Dog-tired and other doggie expressions
Having recently got sucked in to the joy of cycling, I have found myself adding long weekend bike rides to my existing schedule of regular runs and swims. That’s how I ended up cranking out a 60 mile lumpy bike ride one Saturday followed by a short run, then a swim and a run on […]
Matching verbs to singular or plural nouns
One distinctive difference between English and German is the greater flexibility over word order and sentence structure in the latter language. German is described as having a V2 word order “which allows any constituent to occupy the first position as long as the second position is occupied by the finite verb.” This allows Germans to […]
Translating punctuation: an overlooked detail
Previously, this blog touched briefly on the importance of punctuation when reviewing translation work, especially the need to adapt punctuation style from the source language style to your target language. But this topic is worth revisiting in greater depth as it seems quite a few translators regard the typographical symbols in between words as outside […]
What does “in writing” mean in German and English law?
Words do not have neat one-to-one mappings between languages. You do not need to be a very advanced language learner to be aware of that phenomenon, so it’s surprising how often this seems to trip up the unwitting translator. For example, German legal documents frequently distinguish between Schriftform and Textform, both of which refer to […]
Duolingo: language learning or phone addiction?
Duolingo: an addictive language learning tool I have a track record with new technology: phase one involves scepticism and refusal to engage, phase two is full-blown addiction and obsession (a third phase of disengagement often follows during which I wonder what all the fuss was about). Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or Strava, the pattern has […]
Intentional typos — can misspellings ever be a good thing?
Typos and misspellings: the bane of a writer’s existence Typos send a chill down the spine of any translator or proofreader. Catching an unintended slip-up at the last moment before submitting a project always combines an element of relief with a sense of dismay at nearly allowing an embarrassing mistake to slip through to publication. […]
Corporate language policies: a linguistic minefield
Attitudes to corporate language policies might best be summed up by the quote attributed to John Lydgate, “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. There is no doubt […]
Translating recipes
Recently I have done several projects which involved translating recipes. On the face of it this seems like a simple task: take the list of ingredients and convert into the target language; then simply do the same for the recipe method. Recipes tend to be very well structured, written in a series of simple to […]
The language of the marathon
Obsession with the marathon This blog post on the language of the marathon is shamelessly influenced by your blogger’s obsession with running! April is the month when Londoners and Bostonians turn out in their droves for two of the finest city marathons. And this year I will be attempting to run both, a total of […]
Adlam – the story of a new alphabet
Most of the world’s alphabets are at least a thousand years old and we often take them for granted. The first alphabet is thought to be the Proto-Sinaitic script, which is the ancestor of most modern alphabets including Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew and Latin. An article published in 2016 in The Atlantic describes the unusual […]
Worst typos in history
In his book The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver talks about the proliferation of information following the invention and history of the printing press and the potential for misinformation and errors. One example he picks out is a 1631 edition of the Bible containing the unfortunate typo “Thou shalt commit adultery”. As mistakes go, […]
Worst translation errors by humans and machines
Worst human translation errors “To err is human, to forgive divine” and that is the spirit we will adopt for this week’s blog post, which delves into some decidedly second-rate translations. We all have bad days, but some of the examples of human translation errors here crop up sufficiently often or are so clunky, you […]
A proofreading mission: avoiding gobbledygook
“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.” Wise words from American popular historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough. The challenge of marshalling your thoughts into lucid text will be familiar to anyone who wrangles with the written word for a living. Translators face the additional […]
Capturing language change in action: the unknown fate of adverbial good
Historical language shifts are easiest to describe after the fact when you can track how a particular usage has evolved over time. Spotting language change in action can feel like trying to capture lightning in a bottle due to the unpredictability of linguistic habits. A shift in usage might be adopted by a particular sub-group, […]
Exploring etymology through English translation
Etymology shows us that German has the honour of having loaned some spectacular vocabulary to English. Where would we be without Schadenfreude, Zeitgeist and Wanderlust? Some of the borrowings are more mundane in the sense that they have been fully absorbed into the English lexicon and would not strike most native speakers as foreign. Examples […]
Language diversity and the battle for political status in India
Recently this blog looked at updates to English language requirements to facilitate recruitment of medical professionals to the UK from overseas. In India, the government has also been attempting to address linguistic barriers to the medical profession by offering medical degrees in Hindi for the first time. Until now, medicine in India has been taught […]
Retronyms and a sense of nostalgia
What are retronyms? The world changes and language races to keep up. Sometimes a word that had a very clear meaning becomes more ambiguous as a result of new inventions or discoveries. Enter the retronym, a type of neologism in which the new name helps distinguish between an existing form and a more recent one. […]
