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I am sure you all already know about Wikipedia. But did you know that Wikipedia is run completely by volunteers and is funded purely on donations?

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is made up of facts and information that are user contributed, corrected and updated, is reaching out to users everywhere to make an annual or monthly donation in order to keep its webpage advertisement free, open, and bias free.

According to the founder, Jimmy Wales, “If all of Wikipedia’s 400 million users would donate $1 each, we would have 20 times the amount of money we need. We’re a small organization, and I’ve worked hard over the years to keep us lean and tight. We fulfill our mission, and leave waste to others.”

If you like Wikipedia, and more importantly if you use Wikipedia, and like the idea of a completely open source encyclopedia, consider making a donation today. Unless you are the creative type; in that case, find out other ways you can contribute here.

In an increasing global world, bilingualism is becoming more than just a novelty, but a necessity. Increased immigration, travel and globalization have made the world a much smaller place and knowing one language is just no enough anymore.

I have already written several posts about the growing demand for translators, but we are also seeing an increase in demand for bilingual speakers in several areas. CNN published this list created by careerbuilder.com in 2009 and that is mostly related to demand in the United States, but many of these areas are in demand in various parts of the world.

Health care: With an increase in the number of foreign language speakers, there is a higher demand for bilingual staff to assist these patients. This area also happens to have a high demand for translators as well.

Hospitality: As traveling around the globe becomes easier and cheaper, there is an increased demand for staff that can understand and speak to a variety of guests to make them feel at home.

Education: In addition to ESL teachers, there is a high demand for bilingual teachers, counselors and principals that can help the students communicate with immigrant parents.

Law Enforcement: When solving crimes, questioning suspects, or shouting demands, it makes things a lot easier (and could even save lives) when if law can communicate effectively.

Customer Service: With an increase in the number of immigrant consumers, there is higher demand to service them in the best way possible. That starts with communicating properly.

Social Services: Like other service areas, social service is based on communication. Caseworkers, parents, and children all need to communicate well.

Finance: Business is increasingly global and therefore financial positions increasingly deal with foreign currency and the languages that come with them.

Communication: Well, this one is quite obvious, right? You get the picture…

Yammer is the social networking site aimed at businesses. It was designed to be a company’s internal communications tool. It brings all of a company’s employees inside of an internal social network so that they may collaborate and communicate in an effective way. It reduces the need for meetings, increases communication across silos, surfaces pockets of expertise and connects remote workers.

Some of Yammer’s tools include Enterprise Microblogging, Direct Messaging, Files, Links, and Images upload, Groups, Communities, Profiles, Company Directory, Knowledge Base, third party applications and mobile connectivity.

In an effort to grow and compete with other enterprise networking sites like salesforce.com, Yammer has recently earned significant funding that it plans to use it to triple its marketing efforts and increase its global presence in the marketplace. Yammer is also working on increasing users by making its application available in more languages.

They have recently made the application available in Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. Yet they also plan to add additional languages each week with the help of a professional translation firm as well as its own Translations application.

The app makes use of crowdsourcing as part of the translation process by allowing volunteers to submit translations and vote on existing ones. Ninety-four languages are currently available for user translation:

We have all heard of and have probably used MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and Orkut. But have you heard of Yammer?

“Yammer has a huge global opportunity,” said David Sacks, the company’s founder and CEO. “We believe that every company will want its own enterprise social network, no matter its size or industry, and that includes companies in countries that don’t speak English. Translating Yammer massively increases our market opportunity.”

By comparison, Salesforce.com is currently available in 16 languages, while other competitors such as Huddle and Jive come in less than ten.

Wanna volunteer? Check this out: http://blog.yammer.com/blog/2010/11/yammer-in-translation.html

Nuns at a Dominican Literacy Center in Aurora, Illinois, have taught immigrant women to read, write and speak English for more than 16 years. The Literacy Center hopes to improve the lives of immigrant women by making it easier for them to communicate with their doctor, or their child’s teacher, or to even understand what their English-speaking children are saying to each other at home.

