Archives

We all know that the Chinese believe in all kinds of aphrodisiac food, but this menu is a bit too much, no?

For some time now, scientists have been discussing the link between multi-lingualism and the brain. Finally, a recent study conducted by the European Commission entitled “The Contribution of Multilingualism to Creativity,” presents the first known macro analysis based on available evidence, which has been conducted by searching through several studies and giving particular attention to recent research on the brain.

The results of the study show that being multi-lingual contributes to a more creative and more effective thought process. One of the central cerebral areas highlighted in the research report is the one responsible for memory function. People rely especially on the short-term memory when thinking, learning and making decisions.

David Marsh, specialized planner at the Continuing Professional Development Centre of Jyväskylä University, who coordinated the international research team behind the study, says that the research conducted within neurosciences offers more evidence of versatile knowledge of languages being beneficial for the usage of an individual’s brain. “It is obvious that enhanced memory can have a profound impact on cognitive function,” says Marsh. This may be one reason why multilingual individuals show superior performance in handling complex and demanding problem-solving tasks when compared to monolinguals. They seem to be able to have an advantage in handling certain thinking processes.

The research report brings forth six main areas where multilingualism, and hence the mastery of complex processes of thought, seem to put people in advantage. These include learning in general, complex thinking and creativity, mental flexibility, interpersonal and communication skills, and even a possible delay in the onset of age-related mental diminishment later in life, Marsh relates.

This study was conducted during the period May 2008-June 2009 across all 27 EU Member States plus Norway and Turkey. It comprises an analysis of scientific literature, both European and International. Input given by thirty country experts and a Core Scientific Research Team (CSRT) was set against five hypotheses, as given by the European Commission.

Who knows, if the results of the study gain momentum in the scholastic realm, we could see mandatory multi-lingualism in curriculum. Leading us to a better communicating, more globalized world full of highly efficient thinkers.

It’s not very difficult to put a hole in the wall while reforming a house and end up finding a pipe. Then the situation becomes delicate: you must break the wall, figure out the location of the pipe and then drill a new hole in a different place.

This happens because most people do not have the blueprint for the property. If you do not have it, it’s almost impossible to guess where all of the pipes and wires are located, which makes any maintenance work more complicated and risk.

What people don’t know is that the same happens in localization. After generating the beautiful and complex graphics or that lovely PDF that took months to create in Adobe InDesign, sometimes people simply ignore the source files (those beloved editable files) and save only the final result. After all, no one will publish an editable file, right?

But when we need to change something in the file, how do we translate the text of the file? Without the source files, the only option is to extract all of the text from the file – which is frequently a manual process – translate the text and then try to create the file all over again from scratch. Clearly, besides spending almost the same amount of time it took to create the original file, the result is never quite the same. This problem could be easily resolved only if the source files had been saved.

So how about saving time, money and maintaining the quality of your translated material as high? Just save a few extra files and send them along when you need any changes to be made… It’s really not that complicated, is it? =)

Image Credit: www.flickr.com/photos/maryaben/

The US National Museum of Language, a dream in the making for 11 years, opened its doors on May 3, 2008 just in time for UNESCO’s International Year of Languages (2008). Located in a Maryland College town, the museum offers a humble but interesting look at both in-museum language exhibits and online exhibits, which anyone in any country can enjoy.

Rather than focusing on specific languages, the museum focuses on the specific structure and nature of language and linguistics. The underlying themes of the Museum will focus on “Language in Society,” “World Languages,” and the “Universal Aspects of Language.” The museum hopes to encourage visitors to learn other languages as well as promote a better understanding of language and its role in history, contemporary affairs and the future. It recently held a contest asking users to create a flag that is representative of language and of the museum itself. The winning design is below.

The three shades of green of the leaves represent living languages, dead languages and future languages, on a brown two-tone tree trunk. The stylish curves flowing away from the tree represent the spread of knowledge gained from languages. The original flag will be displayed at the Museum and hopefully at other sites as well. “Although the flag belongs to the Museum now, it also belongs to the world,” says Gregory Nedved, the project coordinator.

The online Exhibits include a PowerPoint presentation of Arabic Calligraphy and Calligrams, an American Sign Language resource page, a Chinese calligraphy presentation, writing guide and quiz (including iPod downloads), a Cherokee Syllabary presentation, and other presentations including Ge’ez, Japanese, Esperanto, Latin, Vietnamese and the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights.

The Resources page offers web links to various language societies and history/anthropological societies, a link to the Allen Walker Read Library, Papers, Podcasts, Presentations and the National Language Museum Wiki.

The Kids page offers resources for kids to learn about languages as well as the possibility to learn languages including games and activities.

The Events page shows a schedule of speakers and events that will take place at the museum. Recent speeches include “Informal Language Learning for Families,” “Paper, Rock, Bone and Bronze–An Epigraphic Odyssey,” and “Persian Poetry and Calligraphy.”

The website is a plethora of language information that is useful to anyone of any age. The only thing the website is missing is translations to other languages. But judging by the welcome greeting in various languages, it looks like that that is soon to come.

Entrance to the museum is free (as is all its online content) and the museum relies mostly on membership donations.

In this second post about software quality, I am going to talk about the comments sent by Jefferson Costa, from QAI Brasil. After reading my first post, The Quest for Quality Software, he sent the following questions:

What is “Quality Software”?
What are the factors involved in this measurement?

In regards to the measurement factors that determine if a software program is of high quality, ISO created a standard the clearly defines how to measure the quality of software. The so-called ISO/IEC 9126 standard goes far beyond stating that quality software is software without bugs. It is divided into six categories, each of them with a corresponding, fundamental question. They are as follows:

Functionality: Does it meet the requirements?
Reliability: Is it fail proof?
Usability: Is it user friendly?
Efficiency: Is it fast and lean?
Maintainability: Is it easy to modify?
Portability: Is it easy to deploy in different environments?

Therefore, we can say that these are the factors that enable quality measurement.

While reading about this standard, we can have an idea of what is quality software: it is software that combines each and all categories mentioned above. But the quality of software is also directly linked to the quality of processes used during development. But that’s another conversation, as we would have to talk about the project life cycle, CMM, etc.

Who knows, maybe in the next post? =)