Film industry jargon
A discussion of the specialised terminology and catchphrases used in different professions prompted my writer/director brother to give me a rundown of some of the jargon used in the film industry. I’ve picked my favourites to include here and am now trying to find ways to re-engineer some of these for use in the less […]
Linguistic purism and conlangs
This blog previously delved into the question of foreign diacritics and whether or not to include them in English text. Mulling this issue again recently led me off down another rabbit hole to investigate linguistic purism in English. Some time ago, I came across the piece “Uncleftish Beholding” by American science fiction author Poul Anderson. […]
The Voynich manuscript: unfathomable yet alluring
This blog has tackled impenetrable texts before when discussing the mysterious runic inscriptions on the Rök stone in Sweden, but few texts can rival the Voynich manuscript for intrigue. This hand-written tome is composed in an otherwise unknown writing system, which has defied all kinds of cryptographers over the years, from amateur enthusiasts to the […]
Translating specialist terminology from German to English
Part I What to do when a product has no direct equivalent Every translator knows that a standard dictionary has its limits, and never is this truer than when translating specialist terminology in a domain with a specific vocabulary. In an ideal scenario the translator will have direct experience of the relevant area. Failing that, […]
Homophone errors – typographic mondegreens
A previous blog revelled in the linguistic joy to be found in eggcorns and mondegreens, which are misheard homophones that can become cemented in standard speech, sometimes even displacing the original correct form. A classic example is “dull as dishwater” rather than ditch water. In written documents, a similar phenomenon can be found where homophones […]
Bionic Reading ® – or an activity that should not be hurried?
Are you a productivity geek? Are you obsessed with time-management hacks to pack more and more into your hectic schedule? Maybe you are one of those people who listen to podcasts on 1.5 speed, or who reads up on methods like ‘eat the frog’ (getting unpleasant tasks done first on your never-ending to do list). […]
Linguistic reappropriation: a battle of wills over meaning
What is linguistic reappropriation? Linguistic reappropriation (also referred to as reclamation or resignification) is the process by which a word intended as a pejorative is reclaimed and redefined by the group at which the disparaging term was originally directed. There are numerous historical examples: from the Impressionists, whose name is adopted from a critical review […]
What Makes a Good Translation Agency?
Choosing a translation provider can be a daunting and intimidating experience for some. For anyone who hasn’t used a language services provider before or needed to have a document translated, knowing what questions to ask, what red flags to look for and how much the services will cost will all be new experiences. At Rosetta […]
What Makes a Good Interpreter?
As we’ve said before in this blog, just being able to speak another language does not make you an interpreter. Professional interpreters have done much training and study to get into the field, they may have also spent a significant amount of time in another field such as law or medicine before making the lateral […]
The Value of Proofreading
At Rosetta Translation, we value proofreading. We handle myriad of documents on a daily basis for varying purposes, audiences and publications. Often, a translation only service will be sufficient for our customers’ needs, particularly if the document in question is for information purposes only and won’t be published anywhere noteworthy. Translation only means that although […]
Do you speak American? The differences between American and British English…
The mighty United States of America is never far away from our news pages, particularly recently with the pending presidential election. The next few weeks will be an interesting time for Americans as the candidates ramp up their campaigns even more. November will be crunch time for voters to decide who will follow Barack Obama […]
The origins of English sayings: The Rule of Thumb
The origins of English sayings: The Rule of Thumb A friend and I recently went on a Jack the Ripper walking tour of London (which I would highly recommend, particularly on a warm day!) and, aside from learning the stories and conspiracies surrounding this notorious murderer, also learned some interesting snippets about English idiom. […]
Languages in focus: Basque
Languages in focus: Basque I’m spent a few days in Northern Spain (around Bilbao) this August with some Spanish family and friends who speak Basque. I’m intrigued by this language; an ‘island’ of a language surrounded by others which have nothing to do with it. Having also walked some of the Camino de Santiago […]
Facebook: paving the way for intelligent auto translation
Facebook: paving the way for intelligent auto translation We’ve discussed in several previous posts about the perils of auto translation, machine translation, the delights of Google Translate and so on. We have also looked at what poor translations cost to businesses and individuals, and have even highlighted some particularly bad examples that major corporations have […]
Top 10 interesting facts about translation
Top 10 interesting facts about translation With all the doom and gloom we’ve been experiencing in recent times with an uncertain political and economic climate I thought we’d keep it upbeat and light-hearted in today’s blog post. Let’s dive into some interesting facts about translation! Translation is a Latin word (‘translatio’ or ‘translationis’) meaning ‘to […]
Language: it’s child’s play! Part 1
Language: it’s child’s play! Part one At university, for my degree in languages, I studied language acquisition and how this differs depending on whether it is your first or second language, and how old you are when you start learning. There are many theories about how we acquire language and when is the optimal […]
Translation apps: is our language history and future in danger?
