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People keep sending me this BBC story, "Last speaker of ancient language of Bo dies in India," so I guess I'd better post it. I've posted enough dead-and-dying-language stories I was going to let this one go, but the fact that you can actually listen to a clip of...
Richard Ishida, of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), has created what he calls "small web-page utilities" to aid in language use online: a Unicode database viewer ("Look up characters, character blocks, paste in and discover unknown characters, store your own info about characters, search on character names, do hex/dec/ncr...
I'm still reading the Gorky translation discussed here and here (I'm now on the second volume, V lyudyakh [Among people, tr. as In the World]), and in Chapter 8 there's a nice anecdote about how the young narrator, forced to read dull books to the captain of the Volga steamer...
I'm afraid this doesn't even have any Estonian in it, so it's kind of hard to justify its presence here, except that I figure we can all use a laugh; as Robert Mackey says in his NY Times "Lede" post, which embeds it, "this note-perfect Estonian television ad for an...
One of my heroes, Howard Zinn, died recently, and this moving reminiscence by Alice Walker gives me a hook to post about him here:Coming back to Spelman, I discovered Howard Zinn was teaching a course on Russian History and Literature and a little of the language. I signed up for...
Anatoly sent me to this post from Shkrobius, and the story told there was striking enough I thought I'd translate it here:Once my mother and I were riding in an overcrowded train. It was Victory Day. The man sitting opposite us looked like a peasant and was crying bitterly, washing...
The English Blog
Charlie Brooker's spoof news report for BBC Four's Newswipe hilariously deconstructs the formula of how a standard TV news piece is put together. COMMENT Brilliant. Those Sky News clips will never seem quite the same again!...
The Big Picture: Colorful India
January 26th, 2010 marked the 60th anniversary of India's adoption of the Constitution of India, and the 80th anniversary of its original 1930 Declaration of Independence from British rule. The annual holiday is celebrated as Republic Day, with a grand......
Council hires 'core skills trainer' to beat jargon
From The Daily Telegraph: Leeds City Council is using a “core skills trainer” to teach staff to simplify their language as part of a plain English campaign after its switchboard was flooded with members of the public confused by official......
Here's a slide presentation about the Apple iPad I created for a lesson with my students which you might find useful. Apple iPad View more presentations from jeffreyhill....
Video: More Trouble For Toyota Over Prius
Things go from bad to worse for Toyota with doubts being raised about its flagship hybrid car, the Prius, after a mass recall in the US of the company's other vehicles following a safety investigation. Sky's Holly Williams reports....
The Telegraph spells out the public anger surrounding the MPs' expenses scandal with the headline 'This Rotten Parliament', explaining that half of politicians have been asked to repay money. Full story >> VOCABULARY If you describe something as rotten, you......
There's Something About Translation...
Introduction to OmegaT and BiText2TMX: free and open-source translation tools
Two quick screencasts with my take on OmegaT, a translation environment, and BiText2TMX, an alignment tool. Both are cross-platform, multilingual, free and open source. OmegaT (4 mins 57 sec) Note: a newer, slicker-looking version has been released since this screencast was made. This new version automates some of the steps I cover...
Getting paid across borders: multi-currency banking for freelance translators
When it comes to accepting payments from overseas, I’ve learned the hard way that there is no single answer as to what works best. It all depends on a range of factors, such as: the country in which you live the country or countries in which you hold bank accounts the facilities available...
I don’t normally like to use my blog as a platform to criticise others. But today I’m making an exception. [edit 30 October 2009: Scroll to the end for an update] There are many reasons why I have a blog, and gaining a good, strong Google ranking is just one of them....
5 Qs with Amy Williams, French and Italian to English translator
Amy Williams is a freelance translator working from French and Italian into English, and a director of Eggplant Translations. She specialises in marketing and advertising, and the arts, media and music in particular. In the early stages of my freelance career, Amy was kind enough to give me some great...
Building a Strong Online Presence
Hello to translators and interpreters surfing by following my recent Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) webinar. I intend to blog about this in more detail later this week, but until then, here are some resources you might find useful: A series of short videos introducing Twitter. Some 5 minute videos on how...
