Online College Club

Cultural and racial diversity have always been characteristic of the United States. In the mid 19th century a Los Angeles Translation company representative astonishingly discovered that 18 languages were spoken by the city’s community. By the mid 19th century, the U.S. comprised people of so many cultures that writer Herman Melville exclaimed that spilling American blood would mean spilling the blood of the whole world. What Moby Dick’s author would say today can only be guessed. One can argue that the U.S. society of today comprises the most cultures and ethnicities. For more than a century, most immigrants to the U.S. were Europeans—Irish, French, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, English, Scandinavians, Greeks, Poles, Italians, and others. Together, Europeans and African Americans increased the necessity of San Jose Translation Services agencies. Nowadays, the major immigrant flow comes from Asia and Latin America This wave of Latin and Asian immigration has transformed the United States into what some call “the first universal nation,” a multicultural society of unmatched diversity. On the other hand, this diversity can also be discovered in small towns or villages, as well as in companies and religious places. Consider these:
• Of all the nations in the world today, at least one person lives in the United States.
• In Houston, Texas two radio stations have only Vietnamese broadcasts and one paper is printed in Chinese.
• Recent studies show that more than 60-percent of the current population of Miami was born outside the United States.
The number of people who do not speak English at home is growing every day.

Despite being amazing at first glance, these figures are normal to the United States. For decades, politicians and economists have been saying that we live in an age of international business and multiculturalism that requires the expertise from such firms as Miami Translation to ensure our messages are communicated and received in a culturally sensitive manner. The Internet allows for instant communication everywhere around the world. CNN is broadcasted to more than 1 billion people globally. International air travel has made national boundaries almost meaningless. All nations are becoming part of a vast global village. For example:

• There are 77,000 transnational corporations around the world, and they account for more than 30 percent of the world’s economic output.
• McDonald’s sells twice as many hamburgers and French fries abroad than it does in the United States; Nike makes 63 percent of its sales through exports.
• A radio station in Canada broadcasts in 31 languages while France has an equal number of Muslims and Catholics.
• More then half of the school population in Geneva, Switzerland is non-Swiss.

Any speech you prepare to deliver is heavily dependent on diversity and multiculturalism. Consider:
• A salesman is presenting a new product to a foreign audience
• The Pope greeting the peoples in their own languages
• A foreign student teaching his native language to U.S. colleagues
• A teacher assigning homework to pupils of various ethnic backgrounds

Modern life is constantly influenced by multiculturalism which requires translation and interpretation skills. The more diverse a community is the more complicated translation and interpretation. Part of the complexity stems from the differences in language from culture to culture. Language is the main separator between cultures. Our notion of culture is best expressed through the language that we learn when we grow up in this particular culture. ‘The meanings attached to gestures, facial expressions, and other nonverbal signals also vary from culture to culture. Even the signs that express “hello” and “goodbye” are based on culture. In Western cultures nodding the head means “yes” while shaking the head from side to side means “no”. In Bulgaria it is exactly the opposite. Failure to make sense of customs in different nationalities often puts translators and interpreters into embarrassing situations. These stories should serve as an example to public speakers to never neglect cultural differences.