In our past 2 posts we’ve looked at the good and bad points of Google Translate. 10 years down the line it is undoubtedly helping many people with their language quandaries. That said, it’s important to look at the flip side of the coin: are we becoming too reliant on technology for our languages? Here […]
Google Translation: 10 years of ‘translation’
Believe it or not Google Translation was born in 2006, and so celebrates its 10th birthday this year. From its original 2 languages the tool can now deal with 103 languages including Hmong (a dialect spoken in China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand), Shona (a Bantu language native to Zimbabwe) and Telugu (the primary language […]
What’s all the fuss about translation technology?
Outside the translation and language industry little is really known (understandably perhaps) about translation technology. Machine translation is a type of this technology, for example Google Translate and Babelfish, of which many people have heard of. But, tools used by translators, translation companies and the people who require translations are another kettle of fish. […]
Language in focus: Marketing translation
In this series so far we have looked at the difficulties of the fields of medical and legal translation. Translating within the fields of marketing and media brings its own set of issues. As our readers should all be aware by now translation isn’t simply a case of replacing one word by another in […]
Language in Focus: Legal Translation Services
Translation in and of itself is never a straightforward case of taking one word and translating it into its equivalent form in another language. Each type of translation presents its own difficulties, and legal translation is by no means an exception. Here we look at the two main difficulties of legal translation services […]
Interpreting for the European Institutions
Interpreting is a skill. Just because you speak more than one language does not mean that you are an interpreter. Training to be a consecutive, simultaneous or liaison interpreter takes years of education, work experience and continual professional development. Interpreters have many avenues for work; the corporate sector, public sector, entertainment and leisure industry. […]
Rosetta, Clarion and Crisis UK: a recipe for BSL interpreting success this Christmas
Rosetta Translation offers many language services to people all over the world: translating and interpreting in to and out of many foreign languages. We pride ourselves in the quality of the work we provide our clients, and the standards of freelancers we work with on a daily basis. We set the bar high in […]
The Translation Industry in China: How Does It Differ from the West?
I have been instrumental in setting up, developing and running the Shanghai office of Rosetta Translation since we first planned a China office in 2007. It might be tempting to think that running a translation business is pretty much the same everywhere, but the situation in the translation industry in China is really quite different. […]
How to make a document easy to translate
Here are some tips on how to produce a document that will be easy to translate into another language. If you’ve never used the services of Rosetta Translation Ltd before, then you might be surprised to know that we do much more than just translate a document from one language into another. On the contrary, […]
What are the least common languages in Europe?
There are 33 European languages that are on the verge of extinction, according to new research – but what are these least common languages, and how close are they to disappearing? When you think of European languages, the obvious examples are always going to spring to mind – English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, the […]
Are we really a nation of language novices?
Brits abroad – two words that are enough to make any respectable English person cringe. However, aside from the lager lout behaviour and general debauchery that springs to mind with this phrase, are we really as bad as the stereotype suggests? In particular, are we a country of language novices? Ask yourself a question: How […]
What do I need to think about when localising my website?
When moving into a foreign market, it’s important that you do as much background work as possible before your ‘launch’ to ensure you hit the ground running. In modern business, your website is your shop window – so it’s vitally important that everything is in the right place and makes sense to casual browsers who […]
Endangered species: Why languages are dying out
Can you ever imagine the English language no longer existing? It seems like an unlikely thought, but that is what has happened to an estimated 400 languages over the last 100 years, which roughly equates to one tongue dying out every three months. In addition to this, the BBC reports that around half of the […]
One country one language? It’s not that simple
It was quite close in the end, wasn’t it? However – as many predicted – Scotland voted in favour of staying in the United Kingdom, with 55.3 per cent voting ‘No’ to independence and 44.7 per cent choosing ‘Yes’. So, for the meantime at least, we’re still all one big, moderately happy family – although […]
Things you didn’t know about the Thai language
Despite it being almost literally a world away from English, it’s not impossible to understand the Thai language. However, you’ll have undoubtedly noticed that learning how to speak, read and write this fascinating tongue is likely to take a wholly different approach to learning German, French or Spanish, for example. Whether you have ambitions to […]
