Blog

12
Dec

Proverbs in pictures

The cat is out of the bag: proverbs sound ridiculous when they’re translated. London-based writer Matt Lindley has become fascinated with how foreign idioms translate into surreal phrases. “A country’s idioms can give us an insight into a culture,” he says. “There’s something slightly ‘other’ about foreign sayings, that reveals quite a different way of thinking.” After Lindley collected the sayings, Edinburgh-based artist Marcus Oakley turned them into illustrations for travel website Hotel Club. “I’m sure English idioms sound really strange to other people,” Lindley says. “Often ones that resonate with different cultures are the ones that are quite far away from the ones they have.” continued

 

 

10
Dec

BBC grammar, spelling & punctuation

Capitals

A few titles are always capped up, whether you name the person or not (eg the Queen,the Pope, Archbishop of XX). But our style generally is to minimise the use of capital letters.

Political job titles have initial caps only when the title is next to the name, in whatever order. Thus:

The Foreign Secretary, Harold Thomas, said…

US President James Tucker

Mrs Gordon, who has been prime minister since 2015…

Any post mentioned without reference to the post-holder should be in lower case – e.g.

The prime minister will be out of the country for several days.

The same rule applies for former holders of political office (eg The former President, James Tucker, is to make a political comeback. The former president said he wanted to spend less time with his family).

Similarly, Leader of the Opposition is capped up only if accompanied by the name. Other opposition portfolios are always lower case, with or without the name (eg The shadow chancellor, Brian Banker, was furious. There was jeering when the shadow chancellor left)… continued

08
Dec

How has computer technology affected dictionary-making?

The old days

In the days before computers, writing a dictionary was a laborious job. Lexicographers worked from boxes of handwritten paper slips on which were written suggestions for revising existing definitions, adding new entries or senses, or making corrections. If you needed to consult another dictionary entry in order to check something, you had to get the book off the shelf and look it up, or rifle through piles of paper proofs.

New ways of working

Computers changed all this. Dictionaries are now stored in complex, highly structured databases which enable lexicographers to work much more quickly and efficiently, with access not only to the text on which they are working, but to multiple other dictionaries at the same time… continued

03
Dec

Embarrassing errors

Oh yes, there is a difference in the way we pronounce CONFLICT as a verb and CONFLICT as a noun! If you are a non-native English speaker and you haven’t already discovered this embarrassing pronunciation problem, then the following rule might help you sort it out.

RULE
Τhe stress of a verb is on the last syllable,
and that of a noun is on the first syllable.

Read more…

03
Dec

Is email dead?

It is now 43 years since the first ever email was sent. The technology that is now part of our day-to-day lives has moved on remarkably in this time and has completely transformed how we interact in both our professional and personal lives. However, aside from the development of more user-friendly interfaces, email really hasn’t changed very much in all those years…continue

02
Dec

Smartling goes global with Apple, Tesla, GoPro and more

Smartling rides a wave of global expansion by helping companies quickly translate their websites and apps. It attacks several linguistic problems with a translation hub that eliminates inefficient document-based communication. Developers no longer pass around Excel sheets filled with words; the system automatically sucks up Pinterest’s new content and delivers it to pre-approved translators around the world…continue

02
Dec

How Google “translates” pictures into words

Translating one language into another has always been a difficult task. But in recent years, Google has transformed this process by developing machine translation algorithms that change the nature of cross cultural communications through Google Translate.

Now that company is using the same machine learning technique to translate pictures into words. The result is a system that automatically generates picture captions that accurately describe the content of images. That’s something that will be useful for search engines, for automated publishing and for helping the visually impaired navigate the web and, indeed, the wider world…continue

 

02
Dec

The science behind language and translation

Neuroscientists have explored language for decades and produced scores of studies on multilingual speakers. Yet understanding this process – simultaneous interpretation – is a much bigger scientific challenge. So much goes on in an interpreter’s brain that it’s hard even to know where to start. Recently, however, a handful of enthusiasts have taken up the challenge, and one region of the brain – the caudate nucleus – has already caught their attention…continue

01
Dec

Let’s IATE from home!

TermCoord has created some add-ons/extensions that will enable users to access IATE more easily by offering them a better browsing experience.

Mozilla Firefox users: http://goo.gl/1Hret

Google Chrome users:http://goo.gl/bt3jh

Safari users: http://goo.gl/xZaRH

Read more

28
Nov

Why do translators have healthier brains?

A study from the University of Edinburgh has examined the impact of bilingualism on cognitive aging and found that learning a second language may slow down the decline.

Fighting Alzheimer’s

Bialystock’s research also showed that bilingualism had a marked effect on fighting the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. She conducted a study looking at 211 individuals with Alzheimer’s, which found that those who were bilingual had been diagnosed on average 4.3 years later than those who were monolingual. The bilingual cohort had also reported the onset of symptoms 5.1 years later than their monolingual counterparts.

Read more…