FEATURED NEWS
October 25, 2019 | JNCL Newsroom
On September 17th, the Michigan House of Representatives was forced to consider a new, peculiar definition of what a “language” is . Greg VanWoerkem (R-MI-91) is the sponsor of Michigan House Bill 4974, which redefines a language to include computer coding for high school students fulfilling the state's language requirement.

The new bill amends an existing 1976 code to include “computer coding” under the definition of “language other than English," thus allowing a class in a computer language such as Python, C++, or Java to fulfill
the state's high school foreign language requirement.

October 31, 2019 | Forbes
The House Education and Labor Committee passed a bill to revamp American higher education—the College Affordability Act. After three days of markup with over 40 proposed amendments to the bill, it passed out of committee on partisan lines—28 to 22. The bill was originally introduced two weeks ago at a press conference with Speaker Pelosi and Rep. Bobby Scott, the chairman of the committee, along with other members.

The College Affordability Act, as introduced originally, included several provisions to improve higher education affordability, as well as some changes to improve accountability. The College Affordability Act will also help fill the demand for skilled workers through investments in areas like language, culture, and regional education .

October 28, 2019 | Slator
Two language service providers have recently been to court to fight for work with government agencies. On October 18, 2019, the US Court of Federal Claims rejected a protest from Metropolitan Interpreters and Translators (also known as MetLang).

North Carolina-based security firm TigerSwan’s legal battle has a much longer history. Back in December 2007, Global Linguist Solutions (GLS) was awarded a USD 4.6bn contract to provide interpretation and translation services for the Army and other agencies in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The FCA suit stated that GLS allegedly mistreated linguists. Twenty-nine linguists have claimed that they were “effectively controlled by Global Linguist Solutions, which lied to the government about a purported ‘leasing’ arrangement with the subcontractors,” Law360 reported.

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ï»ż Ezra Wyschogrod
Wyschogrod’s dedication for world language learning began early, teaching himself a language not offered at his high school—German. He completed an honors thesis examining world language offerings in public high schools nationwide, particularly whether the language(s) offered corresponded to the heritage language of that school district’s largest census-defined heritage group.Prior to his internship acceptance, Wyschogrod was part of two research teams documenting threatened languages: Zazaki (Turkey) and Guebie (Cîte d’Ivoire).


ï»ż
Morgan Carmody
Carmody brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from the corporate language services sphere, with over five years’ experience with translation agencies of varying sizes and clientele. Within the corporate translation sector, Carmody has experience as a freelancer translator & interpreter, a client services representative, a project manager, and in business development.

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Disclaimer: The articles and news sources included in NewsBrief are not endorsed by, directly affiliated with, maintained, authorized, or sponsored by JNCL-NCLIS. The views and opinions expressed in the articles in this NewsBrief are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company .