Languages galore

From the point of view of a multilingual translator, an airport is like Disneyland.

And I’m not talking about the endless lines before entering the ride –although that, too-, but about the world of languages and variety of cultures one can find in there.

I mean, if a translator hits a dead end for whatever reason and doesn’t see the point in his/her profession anymore, I’d advice him/her to go to the nearest airport, sit down on one of those awfully uncomfortable seats and just observe the surroundings.

Airport and plane staff are amazing, from my perspective. Not only are they elegant, polite, well trained and versed in all kinds of practical knowledge, they also know languages. Perhaps it is because I come from a country that is maybe a little too proud of its own language and never before saw the point in learning others, but to me, that is amazing.

English: that’s an absolute must. Other than that, it all depends. They also usually speak the languages of both the country of departure and the country of destination. And more often than not, they speak the language of the country where the airline company is based in as well.

And if not… Who can blame them? I mean, for a normal human being, speaking two languages is quite enough. Speaking three is worthy of admiration. And speaking more is usually having a mixture of a lot of languages half-learnt, and rarely put to practice. No offense to the exceptions.

And still, it doesn’t seem to be enough. There are always people who still struggle to ask for a window seat, or to explain that they want their dogs travelling of their lap, or to get an orange juice instead of a soda.

We are in 2013, many many years after the phenomenon known as ‘globalization’ began, and after English was claimed as the official international language to avoid miscommunications in these kinds of situations. But it doesn’t matter: language is identity. Language is comfort.

The world is still hungry for translation.

Well, call us philanthropists, but we just cannot observe this without taking action. We at inWhatLanguage, may not be able to sate the world’s hunger for translation, but we are definitely going to do our part. Starting with an awesome 20% off promotion until the end of February for projects in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese!

Think of it as a little New Year’s bonus!

Contact inWhatLanguage at 800.580.3718 to request a free language translation quote or for more information on our quality translation services.