Impact of Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations on translation needs

Recent US and European Union rulings call for more multilingualism.
U.S. legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 requires companies to monitor and audit their financial processes spanning their international business units. As corporate directors assume greater liability and responsibility, the need for accurate and understandable information that covers both financial and accounting reports and corporate risks will lead to an increase of translation projects. This is especially true for US companies with international business units where native languages are not English.

Similarly, there are already rulings that guide the sales of manufacturing goods, machinery, medical and consumer devices in the countries of the European Union. With the recent enlargement of the EU, additional translation and localization of product specifications, user manuals, health and safety labels will be needed. As of May 1, 2004, the EU added ten new countries that represent nine new official languages. The enlargement means that the new languages will be treated the same way as the existing official languages of the EU. The nine new official languages are: Czech, Estonian, Greek, Turkish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Maltese, Polish, Slovene and Slovak. If you want to penetrate these new EU markets, your literature and electronic content need to be translated into the language of your potential customers.

Back in the US, government agencies are required to serve the needs of people with Limited English proficiency (LEP). In light of the growing LEP population in many states, this represents a major undertaking. According to the US Census Bureau, 12% of US residents in 2002 were born outside of the country. Among residents of at least five years old, 18% spoke a language other than English at home. 60% of them speak Spanish which has become the second language of the US and the rest speak a variety of other languages. Some federal agencies consider proficiency in English to be protected by equal protection statutes at the same level as race. As such, providing translation and interpretation services for citizens with LEP is a mandate. Thus, information technology vendors that sell to the government have to provide access for such individuals and agencies that create custom applications or content should also provide multilingual content.

The regulations mentioned in this article show that translation has moved from being a "nice-to-have" to a "must-have".

Sources for this article include the Common Sense Advisory report "Translation is the Law", (www.commonsenseadvisory.com).

Latest research report says "Bilingualism helps with Aging"

According to a report published in the "Psychology and Aging" Journal from the American Psychological Association, "it appears … that controlled processing is carried out more effectively by bilinguals and that bilingualism helps to offset age–related losses in certain executive processes".

So learning to speak a second language will not just help you communicate with others around the world. It can also protect your brain against the ravages of age! When bilingual people age, their brains decline much slower than those who are fluent only in their mother tongue. Bilingual seniors have faster reaction times than those who speak only one language and are less easily distracted while completing mental agility tasks.

The study found multilingualism significantly improves cognitive performance at an older age. Further experiments are planned to investigate whether learning a language to a non-bilingual level of competency still protects against age-related cognitive decline.

Source: "Bilingualism, Aging, and Cognitive Control: Evidence From the Simon Task," Psychology and Aging, 2004, Vol. 19, No. 2, 290–303.