Mandarin Mashup May 8, 2012
The great language leap - Financial Times
Wandering through the back alleys and side streets of Shanghai’s former French Concession, it is easy to forget that one is in China. Along the tree-lined boulevards sit wine bars, coffee shops, and small designer boutiques.
The architecture is even more disorientating. Grand French villas mix with art deco apartment blocks and even English-style cottages.
The city has always been more outward looking than the rest of China, and has welcomed foreigners for more than 100 years. Their influence is everywhere, from the imposing colonial-era bank buildings and trading houses along the waterfront Bund, to the onion-domed Orthodox churches built to service the tens of thousands of Russians who came to the city in the 1920s and 1930s, many to work as muscle for local crime lords.
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But while some of the scenery may be familiar enough for new arrivals, making friends and fitting in is still a big challenge.
“Interacting with local Chinese people is definitely tough,” says Jack Mur, a curator at Island6 gallery, who has been studying Mandarin at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University for the past year. “You’re dealing with a whole different mindset.”
The language is difficult to learn, and made more complex by its character-based writing system and tonal pronunciation. Many expatriate executives learn enough to make it from A to B, and to order a meal, but little more than that.
Michele Travierso, a freelance writer from Italy, says he speaks just enough to do his job, but that those who have no language skills would have to budget differently.
“You could survive, but your outflow of money would be significantly higher if you did not speak Chinese and couldn’t tap into Chinese services,” he says.
The language barrier also adds to the challenge of making local friends. Most of Shanghai’s foreigners, even those with some grounding in Mandarin, socialise within expat circles.
“We thought when we came here that we might make some really good Chinese friends, and we haven’t really,” says Lynette MacDonald, editor of Shanghai Family magazine, who undertook language study before moving to China. “The real Chinese people, the people who live on my street here, I don’t know what we have in common.”
Even for experienced travellers, the language barrier can be a real challenge says Mur’s Parisian colleague, Thomas Chaveriat. “If you are somewhere like Argentina and you don’t speak Spanish, you could get away with going to restaurants because there are some things you have in common. In China, even ordering food can be a disaster.”
Beyond the language barrier, expats in Shanghai also say that locals of the same age often have different priorities. China does not have the same attitude as much of Europe and the US, for example, towards drinking and clubbing, and people tend to get married and have children at an earlier age. In Shanghai’s vibrant economy, there is also a greater emphasis on work than in some parts of the west, leaving far less time for socialising.
Cayce, SC (WLTX) - An official from the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC visited East Point Academy in Cayce Monday.
Yang Zigang, a minister at the embassy, toured the school. While there, he watched a short program that the students prepared in Mandarin Chinese.
Children at the school are taught all about the Chinese culture.
"They can speak fluent Chinese," said Zigang. "I think this is very important to teach young kids Chinese. Nowadays China and the US are two very important countries."
East Point is the state's first Chinese immersion school.
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majia07 has added a photo to the pool:
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- U.S. college students speak up in Mandarin - People's Daily Online
CHICAGO, May 5 (Xinhua) -- It was all Mandarin Chinese all of the time as dozens of American college students spoke of their hopes and dreams during the Chinese Bridges Speech Competition at Northwestern University.
Crowded into campus classrooms Saturday with their Chinese teachers standing by to take photos, each student gave a five-minute presentation in Mandarin on topics ranging from family life to their Chinese dream.
One student shared how he first became interested in Chinese culture, saying "it all began with the Kung Fu movies I watched as a child."
"Once I discovered I was unable to fly like the martial arts heroes of the films, I decided studying the Chinese language would be the second best option for me to explore Chinese culture," he said.
Another student discussed how different China was from her expectations and marveled at how Shanghai's Pudong district seemed much like Las Vegas while the Puxi buildings across town bore many similarities to European styles.
One of the most memorable performances in the Midwest Division competition came from Dalian Urbonya, who took the top prize in the final Fourth Year Speaking Competition.
The contest was divided into four levels according to how many years students had studied the language. In addition to an individual speech, each participant also shared a Chinese cultural talent such as a song or dance.
Speaking at breakneck speed and in almost perfect tonal pronunciation, Urbonya impressed the judges both with her speaking skills and traditional Chinese dance.
After the competition, Urbonya told Xinhua that she was just as interested in China's culture as she was in its language. She said that she hoped to study Chinese dance and music more in the future.
Urbonya said she was greatly inspired by media personality Mark Henry Rowswell, a Canadian better known in China by his Chinese name of Dashan, when she watched his performance for the first time.
She hopes to one day be! like Ro wswell and plans to participate in the speech competition in China in July.
Alicia Montague-Keels, another student who won a gold medal in the speech competition, told Xinhua that she was actually inspired to study Chinese so that she could teach others.
After a few years of studying French, Montague-Keels switched to Chinese. She found the change so "fresh" and interesting that she moved to Beijing to study last summer.
"It was just an amazing experience, and every opportunity I get to go back China, whether it be two weeks or three months, I take advantage of that," Montague-Keels said.
Montague-Keels, set to graduate with a major in Chinese education, said her experience in learning mandarin has helped her recognize a long-held ambition.
"My ultimate lifetime goal is to open an immersion school focusing on critical need languages. I always wanted to be a teacher," Montague-Keels said.
