Globalese?

Or is John Dixon from Applied Languages writing his career as a translation project manager off?

Apparently, after Elvish, Esperanto, Na'avi, Spanglish, Chinglish and G-d alone knows what else, John is suggesting governments pay a bit more attention to imposing a common world language, tentatively called Globalese.

"Think how much money companies would save in the long run. In the US alone the translation business is estimated to be approximately $10billion per annum and growing."

Think how much less you would be making, John!

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Moroccan Judeoarab Dictionary the first of its kind..

Reported by Arutz Sheva:

(Apologies for the weird English)

Mordechai Hanoun has published the first dictionary of the Jewish Moroccan language. The two-year effort contains about 10,000 words, idioms, phrases and sayings from the Jewish Arabic of Morocco and their Hebrew translations. Hanoun told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew journal that words and phrases from English, French, Hebrew and Italian were mixed into this unique language, along with ancient Akkadian and Ugaritic. He also used the Hebrew word Me'arah, as in Ma'arat Hamachpelah, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron, as an example of a word whose meaning (in this case that of "tomb") was preserved through the Jewish Moroccan language.

Hanoun said, "An injustice has been done to this language, which has been related to as vulgar and not as poetic as it is." He added that the time has come for people to get to know this language, which was created by the people. He thinks the general public, as opposed to academia, will take an interest in the language and the ancient heritage filled with stories and roots.


For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Stay Proficient or Rank Down, says CIA

Oh, la la!

Under a new policy announced recently by CIA director Leon Panetta, an intelligence officer can’t be promoted to the agency’s highest rank — the Senior Intelligence Service — without a demonstrated proficiency in a foreign language. From a CIA release:

While many senior Agency officers have tested proficient in a foreign language over the course of their careers, some have not kept their skills current. Under the new policy, promotions to SIS for most analysts and operations officers will be contingent on demonstrating foreign language competency. If an officer is promoted to SIS and does not meet the foreign language requirement within one year, he or she will return to their previous, lower grade. This is a powerful incentive to maintain and improve skills critical to the Agency’s global mission. Languages play a key role in the CIA’s work at all career levels.

“The stricter requirement for SIS promotion,” said Panetta, “is meant to ensure that leadership on this vital initiative comes from the executive level. With an unwavering commitment from SIS officers—to both lead by example and to support language proficiency at all levels—we will reach not only our language goals, but our ultimate objective: an Agency that is better positioned to protect our nation in the years ahead.”

Let me guess.. it takes the Yanks 9 years to see the error of their ways, and then they arrest a student at an airport for holding flash-cards in Arabic? The mind boggles!

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Even more reasons to have a multilingual website

This from the Marketing Blog

(1) English is not a predominant language in the Internet any more. As the Internet grows, so does the variety of languages. Having a multilingual website means you will be able to sell much more to those new customers. Fundamental, my dear Watson!

(2) If your website is translated to many languages, it receives not just many new orders, but it enjoys a bigger flow of traffic. Your website will receive more visitors. So you can use gadgets such as AdSense ads more efficiently and will receive more CTR and will increase overall dollar amount per day.

(3) Multilingual website brings credibility to a company. Not a cheap free machine translation, for sure. Errors may hurt reputation of a company. Poorly done, machine translation may erode a company’s reputation completely. We are talking a real professional human approach to translation. Professionally done translation adds credibility to your website. Fundamental, too, but you would be amazed at how many CEO's don't get it. Just think Pajero.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Arabic still among the first 10 languages online

There we are, No. 8, with 50,422,300 users online. Enough stuff to translate..



Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Language Attrition Reversed?

Aaron's posting on language attrition suffered by native speakers who live overseas is something I can personally identify with. The sole difference here being the fact that I am a linguist by trade, and so I am even more aware of it.

I have to admit, however, that I was taken aback when a colleague made the comment that my Arabic was "weird". On further investigation, it turned out that it wasn't as much attrition as it was acquisition. Arabic is a rich language spoken with over 20 different dialects all the way from Western Sahara and Mali in Africa to the eastern board of the Arab Gulf. These dialects are often mutually incomprehensible.

What happened in my case is that I had a solid knowledge of Sudanese and Egyptian dialects, but that in Australia, most of my friends were Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian and Iraqi. Over the last 15 years, I had therefore acquired a substantial vocabulary of various Levantine dialects, often pronounced with a Cairene accent. The result, to say the least, would surely be weird to any ears other than mine!

