Is the dictionary sexist? And does it matter?
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, sexist or offensive” she then […]
Can dialectal prejudice contribute to miscarriages of justice?
Can prejudice against a dialect potentially influence decisions made in the criminal justice system? That is the question at the heart of a fascinating paper by John Rickford and Sharese King published in Language: A Journal of the American Linguistic Society. The paper investigates whether a jury’s attitude towards a witness’s dialect could cause […]
The Oscars – Best Foreign Language Films for 2017
Excitement is mounting in the film industry at the prospect of the annual Oscars ceremony on February 26th and there is one award category in particular which will be of interest to those working in translation: the Best Foreign Film award. To be eligible for the award each film must be a feature-length motion picture […]
Facebook: paving the way for intelligent auto translation
Facebook: paving the way for intelligent auto translation We’ve discussed in several previous posts about the perils of auto translation, machine translation, the delights of Google Translate and so on. We have also looked at what poor translations cost to businesses and individuals, and have even highlighted some particularly bad examples that major corporations have […]
Translation apps: is our language history and future in danger?
In our past 2 posts we’ve looked at the good and bad points of Google Translate. 10 years down the line it is undoubtedly helping many people with their language quandaries. That said, it’s important to look at the flip side of the coin: are we becoming too reliant on technology for our languages? Here […]
Tattoos Leaving You Permanently Lost In Translation
I have a tattoo, something which I don’t necessarily regret now, but should I have had my time again I think I would probably not choose to ‘scar’ myself for life with one Japanese symbol. I often forget it’s there until someone spies it and then asks what it means; I laugh in a slightly […]