5Qs with Andrew Bell, AAA Scandinavian Translations
After working as a nurse in several countries, Andrew Bell set up AAA Scandinavian Translations in 2001 and now specialises in medical/pharmaceutical translation services. He also runs the popular translator-networking site Watercooler. Here Andrew tells us about how he became a translator, and offers a wealth of advice for new...
Polish Blog
In Search of the Right Ending…
Today I would like to introduce to you our brand new guest blogger - Adam Blomberg. He will be helping me out with the Polish Blog this month, because I think that after all this time of mostly Anna, you all must be hungry for something exciting and fun. And...
Verb “to like” and its Polish Equivalents
In our last post we talked quite a bit about liking (or not) something (or someone). And I have finally realized (hey, better late than never!) that maybe this verb - “to like” - is not as clear and straightforward in Polish, as it is in English. In English it’s used...
Verbs Expressing Feelings and the Nouns that Follow Them
So, what were we talking about last time? Ah yes, verbs that express emotions. You know, stuff like love (kochać), hate (nienawidzieć), like (lubić), dislike (nie lubić), etc. In English, it’s simple, whether you like or don’t like someone (or something), the noun that follows the verb expressing your feeling doesn’t...
On Disliking Winter - Verbs Expressing Emotions
So, in the last post, our guest blogger - Ms. Anglopole was telling us just how lovely and picturesque polskie zimy (Polish winters) can be. Now, I don’t know about lovely, but they sure are picturesque. Even if you’re not a fan of cold weather (like me), you have to admit...
Guest Post - Evil Winter! (”Zima Zła”)
Today we have a new guest post by a new guest blogger - Ms. Anglopole. Ms. Anglopole is Polish but lives with her husband and kids in the UK. She blogs about her Anglopolish life at Anglopole’s Ponglish World. OK, Ms. Anglopole, the floor (or rather - the blog) is yours today!...
Dictionaries and Reference Books
With Polish being Polish, it’s no wonder there are gazillions of language reference books and dictionaries out there on the market. Because, yes, even Poles need help with their own native language from time to time. No, actually make that - most of the time. Even I myself cannot imagine...
Becoming a Better EFL Teacher
9 Ways to Use Recipes for Foreign Language Learning
Ways to Use Recipes for Foreign Language Learning “What to do?” “What to do?” English as a foreign language and foreign language teachers are often in a quandary for simple but effective class room activities. You and your foreign language learners have to eat don’t you? Well, to help...
An Unusual Recipe from Colombia: Cow’s Eye Soup
Teach English as a Foreign Language Abroad One of the benefits of teaching English as a foreign language abroad or living abroad in general, is the ability to prepare or at least try out some unusual recipes and foreign dishes you might never experience at home. Why else would one...
Getting English Language Learners to Speak
Using Substitution Dialogues for Interactive Speaking Practice English Speaking Practice Dialogues Whether you are using a course book-based English as a foreign language curriculum or not, preparing speaking dialogues can be a highly effective means of generating speech in class. Although most English language teaching course books contain grammar-based practice...
Foreign Language Speaking Fluency in Twi and English
Developing Fluency in Foreign Language Speech One of the most sought-after foreign language skills is that of fluency in speaking. A number of effective methods are currently in practical use but this one as illustrated in the following video offer a unique twist on common practice. That is, the phrase...
Danville Man Can Help You Talk the Talk in Many Lands
Danville Man Can Help You Talk the Talk in Many Landshttp://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2009/11/15/danville_man_can_help_you_talk_the_talk_in_many_lands By Pat Phillips DANVILLE – Mark Frobose isn't afraid to describe himself as a "rags to riches" story. "To show you what is possible, I started with an idea more than 25 years ago, then I failed my way...
Hello Hello Language Learning Website
Hello-Hello Redefines Online Language Learning with Interactive Site and Proven Methodologyhttp://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/11/prweb3231704.htm Hello-Hello.com, the world’s first free online language learning and social networking website developed in collaboration with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), will be officially launched during ACTFL’s Annual Convention and World Languages Expo. The...
Brave New Words
Links on Children’s Literature
My last post discussed what it means to study children’s literature, so here I want to offer a few links that might be useful or interesting.Outside In is about children’s literature and translation and Deborah Hallford and Edgardo Zaghini, who run the site, edited a collection of articles about and...