The solution to that was, of course, to revert to my strongest dialects when speaking and risk not being understood anyway by people from other dialects. Which can be fun, because they in turn learn from you, too..

Aaron is facing the dilemma of speaking proper English, or speaking English Azerbaijani way. These days, with a team of five translators each from a different Arab country, we solved it by simply talking to each other in English.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Translators Boon to Economy

Add three things together:

Economic Migration (outsourcing/multinationals/professional) + the Internet population + social media marketing that reaches incredibly wide audiences.

The result is that you have a highly multilingual market that you need to address IN THEIR LANGUAGE, because even people who speak English well prefer to buy in their own language.

The solution?

Translation.

The fact that language service provider are a boon to the global economy are perhaps not immediately apparent. But if a company, whether large or small, is to get involved with it’s public in a meaningful way it needs to approach them in a manner that their clients understand and like. It needs to buzz in tongues, so to speak.

Companies express their cultural sensitivity by providing their diverse customers with materials in their own languages. For a company not to offer this kind of information would be short-sighted and would not make good business sense.

The role of the translator in the global economy is almost indispensable. The need for businesses to communicate with their clients base that there will always be a requirement for a translator. Not an Internet based software, mind you. Nothing offends more than a garbled information text on a reputable website - it simply renders the owner of the site untrustworthy (if they stuffed my language, they probably stuff lots of other things, too). Putting information out in a foreign language is meant to make things clearer, not more confusing.

Simply translating material is not sufficient; a qualified, professional and experienced translator would need to know what kind of message the company wants to convey to their new client base, and set the tone for the promotion or corporate identity. Certain symbols or ideas that are common coinage in one country may be highly offensive in another. Cultural sensitivity is extremely important.

The role of a translation services provider is not simply to transpose a set of texts or materials from one language to the next, but also to engage with the culture of the target language.

So use a human being. A qualified one. Because that is an investment in your business, not a cost to cut down.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Getting Started with Translation Style Guides

Whenever a translator or a translation editor makes a choice that affects consistency, that choice should be recorded in a glossary or style guide. A simple rule to get started is that translation style guides should contain every choice that can not be recorded in a translation glossary or a translation memory.

Instructions and choices that should be included in translation style guides are listed in Annex D of European Standard 15038 for translation services (see page 15). The elements detailed in the PDF include the following:

• Punctuation
• Spelling
• Formatting
• Adaptations
• Language-specific and client preferences
• Common errors to be avoided
• Other miscellaneous elements

Effective translation style guides can vary in length and detail, as exemplified by the following downloadable style guides from the technology industry:

Google's Translation Style Guide: a single guide for all languages that is simple and concise.

Oracle and Sun's Language Style Guides: guides in 8 languages, each of at least moderate length, French, Spanish, German, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish

Microsoft's Language Style Guides: guides for 90+ languages, each of varying length
Other international organizations and governments with respectable translation teams have also made their translation style guides available online for download:

The World Bank Translation Style Guide: English, French, Arabic, Spanish
The European Commission Translation Style Guides: English, Danish, Finnish, Portuguese, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, and other languages.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Explosive Translation

Oh, boy!



For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Not as "Arabic" as it is claimed

An interesting article on loan words in Arabic was prompted by the recent debacle on whether the term "Allah" is purely the property of Malaysian Muslims..

Note please, they don't speak Arabic. Note again, Islam came to an Arabic-speaking Arabia that was full of Christian, Jews and other religions, and where Arabic jostled side by side with Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew.

But that is the province of historical linguistics in "democratic" countries, not of political war-mongering and nationalistic hip-hop to the tune of religion.

It is evident that there is no such thing as a pure language which would presuppose a self-contained and self-sufficient linguistic community, hermetically sealed from interactions with neighboring linguistic communities – a historical impossibility by any account. Loan words in the Koran point to this over and over again..

"From the earliest period of Islam down to the present day, attentive readers have observed that there are words in the Koran which appear to be of non-Arabic origin. Such observations, motivated by varying factors, have been the source of controversy, discussions and extensive study in traditional Muslim and Euro-American scholarship," says Andrew Rippin his article on “Foreign Vocabulary” in Encyclopedia of the Quran vol 2 E- I ed., Jane Dammen McAullife (Brill 2002) pp. 226- 237).

