Lexical con artists: some German false friends
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 from a semantic perspective, but […]
Spelling bee or spellcheck addict?
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” on the shopping list. My […]
The perils of language poisoning
“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 know a language really well, […]
What is Linguistic Fluency?
Linguistic fluency for translators “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 necessarily […]
Translators in movies
Last month I wrote a blog post about the title of the latest instalment in the Star Wars movies series, “The Last Jedi“. I confessed my almost complete ignorance when it comes to this particular movie franchise as I have somehow reached middle age without ever having seen any of the movies in their entirety. […]
Translating recipes and related cultural issues
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 […]
Starting and Running a Translation Business in China
Rosetta Translation officially started its Shanghai operations in 2008. That’s 7 long years already, and I thought it would be interesting to sit back and think what lessons can be learnt in terms of getting a small service business off the ground in the People’s Republic of China. Get professional help to register the […]
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, […]
Will Google Translate ever be a Substitute for a Human Translator?
Recent years have seen an explosion of online translation tools there to help us. They pop up when a page is in an unfamiliar language, casually requesting if you fancy having that page translated into English. Google Translate is probably the most well known and enjoys the same verb-like status of its search engine feature. […]
Who make better translators, men or women?
The issue of male versus female performance in translation and interpreting work is one that rarely comes up, but it is one where project managers may be surprisingly opinionated. The question of whether women or men make better translators or interpreters is not one that is frequently asked. Perhaps this is because a career in […]