Habla Blog

By Barbara Benjamin-Treviño
Día de los Muertos (DEE-ah day lows moo-WARE-tows)

Day of the Dead may be one of the best examples of a cross-cultural difference between Hispanic and Anglo cultures. While death is a topic often avoided here, honoring the memory of deceased relatives takes on a celebratory air during […]

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By Martha Galindo�
Our Value Proposition�
One of the most time-tested axioms of sales is to sell the solution, not the service.  In our business of providing translation the advice reminds us that it is not what we do or how we do it that interests our clients but rather the solutions or end results our service […]

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By Martha Galindo
 
There was little real analysis given to how the culture itself would change as a result of these actions. Nor did corporations see clearly how this was only the starting gun in a transformation of American business life. There was an aura of benign paternalism about the effort. How narrow such a vision […]

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Editor’s Note: Due to Hurricane Ike, posting will be a little light. We will resume daily posts on Sept. 23rd.

Why is the high school drop-out rate so high?
Remember vaccinations? When you were young you probably were vaccinated against polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough, and other pesky illnesses that can have long-term, adverse effects. […]

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By Martha Galindo

Driving home sometime ago, I was listening to a Spanish radio station that played one of the funniest and most effective commercials I’ve ever heard. The characters were exchanging comical descriptions of how bad their credit was:
“My credit is so bad that my ATM card requires a safety deposit,” “My credit is […]

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By Mary Bartlett, Arise Virtual Solutions�
The need for bilingual workers is at its highest level ever in the U.S.  In fact, a recent survey of 2,417 U.S. hiring managers and human resource professionals conducted by Spanish-language job search site empleosCB.com revealed that Spanish-speaking job candidates will be in especially high demand by employers within the […]

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By Barbara Benjamin-Treviño
With the 2010 Census well into the planning stages, concerns about what terminology to use are again rising to the fore. If you are unsure about whether to use “Hispanic,” “Latino/a,” “Mexican-American,” “Chicano,” or something else, you’re not alone. Categories, labels, words, and meanings all shift with history, politics, governing agencies, generations and […]

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By Deborah Brody
A while back a nonprofit organization for which I consult asked me to review a 24-page booklet they had translated to Spanish using translation software. Let’s just say it was a money-maker for me since I had to spend many hours fixing the translation.�
Why was the translation so bad?  Because computers don’t […]

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This blog continues to address the need for more bilingual speakers, and the benefits of becoming bilingual.  I am constantly surprised by the number of non-bilingual people living in places with a large Hispanic populations.
An article in the California Job Journal stresses the importance of becoming bilingual.  (Hint- you make more money!)
Julia Hollister, the reporter […]

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Remittances, or the money that immigrants send back to other countries, have declined for the first time this year. According to the Washington Post, “in January, the cash transfers, known as remittances, sagged almost 7 percent compared with a year earlier, the steepest monthly dip in at least 13 years, according to Mexican government […]

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