And the hip-hop response to this is that (a) God sent the Koran down in the a form which the Arabs will easily understand. i.e. Arabic; (b) Arabic is the widest and richest of the languages, it should not be surprising that they exists similar words between Koranic Arabic and other languages (DUH? It is only the 8th language of the world, with English being by now the first, followed by Chinese); (c) words of foreign origin are to be found in the Koran but they had been incorporated into Arabic well before the revelation of the Koran and are thus to be considered Arabic, and the nature of the Arabic usage of such words is superior to their usage as found in other languages (is that why almost all technical terms nowadays are being transliterated from English?).

In his 1938 book, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Koran (now almost an obsolete academic curiosity, considering the Arab Middle East can't speak proper Arabic anyway), Arthur Jeffrey wrote, “Closer examination of the question [foreign words in the Koran] reveals even further and more detailed correspondences than these which appear on the surface, and forces on one the conviction that not only the greater part of the religious vocabulary, but also most of the cultural vocabulary of the Koran is of non-Arabic origin".

A few examples will suffice here:

Why, for example, does khalîfa end with an “a” which should denote it as a feminine? There is no answer from Arabic, but in Aramaic it is the article which usually in that language comes as an “a” (alif in Aramaic/Syriad spelling, ta’ marbuta in Arabic) at the end of the word, e.g. meshîha, the Messiah. These scholars would have been able to account for the “feminine” gender of khalîfa if they admit to its origin in the cognate Semitic languages.

Consider the words ‘salat’, or ‘zakat’ - why is it that in Koranic Arabic they are spelled with a “w” in the middle, and not, as outside of the Koran, with ‘alif’ to make it sound a long “a” (salât), while the Koranic spelling makes it sound like ‘salôt’,or ‘zakôt’? There is no answer from Arabic grammar for this observation, but the phenomenon is easy to explain if we take them to be loan words from Aramaic/Syriac, which uses a long ‘o’ where the Arabic uses a long ‘a’. The same explanation applies to the word, ‘salâm’ and ‘shalôm’.

The hip-hop continues, and will eventually become a civil war over a loan word.. Nevermind who is loaning from whom.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Proposal to Make Arabic Official at WTO Expensive

But if it goes ahead we may have some more work to do :-)

Reuters reported on 26/01/10 that Arab members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are pushing for Arabic to be made a fourth official language of the global trade body. But the heavy cost of translation, interpreting and extra printing involved in adding Arabic to the three current official languages -- English, French and Spanish -- means the proposal is running up against resistance (...) Any move to add Arabic as an official language would probably prompt a request for Chinese, and maybe even Russian -- aligning WTO language policy with the United Nations (...) Adding three languages would cost about 45 million Swiss francs ($43 million) a year, the ambassador said -- no small amount given a total WTO budget in 2009 of 189 million francs. As a result the Arab group will need to lobby hard to convince other members of the virtues of the proposal

The WTO's 153 members include a dozen Arab countries, and another six are applying to join, including Iraq, Algeria and Libya.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Writing in multiple identities

Sami Michael is an Iraqi-born, Israeli author. His interview on MedArabNews by Claudia De Martino tells the story of a writer with multiple identities and languages, as well as some strong political opinions..

"I was born in Iraq and immigrated to Israel at 21. Back in Iraq, I was writing in Arabic and it took me 15 years to switch from Arabic to Hebrew writing. In those 15 years, I never published novels in Arabic, but many short and long stories. I also wrote for a newspaper for 5 years; I was on the editorial board of Arabic language newspapers. But the reason why I never published a single novel in Arabic is that authors in exile have to write in the language of the country in which they live, otherwise they do not find readers and most of them became frustrated."

I can identify with that, as well as with his sentiments that "in many Arab countries in the Middle East there is hardly any freedom of speech. If an author writes something “critical” of the regimes in place, he/she may be taking an extreme risk, be jailed or persecuted for it" while in Israel the "persecution" is more subtle - no promotion, no financial assistance. It is the same in any democratic country. Democracy only works if you have access to the media, and main-stream media are seldom democractic anywhere. Thank God for the Internet.

I do write in Arabic, although much less than in English. I have another blog, under a pseudonym, where the Internet has allowed me to talk to people in the language they understand without being jailed or shot for it.

