May 23, 2013
Source: Peter Facey
Translators, writers and scholars have until the 15th of June to submit proposals and papers for the 13th Translation Conference which will be taking place at the University of Portsmouth. The theme for this year’s conference is “Translation and Crime”.
The 2013 conference, set to take place on the 9th of November, will focus on translation as it relates to crime: within the justice system, fiction and forensic linguistics amongst other areas.
Two plenary speakers have been confirmed:
Dr Karen Seago is the Director of Translating Popular Culture MA at the University of London. According to the university website Dr Seago holds an MA in English and German, as well as a PGCTS in German. Seago teaches translation theory and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Specialised Translation.
May 13, 2013
The Sky’s Not the Limit
Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield, concluded his five month stay in space with style – he filmed a music video of himself covering David Bowie’s hit “Space Oddity”. The 53-year old astronaut can be seen floating in zero gravity on the International Space Station, strumming on his acoustic guitar while he sings. The lyrics are, of course, suited to the occasion.
This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I’m stepping through the door
And I’m floating
In a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today
For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do
Though I’m past
One hundred thousand miles
I’m feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
May 7, 2013
Stock market players could be turning to Google suggest for financial insight in the near future. A recent study conducted by U.S. and UK academics has suggested that there is a connection between the direction of stock market trends and search data.
Can Google Predict Stock Market Trends?
The analysis by researchers from the Universities of Warwick and Boston is the newest attempt to pinpoint online behaviour patterns for the purpose of chartering movements in financial markets. The published results have shown that during the period of the study, Google Trends data was effectively used to gain insight into the current state of the economy. An example given from the findings was the increase of search terms such as “stocks,” “economics” and “portfolios” by individuals during times of global economic stress. The conclusion drawn from the changes in search frequency for the collection of financial terms used (98 in total), is that they could be used as early signals of upcoming stock market trends.
May 2, 2013
G20 Meeting Calms Fears
After predictions that the deliberate devaluing of the Japanese and Chinese currencies by their leaders would lead to a domino effect across the global market, mentions of an upcoming currency war appear to have ceased.
In February, both Asian nations faced criticism from Western leaders, accused of pushing up the values of other currencies and harming their export market. However, at a recent meeting of the G20 nations, countries kept their currency criticisms to themselves.
Fickle Financials
At least your forex broker can breathe a sigh of relief – it appears that the financial market is not about to implode anytime soon. The Chinese yuan, however, is at a 20-year low to the US dollar, whilst the Japanese yen has dropped below the 100 yen to the dollar mark.
April 22, 2013
Search Engine Giant Adds 66th Language
Google’s famous translation service has just added its 66th language – Khmer, the official language of Cambodia. There are around 16 million speakers of the language, but Google had great difficulty in adding Khmer since there are not a lot of web resources available, and the language doesn’t usually use spaces to separate the words.
Google Translate currently supports languages such as Afrikaans, Basque, Icelandic and Lao, which was the 65th language to be added last year in September. Whilst the translate tool can be incredibly useful, it is best to rely on professional translators for business or legal documents, in order to avoid embarrassing gaffes that sometimes occur when translations are left to algorithms and machines.
Humans versus Machines
Indeed, the offices at Google Translate do not contain native speakers of the languages that are featured. Instead, the algorithms examine language patterns already present in existing documents and books. Thus, the more literature available for a particular language, the more accurate the online translation is likely to be.
After a lengthy court battle that would have destroyed many a strong minded businessman, Chris Swan walked out of the court house with his head held high after being vindicated of any wrongdoing in regards to the collapse of the company that he created from the ground up. So why did this story garner such media attention? Was there really such disbelief that a single man could, in a period of 9 years, create a business empire that rose from a turnover of 100 000 pounds to upwards of 30 million? Would a key business director, with success in other companies as well, truly stay on as a director after selling the company if he was involved in any wrongdoing? It seems strange that after creating such an amazing company, for employees and customers that Chris Swan would cause his own hard endeavours to crash and burn before his eyes.
When Chris Swan began his task of building Finelist it was a medium sized company of 25 sites, around 150 employees and generated a profit for its owners of around 100,000 pounds every year. Over a successful reign of Finelist for almost a decade before selling the company, this business enigma created a thriving multinational corporation that was responsible for the successful distribution of automotive parts in the UK and Europe. When selling the company to foreign investors, 
Since Chris Swan bowed out of the aftermarket industry, admirers and detractors alike have been eager to hear the full account of this enigmatic business figure’s legal troubles and the downfall of his prodigious company, Finelist.