Anyone who shares my fascination with language and uncovering the obscure will enjoy browsing the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. There are reckoned to be over 6,000 languages in the world with some half of those under threat of extinction this century.

The atlas’s excellent print edition was updated last year and there is an searchable online language map, which is great for random investigation.

For instance, there are 144 languages listed for China: from Adi, spoken by about 170,000 people in Siang, to Zaiwa with only a thousand speakers. There are 11 languages listed for the UK, including Cornish and Manx. The latter is listed as “critically endangered” with the atlas noting:

The last speaker of traditional Manx, Ned Maddrell, died in 1974. Since then, however, the language has been undergoing active revitalization in family, school and institutional contexts.

Personally I have found the atlas an absorbing way to wile away an hour or two. Of course, beyond pure fascination, there is a serious point about how we are all culturally poorer by allowing these languages to die:

With the disappearance of unwritten and undocumented languages, humanity would lose not only a cultural wealth but also important ancestral knowledge embedded, in particular, in indigenous languages.

So if you find yourself with an hour or two to spare this long weekend, I urge you to have a look round … and let us know of any gems you uncover!

Bilingualism – mental recycling?

Debates have raged for many years about just how children learn language so quickly and so well but most studies agree that the earlier children learn a second language, the better they are with that language. Some psycologists used to believe that the confusion of learning two languages at once impeded a child’s cognitive development. This view has been much criticised. Indeed The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists issued guidance in 2006 that “bilingualism in a child or adult is an advantage and does not cause communication disorders”.

Now a new study has confirmed the benefits of bilingualism but at the other end of the age scale. It seems the skill confers some protection against the onset of Alzheimer’s, with bilingual speakers holding the disease off for an average of four years longer than monoglots. Ellen Bialystok, a psychologist from York University in Toronto, said:

“Being bilingual has certain cognitive benefits and boosts the performance of the brain… It won’t stop them getting Alzheimer’s disease, but they can cope with the disease for longer.”

Her research, published in Neurology, looked at more than 200 Canadians with probable Alzheimer’s – half of whom were monolingual and half of whom were bilingual. Cognitive impairment started later on average in the bilingual patients. In patients who were matched for cognitive level, education, job history and immigration background, bilingualism delayed the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms by four to five years on average.

Bialystok said switching between different languages seems to stimulate the brain:

“It seems to be adding to people’s ‘cognitive reserve’, like other social, mental and physical activities that give some protection against dementia in older people who maintain an active lifestyle… It is rather like a reserve tank in a car. When you run out of fuel, you can keep going for longer because there is a bit more in the safety tank.”

Interestingly, the effect seems most pronouced in people who speak two languages every day, and have to choose between two sets of words all the time.

Another study, by Judith Kroll of Penn State University, supports the idea that bilingualism boost brain power. She found that bilingual speakers could outperform monoglots in mental tasks and focusing on important details. Kroll concludes:

“We would probably refer to most of these cognitive advantages as multi-tasking… Bilinguals seem to be better at this type of perspective-taking… The received wisdom was that bilingualism created confusion, especially in children. The belief was that people who could speak two or more languages had difficulty using either.

“The bottom line is that bilingualism is good for you.”

As regular readers will know, this day celebrating translation was established in 1991 by the Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs (International Federation of Translators). Our translation agency, WorldAccent, is proud to be a memeber of one of the federated bodies, the Institute of Translation & Interpreting. The date of 30 September was chosen as it is the feast day of St. Jerome (347-420 AD), patron saint of translators, interpreters and librarians. The day celebrates and promotes translation as an essential activity in contemporary society – but one which too often remains invisible and ignored.

This year’s theme partly celebrates the incredible diversity of language around the globe. As the Federation note in their press release for International Translation Day 2010:

“The estimated six to seven thousand languages spoken around the globe are the repository of our collective memory and intangible heritage. But the linguistic and cultural diversity they offer is under threat: 96% of these languages are spoken by only 4% of the world’s population and hundreds of them will soon be lost forever.”

With that “variety of voices”, the need for “translation quality” becomes clear:

“Translators, interpreters and terminologists, indispensable as mediators in interlingual and cultural contexts, have a special responsibility to help preserve multilingualism and promote smooth interaction among all the world’s languages. The burgeoning growth in information technologies, the widening reach of the Internet, the expansion of trade globally and ever-increasing scientific and cultural cooperation have undoubtedly enhanced the role of translators, interpreters and terminologists in the modern world and ushered in a ‘time of plenty’. This has in turn increased the burden of responsibility on language professionals: their work must meet exacting standards of accuracy and quality yet lose none of the nuances of the original language.”

Also of interest is an event taking place to mark this year’s International Translation Day in London. It is organised by English PEN, which promotes “literature as a means of greater understanding between cultures”. The event will focus on the future of literary translation, with speakers including Boyd Tonkin, Simon Winder, Michael Kelly, Kirsty Dunseath, Sarah Ardizzone and Mark Thwaite.

To celebrate this day we have produced a free e-card to download for yourself, or to send to friends and colleagues.

Download the International Translation Day 2010 greeting card as a PDF (288Kb).

Designers would probably start thinking how about how the ‘O’ cleverly combines textual and visual representation to deliver a single message, as with this poster for The Simpsons Movie:

We, on the hand, tutted knowingly, thinking: that’s practically asking for translation problems. As soon as it’s translated, the text and graphic elements separate back out (the word for “movie” isn’t necessarily going keep that nice O in the middle).

That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways around the problem. Here’s a French version of The Simpsons Movie poster:

Here, the doughnut is the O in ‘Simpsons’, a word which stays the same in the French translation. The doughnut motif would have been harder to incorporate if ‘Simpsons’ did not contain an O, but this is a nice sleight of hand and an elegant localisation. As a side note, we particularly liked the fact Lisa is pictured reading Victor Hugo.

The same trick could be used even in parts of Europe where the word ‘Simpsons’ varies slightly in translation. For instance, here is a Romanian translation of the poster:

What only the most avid fan might notice is that Homer is now clutching his doughnut with his left hand instead of his right. In fact, the whole image has been flipped to place the doughnut in the correct place to provide the O. Not a problem in Romania, but not a tactic you would want to use in cultures where eating with your left hand is taboo.

The unflipped version of the picture is used in a Portuguese version of the poster which simply separates the doughnut from the O.

But because of the layout, the Portuguese translation makes that second line look a little like “OO FILME” rather than “O FILME”. Still, not a big problem: Portuguese readers wouldn’t even link the doughnut with the O, because they know how “o filme” is spelt. Some might think the doughnut could have replaced the O in “o filme”, but this “o” means “the”. How odd would it look with “THE” as the largest element on the poster?

Of course, sometimes you simply have to let the text translation separate completely from the visual element. Here is a Korean translation of The Simpsons Movie poster, which just doesn’t have any nice doughnut-shaped letters to work with:

Does all this mean that designers should avoid such clever and innovative combination of letters and artwork? No, not at all. That would be overly restrictive on creativity. But The Simpsons poster is a fun example to show that if designers are using characters as graphic elements, they should think about the implications if their document is going to be translated. Even better, avoid painting yourself into a corner and ask for feedback from your translators at an early stage.

[NB: WorldAccent did not produce the above posters and they remain copyright of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. They are pictured here only as an illustration of the issues that can be raised in translating graphic design]