Summary. Adobe Reader 10 has some support for foreign languages. If you try to open a document that uses a font not already installed, you’ll be prompted to install the font pack required to view the fonts and characters for that language.

The Simplified Chinese font pack for Adobe Reader 10 is not easy to find through a Google search because so many similar packages are available.

The download page for the Simplified Chinese font pack is the quickest way to get the font pack installed.

Use the links above to get quick access to the Chinese Font pack for Adobe Reader X.

Installation Instructions. Follow the instructions below to install the Simplified Chinese font pack.

1. Go to the download page and click download. Be sure to make note of where you download the file if you choose to save it, or you can click Run to begin installing.
2. If you downloaded the font pack, double click on it to begin the installation and follow the instructions.

Summary. Those using the Sanako (Tandberg Educational) Lab 100 audio language learning lab system may notice an error message after closing the software while attempting to shut down the computer.

The error message indicates that the Lab 100 software is still in use long after it has been closed.

There is a MSU Replication process that takes a little while to initiate after shutting down the Lab 100 software. After a few minutes, you’ll likely see a message on your screen similar to the one shown below (click image to enlarge).

Wait about 5 minutes from the time you close Lab 100, and after the replication process has completed, before shutting down the computer. If you don’t, you’ll get a message when starting Lab 100 the next time that indicates it wasn’t shut down properly previously. This is because the replication process hadn’t completed.

Summary. For written languages that use mostly romanized letters, such as Spanish, it’s usually possible to type words directly into Google Translate and learn their meaning.

However, with Chinese characters, there is no equivalent on a typical computer keyboard to recreate a Chinese character that you are looking at.

If you know Chinese, you could phonetically type a word using the Chinese phonetic input keyboard setting and see if the desired Chinese characters are suggested for you. For example, typing nihao will suggest 你好, which means hello in Chinese.

However, only a billion people in the world know Chinese, and if you’re not among the one in six people who know Chinese, then you need to get more creative at deciphering the characters.

So, here’s a tip. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can write the characters by hand and then have your iPad suggest the proper Chinese characters for you. Once you have this, then you can paste those into Google Translate and discover the meaning.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Below are the steps required to make the magic happen.

Find Chinese Characters. First you’ll need some Chinese characters to work with. Perhaps there’s something you have in mind that you’ve already seen. The example below is a snapshot from a brief moment in a YouTube video where Raj Bhavsar is training with Cirque du Soleil. On his shirt are some Chinese characters.

Enable Chinese Writing Input. To begin, you’ll want to enable handwritten Chinese characters in your iOS device (iPad, iPod, or iPhone). The example photos given on this page were created using the iPhone. Other iOS devices will be similar, but on the iPhone, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards > Add New Keyboard > and select Chinese – Simplified Handwriting. In the screen shots below, you can see the various menus.

Switch Input System. Using the Notes program, on your iOS device, click on the globe icon (right of the 123 icon) to switch to the Chinese input system.

Begin Writing in Chinese. Using the example above of the shirt with Chinese writing on it, begin to freehand sketch the characters as best you can.

As you begin drawing, the input system interprets your writing and suggests possible characters on the right. However, in this example, we’re not done yet with just the first vertical line. The second line is important. Upon drawing that, the basis for a word is formed. So, we can select the symbol on the right that matches what we’ve drawn.

Immediately, the computer guesses at the second character. Notice that the top choice in this example is correct. We could have begun drawing, but since the top choice was correct, we can simply tap on that.

Copy. Now we have the symbols seen on the t-shirt of the gymnast in the video clip. We can select these characters and copy them for pasting into Google Translate.

Paste and Translate. Upon opening Google Translate, make sure the destination language selected is English or the language of your choice. Paste in the Chinese characters you’ve written, and the translation should appear.

Learn More. For fun, you can also separate out the different characters to learn their independent meanings. In the example below,  you can see that Bejing is made up of two words; north and capital. This is because Bejing is located in the north and it is the capital of China. Depending on the context, the word capital by itself could be understood to mean Bejing. Google Translate indicates this.

Summary. Perform a Google search on the word phone and the Hebrew word olam and the top result will be the login page for the AT&T website.

A few years ago I’d noticed the word olam showing up in the web address for the AT&T login page and thought it was interesting that they would have a Hebrew word in their address. The word olam means world as in Tikkun Olam.