I also liked his comment that "my mother tongue is Arabic and my nationality Israeli, and my identity Jewish. I have always thought of myself as an “Arab Jew” without distinguishing at all which one of my identities was the dominant one. don’t feel I need to define myself for anyone, as an Englishman doesn’t get up in the morning and ask himself: who am I?" Many decades ago I opted for a line from Bernard Shaw's Man and Arms - I am a citizen of the world.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

GIGO and Marketing Jargon

I am immensely grateful to Lauren Nemec from Applied Languages for the posting on why it is almost impossible to translate marketing crap from English into other languages, especially ones where obfuscation is not a measure of intellectual agility.

A few years back we landed a project for a tourism authority who wanted to "sell" what their area offered to the Arab World. They hired a copywriting company full of young heads and a month later we were presented with 80 pages of "young-head-Aussie" text.

Everything was "unique". And I mean EVERYTHING. Like, each sunset was unique. The sands on the beach were unique. You shopped in a unique atmosphere, buying unique clothes in unique boutiques, sipping unique coffee in unique cafes on unique streets lined with unique trees. And so on, and so forth..

And then there was the very relative, totally undefined term "fun". Getting wet on a unique waterslide was fun as was drying in the similarly unique air funnel. Eating out is fun. Driving down to Brisbane on the congested motorway was "fun". Kids were going to have fun and so were adults, and the dog and the cat.. and your wallet, I assume.

Amazing. Wonderful. Indescribable (how can you write about an indescribable entity, let alone translate it?)

As Nemec says in her blog, it was meant to impress. I translated. The agent in the Middle East read it, convened a phone meeting, and said very clearly: "The translation is very good. Change your copywriters. The English copy is crap."

The error that many companies in the English speaking world fall into is that they think they can smother opposition by the sheer amount of incomprehensible jargon. That might well work for some at the local level, mostly those who speak the same GIGO dialect. But when you translate your materials to Arabic, Polish, or even German (just to mention a few of the ones I know), information is paramount. Information, and cultural sensitivity.

The unique young-heads at the copywriting company did not even bother to think whether what they were saying would be acceptable, let alone attractive, to the Arab audience. So they put in bars and nightclubs as attractions - unique, mind you, until your third glass of whiskey, after which all nightclubs look the same. They marketed open air saunas for both sexes, and marriage ceremonies atop an air balloon. They waxed lyrical (amazing, unique, etc) about wine tours and working dog shows. And, to make things worse, they did not actually explain what all this was about.

I wonder how many of us would pay heavy money to go somewhere overseas for the sole purpose of watching sunsets, get mud baths, and spend the night in a night club drinking. Heavy money, because Arab tourists come over with wives (often a few per one male) and a progeny line the size of a football club. They come mostly to shop. Singapore is cheaper, and their Tourism Board material actually INFORMATIVE (we know, we did it). So Australia loses potential tourism income because we just can't think in other people's ways. It is all unique, mind you.

Someone out there needs to write a cross-cultural marketing course geared at young-airheads.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Website Translation for Business - what is involved?

Nowadays, it’s easier than ever for the smallest of home-built businesses to network and trade on the international arena. But the first step towards doing so is to build a fully localized presence in your key target markets– and the process begins with adapting your company website for each country you plan to tap into.

(1) Prepare properly and allocate enough budget to sustain your multilingual marketing campaign - it is costly. Have an international marketing strategy that looks at understanding the consumers themselves it looks at the behavior and psychology of people from the country or market. When marketing internationally, the words ‘language’ and ‘local’ should always go hand-in-hand. Failing to do so can lead to a very costly global venture for businesses where funds may be limited.

(2) When understanding multilingual advertising you need to be aware of key terms, internationalization and localization and the different approaches:

(a) Internationalization - getting the websites designed with a macro view then localizing these websites at a later date.

(b) Localization - translating your original websites content and then putting it into a style which appeals to the target audience. English cannot be used for all international internet marketing activities. By creating localized content you can actually reduce costs whilst expanding business relationships with consumers and employees all around the world. By presenting websites in native languages you are making people four times as likely to buy products from you, also this will double the chances of people reading your website.

(3) Contrary to what many people think, fluency in a particular language doesn’t qualify someone to translate into it. To provide convincing translations, the translator requires first-hand knowledge of the culture of that language which is why most translators will only ever work INTO their native tongue from another language in which they are fluent. Furthermore, many linguists will specialize in a particular subject – such as marketing, engineering or agriculture. If your company’s products or services involve highly technical terminology, you will probably want to consider checking with the translation company that they have suitable candidates with the right level of experience. The important thing to remember when translating your website or any other marketing material is that what works in one country, might not translate the way you want it to in another. What’s clever and witty in one country, might be offensive in another. This is something only a native-speaking translator will know. It’s also important to be wary of dialects within languages. If you translate your website into Arabic, it doesn’t mean you can use it for all Arabic-speaking countries.

