As we get ready to celebrate Valentine's Day and President's Day here in the United States, the Chinese will be celebrating Chinese New Year - their biggest holiday of the year.  Since each country observes their own unique customs and historical traditions, it's important to keep in mind these differences as you work with various countries around the world.

Here are two websites which list the holidays around the world:

• Earth Calendar - This is a very cool website.  You can click the "Today" button to see what holidays are being observed today around the world.  You can search by country, by religion and by date.  And, not only this year but other years in the past and future.
   
• List of Holidays by Country - In Wikipedia, you pick from a list of 100+ countries and it will list the observed holidays.  It's an easy way to take a quick look at what holidays a particular country observes.

This is another item our translators keep in mind when they are doing a language translation.  They need to not only translate the words correctly and make the translation easy to understand; but, they also need to know the culture where the document will be used.  This includes knowing about the holidays of each country and culture.  If your document talks about celebrating "Memorial Day" here in the United States, that isn't going to mean much in a Chinese translation targeted for China or a Spanish translation used in Mexico.

Just another thing which makes each country and culture uniquely special!