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Trademarked names can be a tricky problem for translators. It is not unusual to find the source language has a widely used generic term for a particular item, whereas the target language may colloquially use a trademarked term that is off limits in formal documentation. A common example of genericide…

Linguists would normally relish the prospect of a dictionary definition entering the public consciousness and becoming a heated topic of debate. But few have wanted to venture an opinion about the current wrangling over the meaning of the word woman. And who can blame them as the opposing factions each…

To celebrate this year’s Book Lovers Day (back in August) the language learning marketplace Preply compiled a report on The Most Translated Books in the World. The result is a rather charming, whirlwind tour of global literature depicted in a series of maps, highlighting the top text in each country.…

Literacy and numeracy skills are a key focus in every school system, but a UK All-Party Parliamentary Group has highlighted oracy as an integral aspect of education that is currently not being given sufficient attention. The Oracy APPG was established in 2019 and has just published its final report entitled…

According to a survey by the British Council, Latin is only taught at key stage 3 in 2.7% of the UK’s state schools compared to 49% of independent schools. Does it matter? The UK government thinks it does and has launched the Latin Excellence Programme to “level up opportunities for…

Translators regularly come across errors, omissions and other indications of documents that are works in progress in the source language. My favourite is when I discover a chunk of Lorem ipsum, the classic placeholder or filler text, which the author has forgotten to replace with the desired final wording. This…

The Australian's talent for slang was highlighted recently in a tweet by Oliver Burkeman, who declared “Today I learned of the Australian COVID-era abbreviations ‘quazza’ and ‘locky d’. It’s like some kind of compulsion with you guys, isn’t it?” The replies quickly pointed out other Aussie Covid slang such as…

If you are in search of some idle online linguistic browsing guaranteed to boost morale, take a deep dive into the magnificent “positive lexicography” project curated by Dr Tim Lomas. This is a collection of untranslatable words related specifically to wellbeing, highlighting the relationship between untranslatable words and positive psychology.…

BBC’s Law in Action programme recently described an interesting linguistic quirk in Scottish law, which is currently under scrutiny. Under Scots law, jury trials can issue one of three verdicts; the defendant can be convicted (found “guilty”), or alternatively they can be acquitted in one of two ways (“not guilty”,…

Such are the vagaries of the Twitter algorithm you can never quite be sure what will pop up on your timeline. Sometimes it successfully manages to supply you with content that genuinely piques your interest and so it was that a tweet by the Northern Ireland Minister of Justice Naomi…