Results include a easy way to assess a new product or service in a new market before launching an offline marketing campaign, a significantly higher rate of return on investment, access to international best practices and technology, increased revenue, developing a global brand name and a larger customer base.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Social Media As the Universal Translator

Two very interesting blogs last week - the first "Bloggers from Non English Speaking Backgrounds – Share Your Tips and Stories Here" addresses the problems faced by bloggers from non-English speaking backgrounds. According to the blog, they have two main issues:

Not knowing which language that they should blog in – should they blog in their own first language and have a smaller potential readership or blog in English where their readership could be larger but where they had challenges in writing as well?

Feeling isolated from other bloggers – a number reflected that at times they felt that they were not taken as seriously by bloggers in other parts of the world and found networking difficult.

Whereas the blog posting itself is short, the 179 comments (as of 13:30 Sunday) are a serious eye-opener into the hegemony of English in the business world. Reading through some of them, I would agree with the first of the two issues - some of the "Englishes" are so painful to read that it might turn potential audiences off.

To which the second blog entry, titled "Can Social Media become a Universal Translator?", albeit interesting, does not provide any tangible solutions. Automated internet based translations give the gist (sometimes) of what is said, but blogging is not about merely saying things. It is about showcasing how smart you are, your expertise, your marketing abilities. So to me, writing poorly in English, or writing in your own language and letting fishes or microbes or any other such animals translate for you into poor English is one and the same thing.

Is there a market for translators here?

I am very tempted to blog in two languages, having parallel translations of what I write in both English and Arabic. The only problem I have is finding the time to do so, coupled with the lack of any statistical data on how many Arabic-speaking readers are into blogging about translation, language and business.

Then there would be the problem of localising, as not everything acceptable in English would be culturally acceptable in Arabic. Localising, of course, could open a can of worms, with some bilingual readers wanting to know why the translations are localised (i.e. slightly different from the original) or - even worse - attempting to do their own translation of the source English. Maybe starting a brand new blog would provide a solution, but then you are losing your optimisation share (the search engines see it as two blogs, instead of a massive and continually updated single one).

I am open to suggestions.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

The Pee Phone

From the Globalization Group..

A few years ago, International Systems Research (ISR) released a softphone in Japan called the PPPhone (pronounced "pee pee phone"). Unfortunately, that name does not pass what some people call "the snicker test" in English and many other languages where "pee pee" is understood to mean something else. ISR had some good reasoning for using the PP acronym - they already had a product called PPPush (pronounced "pee pee push") and the two P's referred to other relevant acronyms that began with P and described the function of the product. If they had stayed exclusively in Japan, they might have continued to develop additional pee pee products. However, you will see that ISR has an office in the US and a website in English.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Engrish Resources for Blooper Collectors

The term “Engrish” widely refers to the incorrect usage of the English language – usually in written form – by people in East Asian countries, including Japan, Korea and China. “Chinglish” is the term used to describe incorrect usage of the English language in China or by Chinese people.

Things associated with the west, including English, are wildly popular in East Asian countries because they are seen as exotic. So the Chinese, for example, slap English sayings on anything from t-shirts to pencil cases to bubble gum wrappers. Sometimes the translations are done by professionals and checked for quality- but often they are done using raw machine translation, a dictionary or a person who knows very little English, producing the “Chinglish” phrases that we all love so much.

Now you can watch a slide show on Flickr over 1,300 photos of Chinglish, or visit Engrish.com to read about Engrish and see hundreds of hilarious photos of objects with Engrish texts written on them.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

If you've Got Issues, Blame the Translators

Had to smile, although this is rather pathetic.

The Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission is under fire for blaming the distribution ban on an English-language book covering the nation's modern history on poor English translation. Translators plan to file a suit against Lee Young-jo, the new head of the commission, for libel.

Last month, the commission ordered an end to the distribution of "Historical Background of Korea's Past Settlement," written by former chief commissioner Ahn Byung-ook, perceived a liberal, for its allegedly poor translation.

The suspension was made right after Lee, who was a key member of an affiliate of conservative group New Right Union, took office.

The book says that many of the killings of civilians were conducted by the Korean army, police and right wing organizations. It also says the Park Chung-hee military junta introduced an extreme right-wing fascist regime to Korean society.

