The International Mother Language Day was proclaimed by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in November 1999 (30C/62), and has been celebrated across the world since Feb 2000.

This year’s Feb 21st marks the thirteenth International Mother Language Day.

The date represents the day in 1952 when students demonstrating for recognition of their language, Bangla, as one of the two national languages of the then Pakistan, were shot and killed by police in Dhaka, the capital of what is now Bangladesh.

The theme of this year’s International Mother Language day is “Mother tongue instruction and inclusive education”. UNESCO highlights the importance of mother tongue as part of the right to education and encourages its member states to promote instruction and education in the mother tongue.

Languages are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage. The objective of the International Mother Language Day is to promote linguistic diversity and multilingual education, and to develop fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.

Sources:
International Mother Language Day – UNESCO
International Mother Language Day – United Nations Observance Page

The fierce winter that has come upon us in the past few weeks has inevitably left our thoughts more or less preoccupied with the weather and the plummeting temperatures outside, blizzards and disasterous events, to name a few.

I am sure most of us keep an eye on the weather forecast all the time, desperately hoping for those first warmer days to appear soon – I know I do for sure.

There’s a certain area high up north though, whose inhabitants would be less than impressed with the recent display of winter madness here in Bulgaria – simply because they are generally quite used to a much harsher weather, or in other words, winter at its very worst – Alaska.

Here are some interesting facts about Alaska and its culture that we’ve put together for you:

Did you know that…

• There has been a widespread misconception circulating around for many years, claiming the Eskimos have an unusually large number of words for snow. To date though this claim remains subject of many debates and in fact, many online sources point another northern language as the one having a lot more words for snow – the Saami language (belonging to an indigenous circumpolar group), which apparently has an astounding 300 snow-related words (yes, three hundred, you read it right).

• Alaska is home to at least twenty distinct indigenous languages, which reflect the diverse cultural heritage of Alaska’s Native peoples.

• A very popular belief about Alaska maintains that the whole state goes dark in the winter and has endless sunlight in the summer – but it turns out it depends on where you are in Alaska, as the distribution of daylight and darkness is different throughout the state. For example Barrow, at the very top of the state, does indeed have a two-month period of complete darkness during the winter (no daylight for 64 days), while Anchorage has at least 4-5 hours of daylight even on the shortest day of the year.

• In certain Alaskan areas it’s possible to read a newspaper outdoors at 2 a.m. (two hours after sunset) in the days around the summer solstice, due to the long dawns and dusks that make the day appear longer than it actually is.

• Barrow has an average low temperature barely above zero even in July.

• Alaska is the U.S.’s largest state, over twice the size of Texas.

• Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867 for under 2 cents an acre.

• Alaska is the U.S.’s largest state, over twice the size of Texas.

• There is more than three million lakes in Alaska.

• The capital of Alaska, Juneau (population of about 31,262) , can only be reached by air or sea – it’s the only state capital in the US with no road access.

Sources:

http://alaskaconservation.org/experience-alaska/did-you-know/

http://www.alaskasbest.com/facts.htm

http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/languages/

http://www.alaska.com/about/weather/

So you’ve decided to learn a foreign language – good for you! You’ve just done yourself (and your future) a favour that you will without a shadow of a doubt find to be priceless and even capable of turning your life around (for the better).
Much as I’d love to, I won’t delve into the benefits of learning a foreign language today though – for one thing, it would have to be a novel-size post (yes, that’s how many they are!), and for another – it would steer me away from the main topic of today’s post, namely practical tips for learning a foreign language.

I have decided to share some of the learning techniques and methods I have used myself back in the days when I first started studying English, hence the title “experience-derived” tips.

