20/05/2016–27/05/2016 Headlines The latest in the world of wearable tech has been toying with artificial intelligence capabilities like language translation with the Pilot, a wireless earpiece created by Manhattan-based Waverly Labs. The technology—that links up with a compatible mobile app—would allow users to…

13/05/2016–20/05/2016 Headlines Google has open sourced SyntaxNet, its Artificial Intelligence (AI) programming software that helps computers understand the syntax of natural language and which also includes Parsey McParseface, an English-language parser Google believes is more accurate than any currently in the field.…

06/05/2016–13/05/2016 Headlines Syriac is being revitalised in Bengaluru, reports The New Indian Express. A group of university students and youth are now working to incorporate the language in various aspects of their daily lives, from church services to wedding invitations to WhatsApp. In Guam,…

29/04/2016–06/05/2016 Headlines As the Klingon language controversy continues, Salon spoke to David J. Peterson, the creator of Game of Thrones language Dothraki, and asked him for his take on the issue. Peterson places himself firmly on the side of the fans: he believes that…

What’s the best age to learn a new language? Like most things in life, the answer is probably an evasive “it depends.” “Wow, I bet they just soak it up like sponges!” When I started teaching elementary school Spanish, I…

22/04/2016–29/04/2016 Headlines On April 21, Alaskan lawmakers almost unanimously passed a bill granting official recognition to the state’s twenty indigenous languages: Ahtna, Alutiiq, Central Alaskan Yup’ik, Dena’ina, Deg Xinag, Eyak, Gwich’in, Haida, Hän, Holikachuk, Inupiaq, Koyukon, Siberian Yup’ik, Tanacross, Tanana, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Unangax,…

15/04/2016–22/04/2016 Headlines Southwest Airlines has come under heavy fire online after University of California (Berkeley) student Khairuldeen Makhzoomi was escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight for speaking Arabic and, as fellow passengers reportedly put it, presenting a security threat. The Huffington Post, among others,…

08/04/2016–15/04/2016 Headlines A step forward in the field of translation services: Two University of Washington undergraduates created gloves—called SoundAloud—that can translate American Sign Language into text or speech! In reward, sophomores Navid Azodi (business administration student) and Thomas Pryor (aeronautics…

01/04/2016–08/04/2016 Headlines How would we communicate with aliens if and when we finally encounter some? The Atlantic profiled the rise and fall of Lincos, a language developed specifically for exolinguistic purposes by German scientist Hans Freudenthal, and “its enduring legacy” among Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) researchers despite…

25/03/2016–01/04/2016 Headlines The constructed Klingon language of Star Trek is in court, after Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios filed a lawsuit against the makers of Star Trek: Prelude to Axanar, a fan film with “a serious budget”, in January. Axanar‘s makers argue that Paramount and…

18/03/16–25/03/2016 Headlines Disney-Pixar film Finding Nemo (2003) has become the first animated film to be translated into Navajo and will debut in cinemas across the Navajo nation this month. It is hoped that the translated film will be able to preserve…

11/03/16–18/03/16 Headlines More than 200 writers, academics, and experts were joined by the king and queen of Spain in Puerto Rico for a week-long conference on the Spanish language. At the thrice-a-year conference, they discussed the issues and challenges faced by a…