One of the translators, named Kim, claimed that the former New Right member found the "truth" uncomfortable. "While the New Right focuses on the economic fruits of the past administrations, the commission has highlighted the human rights infringements," he said. "Citing the translational errors is a mere stunt to gloss over the ideological war. However, that has hurt our dignity and pride as professional translators."

Kim, who works both as a translator and interpreter, was invited to help in the commission's seminars and events after the book's release. "They shouldn't have hired me if I had problems with English proficiency," he said. The book was released last March, translated by three experts and proofread by three English-speaking foreigners. The commission has printed 2,000 copies and distributed 1,200 of them.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Slanging It in the UK

The BBC last week had an interesting article on what public is saying about slang in the UK.

"Paul Kerswill, professor of sociolinguistics at Lancaster University, is studying street language in London. He says an entirely new dialect is emerging. "Young people are growing up with a new form of composite language. It's a bit cockney, a bit West Indian, a bit West African, with some Bangladeshi and Kuwaiti - and it seems to be replacing traditional cockney."

KUWAITI??? Hold on. They speak Arabic. Is the BBC writer a bit hard of hearing, or has Prof. Kerswill become a professor without knowing which language is spoken where. What is West African? Is that English as spoken in "west Africa" (which is what, exactly?)And Bangladeshi? That's,I assume, Bengali? Because if it is English as spoken in the subcontinent, then the Indians, Pakistanis, and Sri Lankans all speak the same way to my ears.

This "multicultural English" is now the ordinary way of speaking for many young people, he says. Instead of just using it to be cool or to fit in with peers, they use it when they speak to everyone. And those who use it are losing any sense of "appropriacy" - the important skill of turning it on and off in different situations.

"Appropriacy simply means using the right variety of language for the right context - using business jargon in business meetings, formal English in exams or slang in school playground," says slang expert Tony Thorne. "Language isn't just about communication, there is a strong social, political and emotional charge to it."

If that does not sound like attempts to impose middle class lifestyle on the lumpen proletariat, then I don't know what does :-D But then, I am a fair dinkum Aussie. But let us look at this from the causes point of view, not the symptoms. Why are these kids speaking like this? And what are schools doing? And if both schools and society have failed to improve this, then maybe it is time for businesses to start speaking slang, too? After all, these kids will be the managers in 20 years, whether we like it or not, and this "slang" will become the new English.

"It was clear many students found it difficult to get through a sentence without saying 'innit' or 'do you know what I mean'," says Maria Nightingale, principal for operations at the Manchester Academy.

Amazing. Here we are preaching multi-tasking and working at the speed of light, and when the kids come up with an immaginative way of squeezing 6 words into 1, we complain?

"We're a business and enterprise academy. It is really important our youngsters go into the world equipped with the appropriate use of language so they are not disadvantaged."

Disadvantaged only for as long as the 50+ middle-class, public service dinosaurs are in the seats of power. And they have no one to blame but their educational policies - no grammar, everything goes, englishes versus English, lets revamp spelling, and "studgesRus" mentality. Play games instead of reading. Multimedia experience instead of learning, and who needs a brain when you can plagiarise and when your 1T hard drive costs less than a monthly train ticket. Polite, classy language comes with lots of class baggage, and we want to do away with class, politeness, decorum, etc. So why are we whining now?

One school even goes as far as to enshrine this new form of English:

"A-level students learn where slang comes from," says Dan Clayton, a teacher at St Francis Xavier in Clapham. "They analyse it linguistically and think about what function it serves in conversations, as well as its links to identity." Not bad. They will become the intermediaries of the future, the new interpreters and translators from and into Slangish.

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

New Internet Slang Resources

For those struggling with the new Internet slang, the site NetLingo helps you to demystify the technobabble by providing definitions for terms, acronyms and text message shorthand. Another site known as Twictionary defines itself as “a repository for the meanings and manglings of words and language on Twitter.” Users can contribute new words to the site as the Twitter vocabulary evolves.

These sites are quite useful, as traditional dictionary sources like Merriam Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary simply can’t keep up with the pace of change when it comes to techie buzzwords. For example, last year Merriam Webster added the term “vlog” to its Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition; however, this word has commonly been in use since 2005. Despite the fact that they’re a bit behind the times, the most authoritative dictionaries of the English language are making an effort to include social media and tech-inspired words like 2009’s Word of the Year “unfriend.”

For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.