Studying Children’s Literature
As some of you may know, my PhD dissertation was on the translation of children’s literature and I do a lot of research on children’s lit. I have to deal with a lot of misconceptions about what this means:-People ask me if I sit around, reading children’s books, and they...
I am always quite excited when it seems that more attention is paid to translation and to translators. Our profession needs more understanding and recognition. And it needs more talented people. I encourage people to learn more about translation. But sometimes I wonder about some of the people who join...
Dryden Translation Competition
You might want to submit work for the Dryden Competition, which is run by the British Comparative Literature Association and administered here at the University of East Anglia, in part by yours truly. You can find more details on the BCLA site or on the Dryden's Facebook page....
Last year, Brave New Words had our first giveaway. As part of this, we asked readers for suggestions for books on language. Here is the compiled book list:Maya wrote: There was a classic book on language called The Mother Tongue. It must be out of print by now, but it...
Banff Translation Residency Program
The Banff Translation Residency Program is well-regarded and in a lovely setting, so readers may want to apply to attend it....
separated by a common language
This post is inspired by the following quotation from darling, two-year-old daughter Grover: "Bastard. (BrE) Mummy said it!" Before she (orig. AmE) outs me as a (orig. AmE) potty mouth at her (AmE) daycare/(BrE) crèche (or nursery), I'll have to take the matter into hand and save my sparkling wit (in response...
In the Weekend magazine in Saturday's Guardian, the following letter to the editor appeared: Please reword your Q&A for Americans. Clearly, to them, "fancy dress" means "dressing for a fancy party". Why I need to know if Joyce Carol Oates would dress as a bee or a pirate I'm not sure, but I...
gritting, salting and blizzards
[I started this back when it was snowing...then the term started. Eek. Thanks to my new Twitter-followers for their recollections on grit and sand.] A couple of Americans have remarked to me about BrE speakers' use of grit as a verb in snowy contexts like these (from a single article...
I'm pleased to welcome my former student, Solo, for her second guestblogging service here on SbaCL. Take it away, Solo: The Oxford Dictionary of English informs me that sick is an adjective meaning “affected by physical or mental illness,” suggesting that illness is the dominant term. Furthermore, to my BrE mind,...
In the review I just posted, I used the words sesquicentennial and sesquicentenary, which reminded me of a topic that's been on my list for some time. It came to me from Ann S: I'm just back from two weeks in England [...] We were over for WINGS 2009, which stands...
Review: Origins of the Specious
When a publisher sends me (unsolicited) books for review a few months before Christmas, they probably intend my review to be part of their pre-Christmas promotions. What they haven't counted on is that I'd have no time to look at the book until Christmas break. And so it goes for...
A Way with Words
For the final word on grammar, many writers turn to the Associated Press Stylebook http://www.apstylebook.com/. But if you find that stylebook too stuffy, you'll love 'Fake AP Stylebook' http://twitter.com/fakeapstylebook, the online send-up that features such sage journalistic advice 'The plural of apostrophe is 'apostrophe's.'' Grant and Martha share some favorite...
Down A Chimney Up - 25 Jan. 2010
Good poetry is even better when you read it aloud. For his anthology, 'Essential Pleasures' http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Pleasures-Anthology-Poems-Aloud/dp/0393066088, former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky selected works with just that in mind. Martha and Grant discuss a poem from the book with lines that are more delicious when spoken. Also this week: If...
Jack Lynch, Author of The Lexigrapher's Dilemma - 22 Jan. 2010
You know that grammatical 'rule' about not ending a sentence with a preposition? Well, who ever decided finishing off a sentence like that is a bad thing? (Personally, we think it's one of the silliest things anyone ever came up with.) In his new book, The Lexicographer's Dilemma The Evolution of...
Picklebacks and Mountweazels - 18 Jan. 2009
This week on 'A Way with Words,' Martha and Grant talk about phrases you love to hate, like 'Do you mind if I put you on hold?' They also talk about 'mountweazels,' 'jakey bums,' 'picklebacks,' and 'step-ins.' And which is the proper term: mothers-in-law or mother-in-laws?Some words and phrases you...
