A branch of Tesco in Wales has been accused of “promising more than it can deliver” after a mistake in the Welsh translation of “free cash withdrawals” meant it ended up offering a “free erection”.
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/lntkru4
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27
Oct
Oct
For N. Dharmarajan, translation is more than transfer of content from a source language to a target language. It is transportation of the beauty of the original in the target language. It is an endeavour to make the reader experience the fulfilment and pleasure gained by reading the original.
Prof. Dharmarajan has accomplished this through translation of 120 books and 50 short stories over a span of 56 years..
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/k4dvxpt
27
Oct
Oct
In 1980, Ramirez was taken to a South Florida hospital in a coma, says Helen Eby, a certified medical interpreter in Oregon. “His family apparently used the word ‘intoxicado’ to talk about this person.”. “Well, ‘intoxicado’ in Spanish just means that you ingested something. It could be food; it could be a drug; it could be anything that has made you sick.” The family thought something Ramirez had eaten might have caused his symptoms. But the interpreter translated their Spanish as “intoxicated.”
26
Oct
Oct
Researchers at the University of Amsterdam are using neural networks to help statistical machine translation systems learn what all human translators know—that the best translation of a word often depends on the context.
The neural network is able to derive grammatical functions of words without having explicit knowledge of the grammar, said Ke Tran, one of the researchers. This means that to learn word functions the method does not depend on examples hand-picked by the researchers, which can be a difficult and costly process, especially for languages with few speakers.
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/oejeyyh
23
Oct
Oct
An experiment being conducted by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
23
Oct
Oct
Think about what a semicolon allows in writing. 
It is used to continue a thought that could have ultimately been stopped earlier in the sentence.
How do you apply this to your life?
Semicolon represents having the opportunity to stop but making the choice to move forward. It means one could stop and stay in a place forever, or they could move on to a new adventure — even one that may be better than the last.
Link to full article: http://tinyurl.com/n9llben
22
Oct
Oct
Maybe you broke your finger or you suffer from a repetitive strain injury that makes typing impossible. Or perhaps you simply want to get work done while running on a treadmill.
But just because you can’t type doesn’t mean you can’t create documents. All you need is a microphone for your PC and Microsoft Word to take the stress off your hands and start using your voice.
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/nlwuasa
22
Oct
Oct
Take a fun break with this fiendish spelling challenge from the Oxford Dictionaries.
Read more: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/spelling-challenge/
22
Oct
Oct
Pig Latin is a constructed language game in which words in English are altered according to a simple set of rules. Pig Latin takes the first consonant (or consonant cluster) of an English word, moves it to the end of the word and suffixes an ay (IPA [eɪ]). For example, pig yields igpay, banana yields ananabay, and trash yields ashtray or rashtay (dependent on location/preferences).
The objective is to conceal the meaning of the words from others not familiar with the rules. The reference to Latin is a deliberatemisnomer, as it is simply a form of jargon, used only for its English connotations as a strange and foreign-sounding language.
More info: How to speak Pig Latin
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