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One of the benefits of doing regular review work as a translator is that it offers useful reminders of things to watch out for in your own translation tasks. It is always easier to spot errors or stylistic glitches in someone else’s work, so this is a great opportunity to…

One of the first things I noticed many moons ago when working as an au pair in Germany, was the way the definite article was frequently stuck in front of people’s names “Die Petra …”, “Der Klaus …” etc. With certain regional variations, this definite article plus name formulation crops…

This blog traditionally closes out the year by offering a round-up of the various dictionary Word of the Year nominations. Arguably the most prestigious WOTY award comes from the Oxford Dictionaries team, and the 2023 selection of rizz flummoxed your blog author so comprehensively that she needed the Christmas holidays…

My ever-expanding list of language topics I should know more about has long since had sign language on it, and my interest increased when my middle daughter selected a university credit in British Sign Language as part of her liberal arts degree. So I was primed to notice a recent…

Back in 2018 Rhodri Williams, the outgoing director of Ofcom Wales, warned that the growth of streaming services such as Netflix could have a detrimental impact on original language content aimed at a “geographically-specific audience”. The power of the market means that global players are most interested in content that…

Every translator understands that dictionaries have their limits when it comes to selecting the right word. A fascinating example of this cropped up recently in a piece I was working on for a German financial services company. The topic was cryptocurrencies and particularly the evolving technologies in this rapidly changing…

Words do not have neat one-to-one mappings between languages. You do not need to be a very advanced language learner to be aware of that phenomenon, so it’s surprising how often this seems to trip up the unwitting translator. For example, German legal documents frequently distinguish between Schriftform and Textform,…

After another immersion in the world of fashion translation, I have once again emerged in awe of the repetitive and often vacuous nature of fashion marketing texts. Sorry fashion people, but it’s true. Once you get past the basic fact that you are promoting a pair of trousers, a dress,…

In January, this blog examined language data emerging from the 2021 census in England and Wales showing an ongoing increase in the proportion of residents who do not regard English as their main language. Shortly after this, a suggestion emerged that this population of non-native speakers could be the cause…

A few years ago, my eldest daughter and I set ourselves the task of hiking the North Downs Way, a long distance trail which takes walkers from Farnham to Dover via the Surrey Hills and over the Kent Downs. The aim was to do a couple of days at time,…