Ken Jennings: Not-So-Trivial Pursuits (minicast) - Jan. 12, 2010
Grant interviews 'Jeopardy!' champion Ken Jennings about the grueling nature of TV quiz shows, the fine art of writing trivia questions, the special challenges of competing in European quiz contests, and how it feels to answer incorrectly.You can hear him try to puzzle out the answer to our slang quiz...
Nicknames Give Me the Heebie-Jeebies and the Vapors (Rebroadcast) - 11 Jan. 2010
[This episode originally aired April 5, 2008.]Everybody has a nickname, and there's usually a story to go with it. Martha and Grant reveal their own nicknames and the stories behind them. Also, is the expression 'heebie-jeebies' anti-Semitic? And is there a better word than 'retiree' for someone who moves on from a job late...
Mission to Learn
A couple of posts back I wrote about Acting on the Obvious. Well, one of the obvious things in my own life is that I have not been able to give Mission to Learn the attention I’d like to lately, and it’s probably time to take a brief break rather...
10 Personal Favorites from the M2L Archives
[tweetmeme] Not too long ago I published the all-time top 10 posts on Mission to Learn based on the number of page views those posts have received. Getting a lot of page views is great – it means a lot of people are visiting the site – but the posts...
Great Learning Resources for 2010 – A New Learning Monitor is Out!
I’ve just published the year-end edition of the Learning Monitor, my twice-quarterly round-up of learning resources, news, and insights. If you haven’t tried out the Monitor yet, this is a great time to start. It’s free, it delivers valuable content, and you can unsubscribe with a click if you decide...
As much as I am a fan of learning, I’ve also become more and more aware that I often don’t need to learn anything new. I simply need to recognize what I already know and do something about it. I need to act on the obvious. This means, among other...
Learning – and Unlearning? – to Give
I had set out to do a year end post on charitable giving when I ran across the following image on Mint.com. There is some good information in it. There is also considerable room for critique and debate, as reflected in the comments on the Mint.com site. I post it here...
15 Language Learning Tools for Lifelong Learners
I realized recently that it has been longer than usual since I have posted anything related to language learning here on Mission to Learn. Here’s a great guest post from Karen Schweitzer to fill that gap – JTC Reading from a textbook isn’t the only way to learn a foreign language....
Inglês na Ponta da Língua
Collocations e Aquisição de Fluência em Inglês
Semana passada escrevi aqui no blog um post com o título "Fluência em Inglês: Como!? De que jeito!?", nele falei sobre a diferença entre 'fluency' [fluência] e 'accuracy' [exatidão]. O post fazia ainda referência ao curso 'The Fluency Paradox' que fiz em São Paulo com o renomado Jeremy Harmer [visitem...
Quer ganhar o 'Speak English Like an American'?
Semana passada eu disse aqui no blog que quem tem o livro 'Por que assim e não assado?' ganha o ebook 'Speak English Like an American' de presente. Hoje quero estender esta promoção para os leitores do livro 'Inglês na Ponta da Língua'.Mas para receber o o ebook em sua...
Cambridge Exams e os Collocations
2010 começa e com ele inúmeros estudantes de inglês no Brasil [e no mundo] começarão a se preparar com mais afinco para prestar os exames de inglês da Universidade de Cambridge [Cambridge Exams]: First Certificate in English [FCE], Certificate in Advanced English [CAE] ou Certificate of Proficiency in English [CPE].Para...
Não se preocupem! Ninguém fez greve por aqui! A situação é a seguinte: no post abaixo escrevi que para dizer 'greve relâmpago' em inglês a possibilidade é 'lightning strike'. Confesso que meu erro foi ficar apenas nisto e ter omitido o fato de que esta combinação - lightning strike -...
Como encontrar os collocations que você precisa!?
[Do livro 'Por que assim e não assado? O guia definitivo de collocations em inglês']Digamos que você tenha de escrever, em inglês, um texto [redação] sobre "greve". O que fazer!? Como desenvolver o texto!? A dica é a seguinte:Faça uma lista das palavras que combinam com a palavra "greve" em...
Collocations ajudam você a evitar os porquês!
[Do livro 'Por que assim e não assado? O guia definitivo de collocations em inglês']Uma triste mania que muitas pessoas têm ao aprender inglês é o de querer saber o porquê disto ou daquilo. Por exemplo, por que em inglês se diz "throw a party" e não "make a party"...