I wasn’t sure what the Hebrew or Jewish connection might be. I subsequently learned that olam is claimed to be an acronym for OnLine Account Management.

Yesterday, when I received an email from AT&T with Hebrew letters in it, I felt compelled to investigate this a little further. Below is a clipping of the email I received yesterday. You’ll notice the Hebrew letters (which are also used in numbering) being used in a list of items. The only other reference I found to another occurrence of this anomaly was a single blog entry from 17 January 2010.

Like most of life’s great mysteries, this one remains unsolved.

However, one possibility is that AT&T uses an office in Israel to manage much of their business operations. If the program used to create the email was set to default in Hebrew, yet the person was writing it in English, the software may still default to the Hebrew numbers in the list.

In October 2010, it was announced that AT&T would be expanding their presence at innovation centers in Palo Alto, CA, Plano, TX, and Ra’anana, near Tel Aviv, Israel.

So, it’s a likely possibility that someone familiar with Hebrew was behind the Olam name of dual meaning as well as well as the occasional emails sent out with Hebrew letters.

As for the AT&T connection to Talmud and Torah mysteries, there doesn’t seem to be one.

Summary. Word Lens by Quest Visual is an iPhone application that shows you a live video feed of the world around you, yet with all words translated from English to Spanish, or Spanish to English.

Available Languages. Presumably other languages will be available in the near future. This allows travelers or readers to simply hold their phone up, like a lens, and read translated words.

Effectiveness. The program is in its infancy now, but presumably will become more sophisticated over time.

Cost. One would presume that technology like this would have sold 10 years ago to the Pentagon for a million dollars. Today you can purchase the paid version for about $5.

Video. Below is a video demonstrating the program in operation.

Photo by Banksy

Summary. Wartime language and military language have increasingly found their way into mainstream communications. This document provides a brief history of this.

Iraq War Influence. On 20 March 2003, the U.S. war in Iraq began. As non-stop news coverage of the war flooded the airwaves, the language of war slowly became adopted in common conversations. References to “our troops on the ground” morphed into common language as described below.

Media Influence. In an effort to appear tough as well as show unity with the military, reporters were embedded with soldiers. Increasingly, the public was accustom to seeing reporters dressed like soldiers. Even when covering other events, the military look and language became a signature style for some reporters, such as Anderson Cooper. News agencies began referring to their broadcast journalists as their people on the ground. Where else would they be?

Political Influence. It’s common for politicians to refer to campaigning as a “fight.” However, during the convergence of the Iraq war and the 2004 presidential campaigning, there was an increase in wartime language among politicians. In the winter of 2003, the 2004 U.S. presidential campaigns were building up. So, war language and political language merged. This was, in part, an effort on the part of the Democrats to show their ties with militarism and demonstrate that Democrats can be hawkish. In the same way a career veteran might inadvertently weave military language into their daily speech, politicians began weaving military language into their daily speech. Politicians would refer to their people on the ground, or their ground campaign. The absurdity of their usage of these phrases was clearly evidenced by a simple retrospective consideration of the meaning of the phrases. In wartime, there might be an air, sea, and/or land campaign. There might be members of the armed services fighting in the air, or at sea, or on land. In politics, there are not campaign workers on aircraft carriers. There is no air campaign. A political campaign is only on the ground.

Organization Influence. As the Iraq war dragged on, leading up to the 2004 presidential elections, T. Boone Pickens founded the PickensPlan.com website as an initiative to promote the use of natural gas in an effort to reduce wars over oil. Pickens frequently begins his video and written communications by referring to his followers as Troops.

Traditional Masculinity. Men who desire to demonstrate their manliness will often express affinity with militarism, hunting, monster truck rallies, tractor pulls, and/or Nascar. The 2004 presidential campaign resulted in claims that John Edwards and John Kerry were effeminate, and some reports suggested they were gay lovers. Edwards responded to the accusations challenging his manliness by publicly stating he was against gay marriage because of his religious and traditional upbringing. This little rhetorical tennis match continued, and in the process, it seemed to raise the watermark of homophobia in the United States causing numerous conservative radio talk show hosts to rise up in popularity like ships on the water. By 2005, when the film Brokeback Mountain was released, the homophobia was at its peak. This caused the language (and thinking) of militarism and machismo to become permanently engrained in the U.S. psyche. It should be noted that a person’s machismo or femininity have little to do with homosexuality. Despite this, these characteristics are mistakenly used by some people as the basis for what they call their gay-dar (like radar).

