The challenges of intercultural communication are an integral part of many undergraduate business communication courses. Marketing gaffes clearly illustrate the pitfalls of translation and underscore the importance of a knowledge of the culture with which one is attempting to communicate. A good way to approach the topic of translation pitfalls in…

We reviewed the Spanish translation of the Youth Quality of Life Instrument-Research Version (YQOL-R) and culturally adapted the measure with Puerto Rican and Mexican American children and adolescents. The YQOL-R is a self-reported measure that includes four domains: Sense of Self, Social Relationships, Environment, and General Quality of Life. A…

This selection of papers starts with insights into multi- and plurilingual settings, then proceeds to discussions of aims for practical work with students, and ends with visions of future developments within translation for the mass media and the impact of machine translation. Papers are: "Interpreting at the European Commission";…

The approach taken commonly in instructional materials designed for teaching translation at the college level is examined, and an alternative is proposed. The approach under examination is the use of western translation theories to teach translation between Chinese and English, often incorporating examples from other, unfamiliar languages. It is…

The book is an introduction to the field of contrastive rhetoric, an area of research in second language learning that identifies learners' problems in composition and attempts to explain them by referring to the rhetorical strategies of the first language. It traces the history of contrastive approaches to the study of second language writing and…

It is argued that a method for teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) combining the communicative approach with the traditional grammatical orientation and Chinese teaching traditions may be more effective than any one of these single approaches in the Chinese educational and cultural context. The resulting approach is termed the…

The guide lists selective references available at the McGill University (Canada) Humanities and Social Sciences Library or Center for Research Libraries for researchers of French literature. An introductory section offers tips for online literature searchers. Citations are listed in these categories: guides to the literature; general…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of various translation methods used in imported instructional video programs on Taiwan elementary school students' visual and verbal memory. Following pretesting, 128 fourth grade students from an urban public elementary school in northern Taiwan participated. The students in 4 experimental…

A study of the translation process compared the decisions that native speakers (experts) and non-native speakers (non-experts) made that influenced resulting translations. Subjects were 40 students, graduate students, and faculty in a university foreign language department. English language proficiency was measured for native speakers by using the…

In 1941, Angeline Williams, an Anishinaabe elder taught the Ojibwa (Chippewa) language to a class at the Linguistic Institute at the University of North Carolina. Ojibwa is an American Indian language which was spoken as a chain of dialects in numerous communities from Quebec across the Great Lakes and into the plains of Saskatchewan. This text…

The problem of lack of information regarding the relationship among second language students' language ability, metacognition, and reading materials is examined. The study investigates how reading strategies transfer from the native language to the second language within an interactive and compensatory processing model framework. It examines the…

To alleviate problems associated with free composition as a method of foreign language writing instruction, the directed writing method was adapted for use in a college French composition course. High-quality French texts, often of only a page or two and written by native speakers, are used as a basis for grammatical analysis and discussion and a…

An approach to text translation that focuses on understanding the original text and the writer's intentions is outlined. The approach uses a sequence of steps including: studying the text carefully, knowing the writer's background, analyzing the text, understanding the writer's use of words, normalizing the text's grammatical form, composing the…

Indian languages seem to have emerged from a phase of total dependence on English for new input. Several Indian languages have now evolved vocabularies and structural nuances to handle several new registers and styles necessary for modern society. Some of the change has occurred through conscious language policy encouraging multilingualism and the…

The view that foreign language study contributes significantly to literacy in the native language is discussed from the perspectives of a foreign language teacher who also teaches English composition. It is suggested that there is a need for research and publications on the benefits of second language study on native language growth and on…