Rikker's Blogs
โรงเรียนวันอาทิตย์ สเตคกรุงเทพฯ
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A test blog....
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Thoughts on Thai language, media, and culture....
Thoughts On Translation
Maybe it’s not all about the design
I need to update the look of my website and marketing materials; it’s a task I really struggle with because I’m just not a very visual person. Read me a sentence and I can tell you right away if I like it or not, but show me an array of...
When to throw in the towel on a task
At the end of 2008, I wrote a post about post about outsourcing that generated quite a bit of interest, so I thought it was worth raising this topic again. After years of battling with my business payroll taxes (I have an S-Corp and thus have to file quarterly payroll...
Planning a successful event for translators
Over the weekend, the Colorado Translators Association held our annual “holiday” party (which we always have in January, hence the quotation marks). We’re an association of about 100 members and we typically have about 40 attendees at this party, which seems to prove either that translators really need to get...
Some links to round out the week
Thoughts on Translation has been finishing up a few deadlines this week and prepping for the Colorado Translators Association’s holiday party, so we’ll let some other bloggers do the talking. Here are some posts that caught my eye this week: About Translation on making a dual monitor out of your laptop...
Reader survey: the best and worst things about your CAT tools
In preparation for the second edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator, I’m revising the chapter on translation technology. I’d like to include some “best and worst” observations from translators who use various translation environment tools, so if you are interested in having your comments included (anonymously) in...
Most of us who work from home feel guilty about wasting time in large increments, but the same isn’t always true of small increments. If I finish work early or a project is canceled and I have a few “found” hours of time, I nearly always switch to another productive...
Learn a language
Foreign language accent reduction
How to reduce your accent in a foreign language If you want to reduce your accent in a foreign language, this is what you have to do. You have to take a sample of a foreign language native speaker in your target language and listened to it. The sample should be...
Voice to text – Digital recorder speech recognition experiment
Mark’s voice to text – digital voice recorder speech recognition experiment – failure. I detailed my productivity breakthrough I achieved with a voice to text program that comes with Windows -> Speech recognition. It is basically an automatic transcription program that comes with Windows that frees you from typing. You can...
I teach English to foreigners. The purpose of this post is to tell you some common mistakes I’ve seen with students learning English. Mistake number 1 in learning English There is only really one mistake in learning English, that is studying things that are not important. People study text book English not...
Moses McCormick – language polyglot
Why do we need to know about Moses McCormick? Who is Moses McCormick He is a polyglot that speaks 42 languages (from beginner to Advance, most at an intermediate level). He is 28 years old and goes to University in Ohio. He is an African American with a very positive relaxed nature. ...
This post sets out to answer the question, what is the best language to learn? It will answer it clearly and objectively and I hope to open your mind when it comes to language learning. Polish is the best language in the world to learn. I write this seriously as a...
What is the percentage of Ukrainian citizens in Ukraine speak the Russian language? About 30% of the Ukrainians speak Russian as their primary language. However, most of the Russian speaking Ukrainian are in the Autonomous region republic of Crimea. About 50% of the people in this area are ethnic Russians and...
Mr. Verb
This from the WaPo.I guess it has a nice ring to it here in Wisconsin, but I'm not sure I want to live through it in Washington, where they're not well equipped for it....
OUP blog ... what we owe prescriptivists
Lately, for whatever reason, we haven't been posting on peevology and related matters. Maybe it's the passing of William 'Bill' Safire. Or maybe the flood of serious language science and bizarre dog-bites-person language stuff that we have been posting about. Whatevs.But this morning I happened to check in on the...
Building on the last post, if anybody is concerned about the language change/biological evolution thing, let's go for language = virus:The full cartoon is here and highly worth reading, if not about linguistics. Or viruses....
Language complexity and social structure
A couple of folks have called Team Verb's attention to this article in PLoS, in part due to this piece at sciencedaily.com. The paper, "Language Structure Is Partly Determined by Social Structure", has this abstract:BackgroundLanguages differ greatly both in their syntactic and morphological systems and in the social environments in...
Science Channel takes a stand: For science
Wow, here's some breaking science news I haven't seen covered anywhere yet:Science Channel president Clark Bunting told reporters Tuesday that his cable network was "completely incapable" of watering down science any further than it already had. "Look, we've tried, we really have, but it's simply not possible to set the...
