recruiting from 17 countries in the MENA region, the Beyster Institute brought cadres of participants to San Diego for three weeks of training emphasizing the four "M's" of growing entrepreneurial organizations: management, markets, money and mystique.

On April 19, 2009, the latest MEET program was held in San Diego with twenty entrepreneurs and senior managers from nine different countries attending. The program included site visits to key companies for a unique view inside a well-run American company. This real world experience served to accentuate the points brought out in the classroom and also allowed the local community to meet business leaders from a part of the world often shrouded in confusion and misinformation for most Americans.

Agnew Multilingual was selected by the Beyster Institute to provide the linguistic support throughout the programs. "Agnew provided the MEET programs with translation of content into Arabic and French, selected four Arabic and French interpreters, and supervised the entire language support process," said Irene Agnew, company president. "We felt fortunate to have been selected to support this program for the last 6 years and consider it to be one of our most remarkable experiences."

"Agnew Multilingual clearly provided the best value," says Rob Fuller, director of entrepreneurial programs for Beyster Institute and training manager for the MEET US program. "They provided us with a top quality technical solution and quality interpreters at a reasonable price."