Fifty-three students from a number of Midwestern universities including Northwestern, the University of Chicago, DePaul, Purdue and the University of Wisconsin participated in the competition.
Language interpreter services see demand soar - WSBT-TV
A Chinese customer visited the Fox Hills branch of Wells Fargo Bank in Culver City recently to ask about several transactions on his checking account that didn't make sense to him. But he spoke only Mandarin, and no one in the bank could interpret.In Southern California, where more than 200 languages are spoken, it's the type of problem that businesses and their customers face every day. As a result, companies that offer interpreters over the phone are in great demand by retailers, hospitals, banks, restaurants and other merchants.
Wells Fargo branch manager Maged Nashid described what happened when the Mandarin speaker showed up. "We had a hard time communicating with him," he recalled. "I took the customer to my desk, gave him some water and called the 800 number for assistance."
The toll-free number connected the bank to Language Line Services, a Monterey interpreting service that employs more than 6,000 interpreters to translate over the phone for banks, police departments, hospitals and others. The company, which has contracts with its clients, charges by the minute.
Language Line, with annual revenue of $300 million, was founded 30 years ago and is set up to interpret 170 languages. It hopes to hire 2,000 additional translators in the coming year.
In a three-way phone call with a Mandarin interpreter on the line, Nashid was able to explain the account transactions to the customer. "At the end of the day," he said, "the client was extremely happy."
The demand for such language services has been surging in the last few years, partly because of growth in immigration to the U.S. over the last few decades but also because of a recent boom in international business transactions with people in such countries as China, Japan, India and South Korea. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 2,600 translation and interpreting companies make up what is estimated to be a $3-billion industry.
The number of U.S. residents who speak a language other than English at home has more than doubled in the last three decades, a pace four times as fast as the nation's population growth, according to a new census report analyzing language data from 1980 to 2007.
During that period, the percentage of speakers of non-English languages grew 140% while the nation's overall population grew 34%.
Moreover, the amount of foreign investments made in the U.S. tripled from 2000 to 2010, and more than 5% of the nation's workers are employed by firms majority-owned by foreign entities, according to the Commerce Department.
As a result, businesses that offer translating and interpreting services are expanding to meet the exploding demand.
"For every transaction out there, 1 out of 10 will be in another language," said Louis F. Provenzano, president and chief executive of Language Line, which is one of the world's largest interpreting firms and is owned by Boston private equity firm Abry Partners. Many of the interpreters work at Language Line's Monterey headquarters, but others work from home, providing interpreting services over the phone.
Language Line said some of the workers it plans to hire will also help staff a new service that the company hopes to debut this summer. In cooperation with a large cellphone service provider that Language Line says does not want to be identified yet, its customers will be able to push a button and instantly talk to an interpreter. The service will charge a per-minute rate that will vary depending on the language.
Competitors say they too are seeing an increase in business. Dina Spevack, president and founder of American Language Services in Los Angeles, said her company recently hired two staffers to help coordinate the work of more than 2,000 interpreters and translators.
"We are so slamming busy it's unbelievable," she said.
ProTranslating, a Florida company that has offered translating and interpreting services since 1973, is expanding its in-house staff by nearly 20% this year, general manager Natalia Sturla said.
"More and more commerce is being conducted on a global scale," she said. "Consumers, whether in China or the U.S. or Mexico, want to have access to the same products and the same companies."
Besides the explosion of international transactions, interpreting companies have also seen demand surge with other economic trends, such as the increase in home foreclosures during the recent recession.
Language Line's Provenzano said his company recently had to shift more interpreters to handle bank calls. "We still do a lot of foreclosures," he said. "For our interpreters it is quite emotional work."
And, he said, then there are the routine calls from police agencies and hospitals to help emergency workers communicate with non-English speakers.
Torrance Memorial Medical Center recently added 400 dual-handset phones, putting them next to nearly every hospital bed as well as in the emergency room. With the help of Language Line interpreters, these new phones enable nurses and doctors to better communicate with and care for non-English-speaking patients.
"The nurses are really using them daily," said Charlene Cottrell, clinical director of nursing at the hospital.
During Hurricane Irene last summer, Language Line was inundated with calls from insurance companies asking for help to interpret claims from non-English-speaking victims of the hurricane.
"Our interpreters don't know what the next call will be," Provenzano said. "A majority of the calls are not pretty." The company employs about 100 counselors to help its interpreters deal with the stress of the job.
Janet Eckles, a Spanish interpreter for Language Line, recalls a day recently when she got a call from a hospital, asking her to interpret for a nurse who was trying to communicate with a Spanish-speaking pregnant woman. The baby's heartbeat was irregular and the nurse needed to tell the mother what was happening.
"At the end of the call, everything was OK and they ended up doing a C-section," Eckles said. Language Line estimates that its interpreters help in the delivery of an average of 11 babies a day around the world.
But the next call the interpreter got that day was from a nurse in another hospital. A baby had died during delivery, she said, and the nurse wanted to ask the mother if she wanted to hold her baby for the last time before the infant was taken to the mortuary.
"What would happen if they couldn't communicate with the mom at that moment?" Eckles said, adding that she also helped interpret a prayer by the hospital chaplain for the woman.
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