translator

Linguistic false friends are words that appear similar in two different languages but have unrelated meanings. A common example is embarazada in Spanish, which looks like embarrassed but actually means pregnant. Most of the examples of German false friends in this week’s blog do not go quite as wildly astray…

If you own or manage a UK-based business with an English-only website, you may be missing out on critical growth opportunities by opting not to offer overseas visitors an online experience in their native language. Many UK companies assume that being based in an English-speaking country gives them an in-built…

Were you one of those kids who effortlessly scored 10/10 in spelling tests at school? Me too! My husband, on the other hand, has an uncanny ability to remember phone numbers, vehicle licence plates and passport numbers, but still struggles with getting the double letters correct in “carrots” and “broccoli”…

In May this year, the children’s author and illustrator Judith Kerr died at the age of 95. She is probably best known for enduring classics such as “The Tiger Who Came To Tea” and the Mog books. Her books have been translated into 20 different languages and one of these…

Like many jobs today, translation work involves hours tied to your computer typing furiously. It’s hardly a recipe for a healthy brain or body. If you work exclusively from home you may have no human interaction at all except via email. This week’s blog takes a look at some ideas…

“Language poisoning” is a term used to describe a phenomenon I’m sure all translators will have experienced, namely the insidious influence the source language can have on your skills as a writer in the target language. Examples of foreign language poisoning are rife in poor-quality translations. In fact, if you…

“So, are you fluent in X?” Translators have surely all been asked that question by their non-translator friends. Personally I’ve often wriggled around these queries in a way that disappoints the questioner. Because the truth is that fluency means any number of things. And fluency in the source language isn’t…

I’ve been meaning to write about the translation genius behind the Astérix books for a while. Anthea Bell died in October last year aged 82, so this seems a fitting moment to revisit her extraordinary body of work, for which she was awarded an OBE for services to literature and…

Wes Anderson’s latest movie, Isle of Dogs is a fabulous stop-motion animation set in a dystopian near-future Japan where the authoritarian regime has banished all dogs to Trash Island in a bid to contain an epidemic of dog flu. A linguistically interesting quirk in the movie is that the dogs…

With a teenager in the house currently deep into GCSE revision, the concept of time looms large in our lives. On the one hand, X days till exam time – cue panic. On the other hand, Y days till total freedom and a 10 week summer holiday – jubilation. The…