The Scorpion and the Frog
A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.”
The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp:
“Why?”
Replies the scorpion: “It’s in my nature…”
My son is taking Latin next year (voluntarily) yet claims it is a dead language. I remembered that the reporter in Rome with the first scoop on Pope Benedict’s retirement spoke Latin, which is what gave her the edge. I mentioned this to my son and he just shrugged, “well, no one really speaks it anymore except in the Vatican”.
But, according to many scholars, writers and language enthusiasts, Latin has been and remains the language of learning and science. It gave rise to Romance languages and is central to the vocabularies of medicine, law and the sciences.
To keep in touch with teenagers on a daily basis and whose online activities need monitoring, I had to get into the whole texting and Twitter world. With the inconvenience of a phone keyboard to serve as an actual keyboard and with the 140-character limit, abbreviations are crucial… and create a whole new language. A language that can be read quickly if one is familiar with the acronyms, but not out loud, one that requires translation into English many times, but that language is understood across borders once the meaning is established.
Recently we assisted a German movie production with German language pronunciation. The entire short movie was to be spoken in German as well as English with a German accent, but all the actors were Americans with no background in German and no previous German language experience.
That was a challenge!
The Internet is getting bigger by the minute and therefore the world is getting smaller. Because of the abundance of websites in many countries and languages, translation is in an all-time high demand.
Economic momentum shifts from country to country and we can tell where the action is. As soon as countries open up, requests for translation for that country increase. Software, in the form of computer-assisted translation tools, is helping along the way, and the software companies rush to add a new language.