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All too often recently I have withdrawn from following current affairs in a bid to protect my sanity. But when I dared poke my head out to see the latest excitement that Brexit Britain and the Tory leadership campaign has to offer, I noticed that language in the media has…

If you own or manage a UK-based business with an English-only website, you may be missing out on critical growth opportunities by opting not to offer overseas visitors an online experience in their native language. Many UK companies assume that being based in an English-speaking country gives them an in-built…

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”…

Liberal linguists love to gang up on pedants who obsess about split infinitives and the death of the subjunctive. Language changes after all, and a language that fails to evolve is dead. I still remember my fury as an 8 year old being hauled up in front of the class…

In May this year, the children’s author and illustrator Judith Kerr died at the age of 95. She is probably best known for enduring classics such as “The Tiger Who Came To Tea” and the Mog books. Her books have been translated into 20 different languages and one of these…

Like many jobs today, translation work involves hours tied to your computer typing furiously. It’s hardly a recipe for a healthy brain or body. If you work exclusively from home you may have no human interaction at all except via email. This week’s blog takes a look at some ideas…

“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…

“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…

This week’s blog post delves into the entertaining world of the grammagram (also gramogram), a group of letters which can be pronounced to form one or more words. Texting aficionados will be familiar with examples such as “CUL8R” (see you later) and “B4” (before), and the term “IOU” is so…

Most of us working in the translation industry will have long since forgotten the journey to acquiring a second (or third, or more) language. Quite honestly, learning a new language can be painfully dull. Before you become reasonably proficient, you can’t say anything particularly interesting because you lack the vocabulary…