Conclusion. The above factors of media influence, political influence, organizational influence, and social sentiments, have resulted in the language of militarism to become (seemingly) a permanent part of the English language.

1930 Studebaker

When Microsoft announced the release of Windows 95, with a promise of a stable, secure, easy to use, plug-and-play operating system, it seemed that the computing support industry was on its way out.

Now, over a decade later, and after numerous revisions of Windows, it’s clear that the demand for computer support has increased more than ever before as Windows has become more complicated and susceptible to viruses and other problems. Computer support never became obsolete, only those who thought it would became obsolete.

An article on Obsolete Learning Technologies featured on 29 December 2009 by Inside Higher Ed listed Language and Computer Labs among the top 8 obsolete learning technologies.

Language labs are basically gone – computer labs are not far behind. With almost all students coming to campus with their own laptop it makes little sense for colleges spend precious resources on a roomful of desktop machines. I’m wondering if thin clients are even necessary – wouldn’t it be more cost effective to have a few loaner laptops available for students when their own computers break down? Could money saved on computer labs, maintenance, upgrades, staffing etc. be re-directed to learning technologies?

How delightfully naive to imagine an academic world with all students coming to campus with their own laptop. For schools looking at ways to save money, this would seem like an obvious one: remove all of the computers and have students bring their own. Problem solved, right? Well, not exactly. Here are a few reasons why students’ personal notebooks will not likely replace language or computer labs:

1. Cost of Ownership. The state of Maine has a goal for all seventh graders in the state to have a notebook computer (source), but even that limited goal has some challenges. Maine chose Apple computers which have a much lower cost of ownership. Yet, most educational organizations and institutions aren’t savvy enough to buy what cost less to own, they will likely buy what costs less to purchase. There’s a huge difference.
2. Support Costs. The real problem is that technology needs to be supported regardless of who owns it. When institutions adopt standardization of hardware manufacturer, operating system, and applications, the hardware and software support diminishes considerably. Parts are interchangeable and systems all have the same user guide. A “fleet” of college owned computers can all be managed automatically to have the latest software, updates, and virus protection. This wouldn’t be possible with students bringing their own array of computers to school. Supporting a wide variety of brands, operating systems, and programs would increase the expertise and number of support staff needed.
3. Software. Beyond these basic aspects of support, there’s the question of compatibility and system requirements for academic software to function properly. Would all of the students have computers that meet the needs of all software? Who would install that software on hundreds or thousands of computers? Perhaps the institution could purchase and configure standardized computers and give them to students. Maybe build-in remote management could allow for automatic updates to be installed.
4. Theft. Desktop computers in a lab can be locked down and monitored. Notebook computers are easily stolen.
5. Damage. Notebook computers are usually built with plastic parts and tend to be more susceptible to damage than desktop computers. In addition to poor quality materials, they are knocked around more than desktops. This is a bad combination. Increased usage will mean a greater chance of damage.
6. Isolationism. There is still a need for students to all be together in a classroom for one-on-one interactions. Online courseware and collaborative software helps people interact using their computers, but it lacks the dynamics of a real group of people in a room.
7. Motivation. Ask anyone who has tried independent learning. While it works for some, most people find that group education in a classroom is more effective.

Conclusion. Thinking that Language and Computer Labs are obsolete should be among the top 8 obsolete ideas about technology right up there with the idea that Windows computers will not need any technical support.

Summary. On 2 October 2009, the Pusack-Otto Lecture Series at the University of Iowa hosted an event with Richard Schmidt of the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa speaking on linguistics. The event took place at the historic Old Capitol of Iowa.

In this presentation, Schmidt examines how the cognitive paradigm of language learning compares to the sociocultural paradigm of language learning.

Schmidt covers the major points of difference between these two views, while at the same time offering insights into how these two views are interrelated. The presentation slides are available for download as a PowerPoint.

Video. Below is a video of the presentation. Due to a technical problem at the time of recording, only the audio is available for the introductory message.

Alternate Viewing Locations. The above video is also available directly at Blip.tv and Vimeo, although we encourage people to link to this page as the permalink for this event information and video since these other locations contain links to irrelevant videos.