A new international association for translators and interpreters was born on September 30 in Argentina: the International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI), or in Spanish: Asociación Internacional de Profesionales de la Traducción y la Interpretación (AIPTI).
Its objective is to actively promote the ethical practice of translation and interpretation. Translators are facing several problems today in their profession: crowdsourcing, emphasis on price instead of quality, flooding of the translation market with non-professional translators, limitations on the extent to which they can discuss rates and the need for a strong …

Mr. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former Foreign Minister of Germany, assiduously promoted the use of languages in international discourse. In the opening ceremony of the 2009 AIIC Assembly in Nice (France), he became the first recipient of the AIIC Malintzin Prize in recognition of his advocacy of the right to speak the tongue we all speak best – our own.
By Luigi LUCCARELLI, Phil SMITH
AIIC created the Malintzin Prize in 2005 as an award to be given every three years to honor prominent individuals who have actively promoted the profession of conference interpreting. …

Friday, March 20, 2009
Medical translation course starts in May
By MARIKO KATO
Staff writer
Japan’s first full-scale medical translation course will start in May at translation colleges run by Inter Group Co. to produce trained interpreters for hospitals.
Yearlong courses in medical translation between Japanese and English will be held at five branches of Inter Group, known as Inter Schools, for a total of 104 students in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Hiroshima and Fukuoka.
The courses will be supervised by Rinku General Medical Center in Osaka, which opened an international clinic in 2006 where foreign patients …

PERFILES | En profundidad
Ioannis Ikonomou: El traductor griego que habla 32 lenguas
Albert Segura | Bruselas
Actualizado miércoles 18/03/2009 19:47 horas
¿Mi mayor locura? ¡Intenté aprender euskera en Pekín!’ Ioannis Ikonomou (Iraklio, Grecia, 1964) es uno de los 1.750 traductores que emplea la Comisión Europea, pero el único capaz de hablar 32 idiomas diferentes.[...]
Inglés, francés, alemán, español, holandés, portugués, sueco, italiano, danés, polaco, húngaro, turco, checo y eslovaco son sus 14 lenguas de trabajo y el griego su idioma materno.
Pero también se siente “cómodo” hablando en ruso, búlgaro, turco, árabe, hebreo, chino, …

Implementation of New National Translation Program for Book Publishing: The Government Delivers on Its Commitments to Linguistic Duality and Canadian Culture
OTTAWA, March 3, 2009 – The Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, today announced the implementation of the new National Translation Program for Book Publishing, designed to increase the availability of Canadian books in both official languages. Through this program, the Government is delivering on the commitment it made when it announced the Roadmap for Canada’s Linguistic Duality last June.
[...]
Starting April 1, 2009, the Government will …

Friday, 27th February 2009
Gaps still exist in Maltese interpretation service
Ivan Camilleri, Brussels
Despite almost five years of EU membership, Maltese interpretation is still not always readily available during EU meetings.
Although the situation has improved since the first years of accession, the provision of a steady Maltese language interpretation service is still not possible and the service continues to have the worst record of the 23 official languages at the EU.
The main problem is lack of qualified Maltese interpreters, even though a freelance Maltese interpreter can earn more than €300 a day …

By Victoria Kim
Los Angeles Times
Posted Feb 21, 2009 @ 08:02 PM
LOS ANGELES — The international phone line connecting a downtown Los Angeles courtroom to a cell phone 1,500 miles away in Texcoco, Mexico, was repeatedly disconnected and difficult to hear at times.
But on that line hung the constitutional rights of Candido Ortiz, accused of drunkenly stabbing a man with a broken beer bottle and charged with attempted murder. Ortiz, 20, spoke only a variant of Mixe, a language used by some 7,000 people in the mountains of the southern Mexican …