Teaching and Translating

Directing digital storytelling means nothing more or less then attempting to build a conversation in time. In such a way that you control this conversation, to the extent possible in this virtual world. Hence the three pillars of Digital Storytelling.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/marketing/the-3-pillars-of-digital-storytelling-0300166#T9YVpju4hhP762Ff.99

"Incorporating technology in the classroom has been an education initiative for some time now. For many years, educators, school boards, and administrators have been working to find ways to incorporate technology more fluently within the modern day classroom. As educational technology only grows and evolves, its role within the classroom has shifted and changed as well."

"No es cierto que a los mayores no les guste la tecnología", afirma por su parte la economista Nicola Bilstein.

A language is a living, breathing thing, much like the community or nation that uses it. Like any other living thing, it has a lifespan. Throughout the history of language, we’ve seen many languages simply disappear from the Earth – or almost disappear.

This is a process that continues today; if you travel around you can encounter hundreds of languages that are spoken by a very few people. In fact, there exist languages that have just one native speaker left in the world.
As a translator, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I mourn the passing of a language because it represents a final shift in a culture, a permanent loss of some bit of their identity, and the loss of some small portion of the ingredients that make the world such a fascinating mash-up of ideas and cultures. Every dead language makes the world a bit more homogeneous, a bit more boring.

On the other hand, this is a natural process. I think artificially extending the lifespan of a dying language is just that: Artificial. You still lose the cultural significance and the life the language once enjoyed. What you’re left with is a zombie language maintained by the tourism board.

The Figures

There are about 187 ‘endangered’ languages in Europe alone, ranging from Guernsey French to Gaelic in Ireland, from the Cornish language to the Algherese language of Italy, from the Gagauz language within Moldova, Ukraine, Romania, Greece, Macedonia and Turkey. All of these languages potentially may have zero living speakers within the next generation, and I’m not sure this is a bad thing. I will mourn these languages, but I don’t think we should save them.

Will Less Languages Break Down Barriers?

For one thing, I think the world is a closer, more peaceful place with fewer languages. If you remove the communication barrier of different languages, and you remove the danger of poor translations changing the meaning of speeches and phrases, you remove a great deal of the uncertainty and fear of different regions and people. Imagine being able to travel anywhere in the world and being able to easily communicate!

Death and Taxes

Storybricks is a new service (still in alpha mode) for creating multilayered online stories.

La especialista Dolors Reig realizó una videoconferencia sobre Sociedad Aumentada y Aprendizaje en el marco del Instituto Iberoamericano de TIC y Educación.

Writing Skills in Translation
Good writing and editing can make all the difference in a translation, turning a word-for-word rendering into real English that sings, argues, or informs to greatest-possible effect. What can translators do to polish these skills? In the opening interview, veteran translator and editor Lynne Riggs will answer questions about how writing and editing skills increase the quality of Japanese to English translations, how she works, how "real translation" is presented to and negotiated with clients, collaboration, and other professional situations, giving practical tips and showing examples.
The second part of the meeting will be a practical demonstration of editing and writing skills, for which participants are invited to submit short translations to be edited by Riggs in advance and used as the basis of discussion. All submissions will be kept anonymous. Translations (non-technical/general content is preferred) should be submitted together with the source text, which should be no longer than 400 characters in length. Submissions should be in MS Word or plain text files. If too many submissions are received Riggs will choose those that illustrate a range of issues. Send submissions to tac@jat.org by August 25th.

Text 2 Mind Map es una aplicación web que te convierte al instante un listado de palabras u oraciones en un mapa mental; interpreta lo que tú teclees y a partir de tu input dibuja un mapa mental.

No necesita ningún tipo de registro, es tan sencillo como acceder a su web, teclear el vocabulario que desees y pulsar el botón Convertir en mapa mental, Convert to Mind Map.