Language translation and training blog

The Italian Language

info@robertsonlanguages.co.uk (Business Podcast Services (Richie Gardiner)) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:41:13 +0000

Italian is an easy language to learn for everyday use, especially if you’ve learnt French. It is one of the Romance languages, which is a branch of the Indo-European language family, comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of ancient Rome. Italian is spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by [...]

Doing Business in Belgium

info@robertsonlanguages.co.uk (Business Podcast Services (Richie Gardiner)) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:39:16 +0000

The languages of Belgium are Flemish (a regional variation of Dutch), French and Walloon, an historical language of southern Belgium. Whether your partner speaks Flemish or French is of course important to him, so make sure you know which region you are in! Belgium is a founding member of the European Union, a member of NATO [...]

Free translations on-line

info@robertsonlanguages.co.uk (Business Podcast Services (Richie Gardiner)) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:36:05 +0000

We know that sometimes you just need to know a word or short phrase or understand the gist of an internal document. On such occasions please use our free Online Translation Tool.

Choosing a translation service provider

info@robertsonlanguages.co.uk (Business Podcast Services (Richie Gardiner)) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:31:59 +0000

When managing a project you may be tempted to leave the translation of documents to the last stage of the process. In a way this is logical because you obviously need to write the source document before you can have it translated. However the danger is that you do not leave enough time or pay [...]

What makes a successful relocation?

info@robertsonlanguages.co.uk (Business Podcast Services (Richie Gardiner)) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:51:39 +0000

Relocating an assignee from another country is a major undertaking. It makes sense therefore to support newly relocated employees with the right training and relocation advice to help them settle into their new personal and professional environment. A report undertaken for the relocation industry showed that the most common reason cited by assignees who withdrew [...]

Doing Business in Spain

info@robertsonlanguages.co.uk (Business Podcast Services (Richie Gardiner)) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:46:01 +0000

In several European nation states (eg Italy and Germany and to some extent France) that grew out of independent regions, one dialect now dominates and is viewed by outsiders at least as the national language. In the case of Spain this is Castilian from Castille in Northern Spain and, Spaniards often refer to their national [...]

Offensive Gestures From Our Latest Video

info@robertsonlanguages.co.uk (Business Podcast Services (Richie Gardiner)) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:57:00 +0000

For those of you who watched our latest video and were wondering where all the offensive gestures come from (and why they are offensive), here’s a brief list of some main offenders! The OK sign: When used in Europe or US this sign means that everything is OK or good. However, in Latin America it is seen [...]

European Day of Languages on 26 September

info@robertsonlanguages.co.uk (Business Podcast Services (Richie Gardiner)) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:20:02 +0000

Since 2001 the Council of Europe has been celebrating Europe’s linguistic diversity by running a special day each year on 26 September. About 50 languages are spoken in Europe and over 6,000 in the world. Despite the demands of a global economy where a few dozen of the biggest languages dominate, many hundreds of languages [...]

What do you call a man who attends funerals to get a free meal?

info@robertsonlanguages.co.uk (Business Podcast Services (Richie Gardiner)) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:29:08 +0000

There are many words and phrases in other languages which have no equivalent in English and you might not have imagined the need for one! On the other hand you could say English is a limited language. Why do we not, for example, have a word for a camel that won’t give milk until its [...]

Doing Business in Greece

info@robertsonlanguages.co.uk (Business Podcast Services (Richie Gardiner)) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:25:21 +0000

The earliest examples of written Greek found to date were on baked mud tablets in the remains of the Knossos palace of Crete. During the Classical or Hellenic period, Ancient Greece was divided in numerous states and each one had its own dialect. The two most important were the Ionic and the Attic. At this [...]