Localization Today

In this column, KUDO co-founder and chief language officer Ewandro Magalhães tells the tale of Enrique — an enslaved person who served as Ferdinand Magellan’s interpreter in his quest to circumnavigate the world.

Sometimes things become reality if you only put the right label on it — in this piece, LT-Innovate board member Arthur Wetzel sets out to determine just what exactly LangOps means, and whether or not “LangOps” is the right label for it.

Each December, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) hosts its NORAD Tracks Santa program, allowing kids to track Santa’s exact location in real time. To spread the holiday cheer even further, NORAD and Interpreters Unlimited have partnered up to offer NORAD Tracks Santa in eight languages, making it more accessible to kids from different linguistic backgrounds.

Across the world, these last couple of weeks in the calendar year are jam-packed with holiday celebrations. As language enthusiasts, it’s fascinating to look at the etymology of the names for these celebrations — here are the origins of names for some common holiday celebrations throughout the world.

Recently, advocates in the US state of New Jersey raised concerns about the state not providing adequate language access services at community meetings on the environment, leading to low engagement levels among individuals with limited English proficiency (LEP).

At the eighth Google for India event earlier this week, Google announced a handful of new language technology developments that it’s rolling out in India.

A recent survey from CNN showed that 90% of adults in the United States believe the country is in the middle of a mental health crisis. This predicament seems particularly pronounced among children and adolescents — and even worse for children and adolescents who are immigrants or have limited English proficiency.

Nigeria is home to more languages than all but two countries on Earth. Still, primary school students in the West African nation have been educated mainly in English for decades, even after the country gained independence from the British Empire in 1960. That may be changing in the near future, though. 

In the United States, the number of people who speak a language other than English at home is rising faster than those who mainly speak English.

If you’ve been watching the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, no doubt you can by now quote parts of the Frito Lays commercial featuring Peyton Manning and David Beckham.