International hot and spicy food day is for all the daring taste buds that love to feel the fire. We wanted to take a look at what’s behind the spice and take a look at some interesting facts and figures about hot and spicy food.

Today, January 16th, is International Hot & Spicy Food Day!

Five Food Facts About Spicy Food:

• People who are really into eating spicy food are considered pyro-gourmaniacs

• Christopher Columbus discovered chili peppers when he  ‘discovered’  the Americas in 1493.

• People have been using hot and spicy seasonings in their food for more than 6,000 years according to archaeologists.

• The best way to ease the burning sensation of flaming hot peppers or overly-spicy mustard of horseradish is with cold milk or yogurt.  Chilies contain a substance called capsaicin that makes taste buds sting. When capsaicin touches the taste buds, our heat-detecting neural sensors send a message straight to the brain: “fire!” Milk, however, contains casein, a fat-loving compound that binds with spicy capsaicin oil and then washes it away. Avoid water as it won’t mix with the oil and will only result in moving the heat to other parts of your mouth.
• Capsaicin, the chemical in peppers that makes them hot,  isn’t found in any other plant and is potent enough that people can identify it even when the concentration is as little as one part per million.

Hey! Did you know?

The Scoville scale is the measurement of the pungency (spicy heat) of chili peppers or other spicy foods as reported in Scoville heat units (SHU),^[1] a function of capsaicin concentration. The scale is named after its creator, American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville. His method, devised in 1912, is known as the Scoville Organoleptic Test.

Unlike methods based on high-performance liquid chromatography, the Scoville scale is an empirical measurement dependent on the capsaicin sensitivity of testers and so is not a precise or accurate method to measure capsaicinoid concentration.

We think hot and spicy food is the way to go! So many of our translators and interpreters living across the globe enjoy hot and spicy foods with all of their meals — maybe that helps their linguistic skills?? Get in touch with us for your multilingual needs so we can match up a linguist for your international project.

Source: http://foodimentary.com/2014/01/16/january-16-is-national-hot-and-spicy-food-day/

Can you guess where Mabel is this week? 

She is in Alaska, looking at the northern lights. 

Vibrant blues, pinks, greens and yellows sway in the sky, marking the path of the dancing aurora borealis. The shimmering opus can be seen swirling in Anchorage‘s starlit skies as early as 8 p.m. during winter months. Also known as the northern lights, they can be incredibly bright, multihued and fast moving.

A little bit about Alaska: 

Vitus Bering, a Dane working for the Russians, and Alexi Chirikov discovered the Alaskan mainland and the Aleutian Islands in 1741. The tremendous land mass of Alaska- equal to one-fifth of the continental U.S.- was unexplored in 1867 when Secretary of State William Seward arranged for its purchase from the Russians for $7,200,000. The transfer of territory took place on October 18, 1867. Despite a price of about two cents an acre, the purchase was widely ridiculed as “Seward’s Folly”.

Alaska’s name originated from the Aleut word “alyeska”, meaning “great land”. Alaska is the largest of the 50 states. It is more than twice the size of Texas, the next largest state.

Situated at the northwest corner of the North American continent, Alaska is separated from the coterminous 48 states by Canadian territory. Life zones in Alaska range from grasslands, mountains, and tundra to thick forests. The annual daily mean temperature in Juneau (Alaska’s capital) is 41.5 degrees F.

Diverse and abundant wildlife are central to Alaska’s economy and people. Over 1,000 vertebrate species are found in the state, sometimes in huge numbers. More than 900,000 caribou roam in 32 herds across vast tundra landscapes. On the Copper River Delta alone, five to eight million shorebirds stop to forage and rest each spring on their way to arctic breeding grounds. Alaska has 32 species of carnivores, more than any other state.

 All of the languages but two found in Alaska today are related to two major language families. These two families are Eskimo-Aleut and Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit. The exceptions are Haida and Tsimshian. These are both languages of Native groups who lived in the Pacific Northwest.

The table below gives statistics from the 2000 census for language spoken at home for persons 5 years and over.

Tune in next week to see where Mabel is headed next! 

Original image found on google. 

There have been catchphrases and unique words that can define a generation. Like Joey from Blossom and his famous word “Whoa!” or “Whassup?” from the Budweiser commercial. A lot can be controlled in the market place by these catch phrases. However, before we can talk about SEO or international search engine optimization, it is important to know what SEO is all about.

Having a web page is the first step, but the next big step is to get an audience for your website. Word of mouth advertisement of your website is a good method but it can be a long and tedious process. So a new method was discovered in which your website can come up in a search engine with the help of some key words. The idea is that when a keyword is typed by a user into a search engine and that key word is in your website, your website appears in the search result, thus giving your website a larger audience. Essentially this is SEO, or search engine optimization.