Yesterday the American Dialect Society's ads-l list was abuzz with posts about the product name iPad, with how fast the jokes about iTampon and such have spread. As Dennis Baron notes, here:It's got a name that cries out for parody (that didn't stop the Wii).Sure, and Apple was certainly thinking...
The Linguist - language learning should be fun
对你来讲，什么是英文的主要问题。请告诉我。我将会准备课包含这些问题。将有声音和文......
Quali sono i vostri problemi in inglese?
Quali sono i vostri problemi in inglese. Mi dica pure. Preparerò lezioni su questi problemi. Ci sarà una lezione semplice e una più difficile ogni settimana, con il suono e il testo. Are you an English learner? Would the following......
Quais são os seus principais problemas em Inglês
Quais são os seus principais problemas em Inglês. Por favor, me avise. Vou preparar lições sobre estes problemas,uma lição fácil e mais uma lição difícil a cada semana, com som e texto. Are you an English learner? Would the following idea......
英語で何が主な問題ですか？教えてください。これに元随てレッソンを作ります．優しい......
Каковы Ваши основные проблемы на английском языке?
Каковы Ваши основные проблемы на английском языке? Дайте мне знать, пажалуйста. Я буду подготовить уроки по этим проблемам. Там будет один легкий урок и еще один трудный урока в неделю, со звуком и текстом. Are you an English learner? Would......
Quels sont vos principaux problèmes en anglais?
Si vous avez des problèmes particuliers en anglais, dites-les moi. Je vais preparer deux leçons par semaine, une facile et une plus difficile, avec son et texte. Are you an English learner? Would the following idea be of interest? You......
Language Log
So many languages, so much technology…
Suppose you had 100 digital recorders and 800 small languages, all in a country the size of California, but in one of the remotest parts of the planet. What would you do? What would it take to identify and train a small army of language workers? How could the recordings...
The annihilation of computational linguistics at KCL
[What follows is a guest post reporting on a very disturbing situation at King's College London involving the sacking of senior computational linguists and others in a secretly planned, tragically stupid, and farcically implemented mass-purge. The author of the post is currently employed at KCL, and for obvious reasons must...
I write this from gate 27 at SFO, on my way back to Philadelphia from a meeting that was interesting and productive, but didn't have a lot of direct linguistic relevance. I did manage to fit in breakfast with Geoff Nunberg and lunch with Paul Kay, and Paul pointed me...
A few days ago, TPM linked to an political ad in the New Orleans Coroner's race, which gives a good example of a particular NO accent (known as "Yat") about which A.J. Liebling wrote in The Earl of Lousiana: There is a New Orleans city accent . . . associated with...
An anticupertino incorrection?
'Definitely' is always spelled with an 'a' —'definitely'. I don't know why," says Paul Budra, an English professor and associate dean of arts and science at Simon Fraser. So reports CNews in Canada here. But I think what they meant was that Professor Budra (who is talking about the disastrous state of...
David Marsh, in the regular language column at The Guardian, writes about the increasing frequency of -gate derivatives in recent journalism, and cites Language Log: All these gates are examples of a snowclone, a type of cliched phrase defined by the linguist Geoffrey Pullum as "a multi-use, customisable, instantly recognisable, timeworn,...
One Hour Translation Blog
Translation is a very broad field of activity. Apart from innumerable language pairs that translations involve, there are also very many topics that the source text refers to that needs to be translated into a target language. However, translation can be broadly classified into 3 categories: commercial translation, technical translation...
Translator licensing and certification
Translation being an ever growing profession, more and more people are getting into the bandwagon be it part time, full time, freelance, online etc. With increasing penetration of the internet, it is truly becoming a global industry with opportunities coming in from all parts of the world. Having said that,...
Free translation? Yes you heard that right! When you are unable to translate a text into a language of your choice and you find professional services beyond your reach, you can take the help of these free translation tools to at least get an idea of what the author of...
If you are new to the translation industry having just completed a language course – diploma or degree or whatever – you may not find it easy to land translation jobs with no prior experience. Most clients would want previous references, their contact address / email ID etc. Then how...
