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In her book Sleeping Beauties, neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan explores the phenomenon of culture-bound illnesses around the world. The conditions she is interested in are psychosomatic disorders which arise due to a complex interaction between the mind and body, but also the cultural context in which an individual finds themselves. And…

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…

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…

“This is why you need to go on TikTok mum, you are missing out on quality content for your blog”. That was the advice of my middle daughter after she had patiently translated her reference to “the cozzie livs guy”, which had left me baffled. Now that cozzie livs has…

The need to translate English into English is more common than you might imagine, where phrases of English are deployed in a foreign language and have taken on an alternative meaning that isn’t appropriate in actual English text. There are lots of examples where the meaning has diverged completely from…

Prompted by the long dark evenings that dominate January and February in the UK, I am finally catching up and watching David Olusoga’s highly praised 2023 BBC series “Union”, which describes the historical origins and evolution of the country we refer to as the United Kingdom. Olusoga examines the threads…

The topic of false friends comes up regularly in translation, and this week’s collection of translation glitches are similar but perhaps better described as “friends that might lead you astray”. All the examples we discuss here have what seems to be an obvious solution in the target language, but this…

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…

Language — or rather text — played a key role in the recent high-profile departure of the president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay. The simple story is that Gay was found to have plagiarised other scholars’ work on multiple occasions both in her doctoral dissertation and in several published articles…

In 2014, the BBC’s Panorama programme reported on what was described as widespread cheating in English language tests that formed part of the international student visa approval process by the UK Home Office. This complex legal immigration story has been back in the news recently as new evidence has been…