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New Year, new you. It’s that time where you reflect on your failings and resolve to improve. For me, it’s something of an annual tradition to commit to resurrecting my fading, and frankly never brilliant, Spanish skills. Last year I made a good stab at it and lasted several months…

It’s almost as traditional as the tinsel, mince pies and yule log. No, I’m not talking about Christmas stockings, I’m referring to the debate about inappropriate festive greetings. Whether it’s claims that “Seasons Greetings” is offensive to Christians for failing to refer to the true reason for festivities, or suggestions…

Even the most diligent translator occasionally needs some distraction from work. This week’s blog takes a trawl through linguistic Twitter in search of entertainment and education that might even tenuously be described as working. Of course, you can dutifully follow whichever agencies you work for and use your Twitter profile…

Translation is different from other forms of writing in that the basic material already exists when you start. The translator’s job is to reproduce the content so the target audience can access the text. But in other respects translation has much in common with creative writing, journalism and commercial copywriting.…

I have recently been immersed in the Neapolitan Novels, a series of four books written in Italian under the pseudonym Elena Ferrante. Sadly Italian is not a language I speak, so I have been dependent on the translations by Ann Goldstein. In fact, it was really my interest in Goldstein…

Earlier this year, women’s rights activist Maria Beatrice Giovanardi found herself looking for synonyms for the word “woman” using various online search engines. She was unimpressed with the results and reports on her experience in an article for the online publishing platform Medium. Describing the dictionary outputs as “patronising, misogynistic,…

With Halloween just around the corner, this week’s blog is inspired by a tweet from the wonderful @tweetolectology. This language and geography focused Twitter account is the brainchild of an ESRC funded collaboration between the universities of Cambridge and Lancaster investigating the diffusion of morphosyntactic innovations using social media. The…

The body achieves what the mind believes*. Or so the saying goes. It is widely accepted that the mind has a far greater role to play in endurance sports than, for example, when running the 100 metres. October will see another attempt by Eliud Kipchoge to run a marathon in…

Wednesday October 16th marked the second International Pronouns Day. Organisers hope to make “respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns commonplace”. Harnessing language to bring about cultural change is nothing new, nor are the impassioned opinions voiced as a consequence. Pronouns are little words that pack a big punch. If…

A trip abroad offers ripe pickings for the travelling translator. On our recent trip to Spain my kids developed a real knack for tracking down comedy English text. Amateur translations in hotel rooms are always worth a chuckle: “Don’t let the balcony open. We are not responsibles if there is…