The government-based organization that brought us national standards for language proficiency and for translation and interpretation is the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR). Now ILR brings us a provisional draft of ILR Skill Level Descriptions for Competence in Intercultural Communication. To read the draft document, click here.   

ILR is an unfunded Federal interagency organization that shares information about foreign language-related activities. These new intercultural communication standards represent what may be the first credible, national-level descriptors to asses our effective verbal intercultural skills.

You can lend your voice to this important work.  For one year, ending on April 30, 2012, you may submit comments and suggestions directly to the two co-chairs of the committee, Maria Brau (mmbrau@gmail.com) and Gerald Lampe (alvictus@verizon.net). Exciting news for many of us. Make your voice heard!  

Listen to the latest: the dominant theory of linguistics in North America has just sustained a major torpedo assault. Jason Palmer of the BBC reports on a new study that shows cultural evolution, not the brain, drives language acquisition. 

In other words, the Chomskyan linguistics I grew up on stated that we learn language according to a universal "language acquisition device" based in genetics. That belief appears to be false. So reports Nature, the most famous and highly cited scientific journal in the world.

North American linguists have long stated (without empirical evidence) that infants possess an innate mental faculty that enables them to construct the grammar of their native language simply by being exposed to language around them. In other words, rather than viewing language as a complex set of cognitive skills mediated by social and cultural interactions, linguists viewed language acquisition as a somewhat automatic process mediated by a language center in the brain.

The evolutionary linguists who authored the new study focus on prepositions. They studied the characteristics of word order in four language families: Indo-European, Uto-Aztec, Bantu and Austronesian. Researchers looked at whether prepositions occur before or after a noun ("in the boat" versus "the boat in") and subject-object word order ("I put the dog in the boat" versus "I the dog put the canoe in"). They found that "each of these language families evolves according to its own set of rules, not according to a universal set of rules," as Author Dr Dunn explains. "That is inconsistent with the dominant 'universality theories' of grammar; it suggests rather that language is part of not a specialised module distinct from the rest of cognition, but more part of broad human cognitive skills."

To read Jason Palmer's BBC report about this major study, click here.

THE COMMUNITY INTERPRETER: A Comprehensive Training Manual (5^th edition, 405 pp, $80) and  

THE COMMUNITY INTERPRETER: Exercises and Role Plays (2^nd edition, 131 pp, $40).   

Marjory A. Bancroft and Lourdes Rubio-Fitzpatrick (2011).   

Columbia, Maryland: Culture and Language Press.

We are proud to announce the publication of the fifth edition of the only comprehensive training manual in the U.S. about community interpreting in all its sectors (with a focus on healthcare, educational and social services interpreting).   

In other words, for just the second time in this newsletter's history, we are featuring our own publications in Book of the Week.

The training manual addresses the special needs of two neglected audiences: bilingual staff who interpret, and contract interpreters who work in a broad array of community service sectors. The training manual offers an up-to-the-minute overview of the profession with a focus on ethics and standards, professional skills, intervention and mediation, cultural barriers, terminology, an introduction to legal interpreting and much more. The workbook includes activities, skills-building and role plays that cover a wide variety of service settings.

For more information or to order, click here.

On the Calendar

Translation and Localization

Localization World is hosting two international conferences this year on translation, localization and global websites: one in Spain and one in the U.S.  

Localization World
14-16 June 2011
Barcelona, Spain

Localization World
October 10-12, 2011
Santa Clara, CA

For more information about the programs, seminars and working groups of the Barcelona conference, click here.

The Language of Justice returns on November 7-9 in Columbia, Maryland. This three-day program offers guidance developed by national experts, attorneys, law professors, a legal interpreter service and community-based organizations on how to perform legal interpreting in community settings. 

The session will be followed by a two-day Training of Trainers on November 10 and 11. The TOT shows trainers how to deliver legal interpreter training and The Language of Justice. 

For details or to register, click here. 

For questions about the program or licensing, contact ccc@cultureandlanguage.net.