The king’s speech — and how to translate it

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve had a speech-flavoured working week. Translating a speech is a good opportunity for translators to provide added value for their clients. Not only should our translated text read fluently and naturally, it should also be easy for non-native-speaking clients to read aloud (and for their audience to …

The king’s speech (not to mention the queen and the presidents’)

It’s been quite a month for historic speeches in the UK and Ireland, with the speeches by Queen Elizabeth, President McAleese and President Obama during the Queen’s State Visit to Ireland and President Obama’s to Ireland and the UK. And it’s been the year of The King’s Speech (the film, that is), featuring Lionel Logue …

Stormy weather

Stormy weather, written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler and here sung by Lena Horne, from the film of the same name. I should clarify that it’s blowing a gale here in Scotland today — trees uprooted and blocking the roads, trains cancelled, people stranded. Hence the choice of music. By Marian Dougan

Passionate about perspective

Have you got any website words that set your teeth on edge? “Passionate” is one of mine, as in “we’re passionate about quality” (or about our work, our clients etc). First, it’s over-used and doesn’t do anything to distinguish company A from company B. If everybody’s passionate about their work and their clients, where’s the …

We have ways of making you pay (we wish)

If you run your own business, you surely know (and if you don’t, your accountant will soon tell you) that cash-flow is king. There’s no point having thousands of pounds/euros/dollars in the payment pipeline if your bank account’s empty and you can’t pay your suppliers (or, ultimately, the mortgage). I work a lot with Italian …

Top 100 Language Blogs 2011 – voting now open

Voting is now open for the Top 100 Language Blogs 2011 competition organised by LexioPhiles, for which we’ve been nominated in the “Language Professionals” category. Voting takes place from 17 to 29 May 2011. If you’d like to vote for Words to good effect, you can do so here. Thank you! By Marian Dougan

Converting PDFs (at a reasonable price) without losing the formatting — or your temper.

Back in November 2010 I wrote about Nitro Software’s free PDF to Word web-based application for converting PDF files (with graphics) to editable Word files (with the graphics more or less intact). Since then, I’ve invested in Docudesk’s deskUNPDF convertor, which costs about $70 for a single-user licence (add another 14 or 20 dollars if you want 2- …

The linguistic expertise of British diplomacy

The British Foreign Minister, William Hague, has just made a statement to Parliament on Britain’s future diplomatic network (11 May 2011). It describes some of the spending cuts, rationalisation and refocusing of the UK’s diplomatic network that will be taking place throughout the current Parliament. Mr Hague adds that: This development of our network should be seen alongside …

Calm down dear, it’s only language

Richard Alcock, the Guardian newspaper’s business production editor, has written a post in the Mind Your Language blog offering David Cameron advice on the use of catchphrases. The post is inspired by the Prime Minister’s recent use of “Calm down dear” when addressing Angela Eagle, a female Labour Party MP — and Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, no less. Her …

Take our poll: should new clients test your skills or hire you on trust?

The Institute of Translation and Interpreting’s 25th Anniversary Conference took place in Birmingham on 7-8 May. It was a fantastic event that gave us all lots to think about and plenty of great ideas to put into practice. One of the workshops, No translator is an island, examined the sort of human interactions translators have to …