Chinese efforts to provide signage in English as the 2008 Olympic Games approach inspired Wired Magazine writer Michael Erard to speculate about the future of English as a global language.

The expected “Chinglish” translation boners are cited, but the author also looks at some of the ways English is being changed in different ways in different parts of the globe, similarly to the way Latin and Arabic splintered into a number of locally-influenced dialects.

Thanks to globalization, the Allied victories in World War II, and American leadership in science and technology, English has become so successful across the world that it’s escaping the boundaries of what we think it should be. In part, this is because there are fewer of us: By 2020, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language. Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca.

English is “mingling with so many more local languages than Latin ever did, that it’s on a path toward a global tongue—what’s coming to be known as Panglish.”

Evidently "translations" has become a sexy marketing term. Or does The Container Store mean that translations belong in the trash?

As seen on their website, this $25 wastebasket is "a très chic, environmentally friendly addition to your home. It’s made with authentic Japanese newspapers and magazines that have been beautifully ‘re-purposed.’ Each is a unique work of art."

The store’s marketing department may be a little confused in using the term, since the text on the trashcan is almost entirely Japanese (you can see a few English words if you look closely). Perhaps someone will provide a few translations for us.

At least they don’t call it an interpreting wastebasket.

Thanks to Marian Schwartz for spotting this.

You are invited to a bilingual reading by novelist Cristina García (author of Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, and other books and anthologies) and her translator, Liliana Valenzuela. They will read from García’s latest novel A Handbook to Luck (Knopf, 2007), which Valenzuela translated into Spanish as Las Caras de la Suerte (Vintage Español, 2008). García will also read from her new children’s book The Dog Who Loved the Moon. 

7 p.m. Friday, May 2, 2008 at BookPeople (6^th St. & Lamar)