One Hour Transaltion to offer free translation for Haiti aid organizations
We decided to do for the victims and the aid organizations in Haiti. We will translate for free to 250 words per each organization and individual affected by the earthquake: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/one-hour-translation-to-offer-free-professional-translation-to-help-with-the-haiti-earthquake-victims-and-rescue-forces-81521412.html Individuals and organizations are welcome to visit our Haiti aid page and contact us for translations....
One of the attractions of choosing translation as a career is the fact that you can freelance. It means freedom to pursue one’s hobbies, work from the comfort of your own home and no need to commute long distances in crowded traffic, flexible working hours etc. But there are also...
Learn Thai Podcast
Phrase Lesson 3: General answers (Audio)
In this lesson you will learn some useful phrases. Click here to download the transcript of this lesson....
Phrase Lesson 3: General answers (Video)
In this lesson you will learn some useful phrases....
Phrase Lesson 2: General questions (Audio)
In this lesson you will learn some useful phrases. Click here to download the transcript of this lesson....
Phrase Lesson 2: General questions (Video)
In this lesson you will learn some useful phrases....
Phrase Lesson 1: Greetings (Audio)
In this lesson you will learn some useful phrases. Click here to download the transcript of this lesson....
Phrase Lesson 1: Greetings (Video)
In this lesson you will learn some useful phrases....
Global Watchtower™
Yesterday employment services provider Manpower announced that it would acquire COMSYS IT Partners, a professional staffing firm. Both companies offer language services in their portfolio — Manpower is the fourteenth largest company on our list of top 30 language service providers (LSPs), generating US$55 million in language-related revenue in 2008...
Welocalize Sets Its Sights on Marketing Translation
Language service provider Welocalize today announced the release of its web-based MarketSight translation marketplace. In this latest example of translation technologies moving into the cloud, this self-service software is aimed at helping companies manage their marketing translation budgets and operations. Unlike most portals offered by translation agencies, MarketSight lets users...
Community Translators Misdirect Google Translate
With all of the news about hacked e-mail accounts, it shouldn’t be a big surprise that crowdsourcing interfaces can be manipulated, too. Earlier today, politicking or pranking Russian translators forced a Google Translate mistranslation of four segments — “USA is to blame,” “Russia is to blame,” “Obama is to blame,”...
Language Line Services Does an About Face (-to-Face)
This morning, Language Line Services (LLS) announced that it will use its staff of 8,000 interpreters to offer face-to-face (F2F) services throughout the state of California. Why is the company suddenly making such a strong play for in-person services after decades of touting the benefits of its remote interpreting services?...
SDL Acquires Fredhopper: Amazon-Type Functionality for “The Rest of Us”
SDL announced another technology purchase last week to further deliver on its strategy to be a one-stop-shop for global content management tools. Its acquisition of Amsterdam-based Fredhopper will enable it to be a player in global e-commerce solutions....
Translation Blog
I spent last Monday interpreting in East Sussex. After a busy day, we all ended up in a lovely pub with an interesting history in Lewes to have dinner and talk about forthcoming projects. Little did I know that a major incident had only just been averted thanks to the...
Fanlation is a term that I've come across very recently, and I came across it again when I received Jost Zetzsche's Tool Kit newsletter: I had just suggested that we use a new term for the kind of crowdsourced translation that the likes of Twitter and Facebook do when they engage...
A translator's resolutions for 2010
I thought it’d be a good idea to cast my mind back on 2009 and give myself some vague pointers objectives for 2010. 2009 was meant to be the year where I took advantage of a move to Leeds to work less, discover a beautiful region and resurrect my moribund Spanish....
I spent a lovely Christmas and New Year at my parents’ new house near Bordeaux, in the Entre-Deux-Mers region, surrounded by vineyards and châteaux. We flew back on Saturday. My mother is always anxious when we're travelling, particularly when the weather is bad, so she went online to track our...
Do you hate doing your accounts? Keeping track of invoices? Do you shudder with dread whenever you see an email from your lovely accountant in your inbox? Do you burst into tears at the mere thought of having to file a VAT return? Freeagent is for you. This is what...
While reading PoPCo, by Scarlett Thomas, I learnt that the word “avatar”, which refers to an Internet user’s alter ego in online forums and other communities, comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “descent of a deity to the Earth in incarnate form”. According to Wikipedia, it was popularised by Neal Stephenson’s...