One advantage that the center offers are 90-minute personal classes given once per week. The women have one on one time to overcome their fear of speaking English. And the only cost is a $25 annual fee for the workbook. The classes last three years and afterwards the women can join a conversational group as long as they please.

More than 180 women received tutoring this year at the center on Chicago’s near east side. More than 100 remain on a registration waiting list, while another 90 are waiting for tutors to become available. About 80 percent of the women come from Mexico, and others hail from Russia, Pakistan, Peru, Haiti and elsewhere.

Run by the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, the literacy center is one of numerous organizations in the Chicago region supported by Chicago Tribune Holiday Giving, a campaign of Chicago Tribune Charities, a McCormick Foundation Fund. Here is the link in case you feel like making a donation:

https://donate.mccormickfoundation.org/NetCommunity/SSLPage.aspx?pid=205

The title of this post was taken from the International Business Times. Well, I think everyone is pretty aware that the United States, as a culture, does not place much importance on learning foreign languages nor foreign culture for that matter.

Sure, in high school I had to take two years of a foreign language, but I went to a privileged high school. This is only because I was planning to attend a very good university; otherwise, it was not required. We also had fun things like wood arts and ceramics, which were considered no less important than the French or Spanish classes that we could choose from. I guarantee that many parts of the country do not have funds nor do they place importance on learning a foreign language. Besides, how useful are just two years of study?

As a whole, we tend to be a very linguistically egocentric society. And with the help of the British, we have succeeded in making most of the world speak our language if they want to do business or have relations with us. Think about it, does the president even speak a foreign language? If he does, I am sure I am not aware of it because nobody places language skills as an important factor when you are competing for leadership of the most powerful nation in the world. Weird, isn’t it?

Anyway, this gap in our linguistic awareness is becoming a thorn on our side as we start to suffer the consequences of our lack of foreign language proficiency. Let’s take a look at the Iraq war for example. How many soldiers had the slightest notion of how to speak the local language while they were raiding villages in the middle of the night? They are given basic language training just before a raid without probably ever having to know how to really communicate with the locals.

Anthony Grafton, professor of History at Princeton University, writing in the The Daily Princetonian, a university newspaper, addressed the problem in regards to the military, “Sadly, many Americans don’t see the point of studying foreign languages at all, since the world seems to have learned English,” Grafton said. “I wish everyone could speak, as I have, with a veteran of the Iraq war who has done house-to-house searches at night without the benefit of a competent interpreter.”

There are various reports that also illustrate the problems and disadvantages that exist due to a lack of language proficiency in the U.S. Military. I have the utmost respect for our military and I honor the young men and women that risk their lives to fight for their country, but is it really fair to send them to war without even understanding what the opponent is saying?

“For the United States to get to where it needs to be will require a national commitment to strengthening America’s foreign language proficiency,” said Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the CIA Foreign Language Summit in December 2010. “Mastery of a second language allows you to capture the nuances that are essential to true understanding,” Panetta told attendees. “This is not about learning something that is helpful or simply nice to have. It is crucial to CIA’s mission.”

John Carlino, executive director of the New York State Association of Foreign Language Teachers, says, “It’s important to point out that if everyone else speaks our language, but we don’t speak other languages or understand other cultures, we are at a huge disadvantage in the global market.”

“When you learn a foreign language you begin working parts of the brain you do not normally use. It increases intelligence, communications skills, higher-level thinking skills, critical analysis. Brain and language acquisition research has shown that the earlier one starts and the longer the duration of exposure to another language, the deeper, quicker and longer lasting the learning will be,” Carlino stressed.

Martha Abbott, director of education for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, agreed. “It’s very naïve to say ‘the world speaks English,’ therefore I don’t need a foreign language,” she said. “Who has the advantage in business when they know your language and you don’t know theirs?”

The U.S. ranked 26 on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test, which is conducted every few years by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In my opinion, this score is pretty pathetic for a world superpower. The top 10 ranked countries happen to require foreign language proficiency in their schools.

Go figure…