What is international SEO?

International SEO is no different from SEO except for one aspect: language. International SEO may or may not require professional translation of a web page. A major factor in this decision will depend upon the target audience and their location. If the target audience is Russia, for example, the content will need to be localized into Russian and additional technical changes will need to be made, such as local registration of domain name, etc. Plus, optimizing for Google won’t get you very far since the major search engine in Russia is Yadex. Yadex has a whole set of different rules and requirements than Google; working with an international SEO expert is going to set you up for global success and make sure you are in front of the audience you are targeting.

In simple English terms, international SEO is a method of increasing the visibility of your website in the search results — but for an international target market.

What are the benefits of International SEO?

The benefits of International Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are huge. Your potential coverage area increases dramatically and your ability to reach your target market is increased. More people visit your website and not only do you get more exposure for your business, your chances of success increase. How fast will you see results? This can depend upon many factors, but the opportunity of success is there for sure.

International Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential marketing tool for companies large and small that are looking to increase sales and awareness in an increasingly global marketplace.

Interested in learning more about INGCO International’s international search engine optimization, translation or interpretation services? Get in touch now!

“What’s in a name?” We have heard this saying many times. One can pretend about not being serious about a name but we do get frustrated when our name is not pronounced correctly (maybe unintentionally) and immediately try to correct it.

So, if a mere pronunciation can irritate us then how problematic can a different meaning of a name be? One assumes that it would be a major problem and more so if it were a celebrity child because the whole world knows about it. The fact is that human beings are inquisitive by nature. If we come across a person who has a different name then the first thing we ask him or her is “What is the meaning of your name”? This question alone proves that it does matter “what is in a name”.

Suri Cruise is a celebrity daughter and whether she likes it or not and wants it or not everything about her will be a headline. In the era of 24/7 entertainment and news channels, the paparazzi need something new to keep their viewers interested. And if they are able to find something as sensational as a different meanings of a celebrity daughter’s name then nothing better than that. They will try to extract as much as they can from this point and try to increase their ratings.

Yes, the same word can have different meanings in different languages. Some might be funny and some might even be derogatory. A good example is the English word “Madam”. In British English Madam is used as a sign of respect for women. But the same word can have a different meaning all together in American English. Does that mean the word is wrong? The word is neither wrong nor right. Just the context in which it is used is right or wrong. In the same way Suri means “princess” in Hebrew and “pickpocket” in Japanese.

When translating or interpreting it is important to recognize the context in which a word is being used and who the audience is.  Here at INGCO International we pride ourselves on understanding the message that our clients are trying to convey.   We care about your success and we know what you mean.

INGCO International, Inc. is a translation, interpretation and global marketing firm located in the heart of the United States, in the lovely state of Minnesota. A lot of locals like to call it “MinneSNOWta” due to the massive amounts of snow we typically have in the winter months. And this is precisely why I got to thinking about this blog and The Phenomenon of Ice Chipping: Lessons for Translators.

If I were a translator living in, say, Brazil, and I happened to be walking through my neighborhood on any given March afternoon, say like today, I would be shocked and dismayed to see what in the world goes on here in Minnesota. I call it The Phenomenon of Ice Chipping. Yes, ice chipping. Not the kind of ice chipping that fancy bartenders do when preparing custom concocted cocktails. Not the kind of ice chipping that caterers prepare for fancy weddings to create punch fountains. No folks, the kind of ice chipping I’m referring to is the kind where we crazy Minnesotans head outside once the weather hits about 30°F to start chipping away at ice; ice that accumulates after a long hard winter and forms small but mighty ice skating rinks on sidewalks, streets, boulevards, paths, parking lots, alleys –heck, just about anywhere where people are expected to walk without killing themselves by slipping and falling on the, you guessed it! Ice.

Well we love to talk about ice chipping here in Minnesota. And we discuss ice-chipping techniques as if our life depended on it. And we discuss ice-chipping paraphernalia, and compare and contrast the variety of chippers, which what one could potentially confuse as a weapon. And we discuss remedies that hypothetically can avoid the entire presence of the ice formation in the first place. Alas, none of those remedies work so we are humbled to fall back on the tried and true art of ice chipping. And we chip away until our backs and shoulders are so sore we cannot chip anymore. But we chip so that we do not fall and break a hip, and we chip because we can, and we chip because we must.

This blog is dedicated to all of our amazing translators that live in warm and exotic destinations across the globe that will never have the need to chip ice, ever.