1) Studying new words:
I had a vocabulary-learning system back when I was at Foreign Language school that I must say was extremely efficient and useful for memorizing new words – especially in the first (and most intense) year of studying English, when our homework assignments would regularly include learning 50 to 100 new words daily (all taught in class beforehand). It was nothing I had invented for sure – I just “borrowed” it from somewhere, although I can’t remember exactly how I came to discover this method. Anyway, here is the gist of it:

First you take a sheet of paper and cut it into little rectangular pieces/notes – one for each word you’re planning to learn. Then you write a word (in the foreign language) on one note, and on the back of it you write the meaning of the word in your native language. That’s all. Oh and, of course, the hours of cutting tiny pieces of paper and writing words down. When you’ve prepared these word notes, you can then stack them into separate piles containing a certain number of notes. For example, I’d stack them into 50 or 100-word piles, neatly wrapped with rubber bands.

At first, you look at the word, then look at its meaning on the back, and move on to the next word in the pile. The second time you go through that particular stack of words, try to recall the meaning of the word first before flipping the note around to see if you’re correct. And remember that repetition is the key here – i.e. you will need to go through each stack repeatedly every once in a while, if you want to keep the words in your mind. And, where possible, try to use as many of them in your speech.

I realize this is a very old-school type of a learning technique and that most probably very few of you beginner learners would contemplate doing it, let alone actually sit down and get on it. And it’s totally your call, of course – you’re free to choose any learning technique you want. For me though it did wonders – wherever I went (travelling, etc), I’d always carry with me a few of those stacks, and refresh my memory on as many words as time would allow me to.

It does require quite a bit of patience though to prepare all the little notes – what with all the cutting and writing. Looking back, I’m quite stunned myself that I have actually had the patience to prepare hundreds – no, thousands of these – back in my high-school years (as a typical Sagittarius, I seem to have an innate lack of patience). But my passion for languages and my ambition to become as good as I can possibly get at this language apparently proved stronger than anything else I lacked. And besides, patience can be cultivated – even if you don’t have it in you

That’ll be it for this week, folks – but keep watching this space for more tested and proven learning techniques – I promise the next ones (or at least some of them), will be less trying your patience and more fun!

1. You have a passion for languages. This one’s a must, it goes without saying really. You can never enjoy translating if you don’t have a passion for languages.

2. You love learning and constant self-development. I realize this one in particular is a prerequisite to success in just about any profession in today’s competitive world. When it comes to languages though, you just never, I mean really never stop learning. Why? Well, for one thing, the abundance of words in any language makes it impossible to ever learn all of them. Unless, of course, you’ve decided to learn Taki Taki (also called Sranan), a 340-word language spoken in Suriname, also known as the language with the fewest words.

3. You love challenges: I promise to elaborate a bit more on the challenges in the translator’s job in a next post, so for the time being you’ll just have to take my word for it (trust me though, you do need to be a challenge-lover!).

4. You enjoy doing research of virtually any kind: from researching a particularly tricky term in dictionaries, to wider research on related topics for the purposes of getting a clearer grasp on a subject or idea.

5. You are well-organized: Being organized is one of the things you have to be, if you want to get as much as possible done in as little as possible time. A very valuable skill in today’s fast-paced environment, what with all the strict deadlines relentlessly closing in on us all the time!

6. You are capable of working long hours and under pressure – with urgent and/or high-volume projects, sometimes workloads can seem quite impossible to handle. Therefore, being able to focus and concentrate on the job despite having already spent too many hours on it, is essential.

7. You have a strong attention to detail – this is a skill of a paramount importance in the translation field, especially with regard to proofreading, which is an integral part of the translation process.

While this list is certainly not exhaustive, it still clearly indicates you might want to consider pursuing a career in translation – if you possess the above personal traits and skills.

Instead of New Year wishes, here is a selection of three memorable quotes that we consider well worth starting the New year with:

“Be at war with your vices; at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”
Benjamin Franklin

“Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.”
~Oren Arnold

“We come this way but once. We can either tiptoe through life and hope we get to death without being badly bruised or we can live a full, complete life achieving our goals and realizing our wildest dreams.“
Bob Proctor

Have a glorious and prosperous New Year from all of us here at Carel Translations!