St. Jerome: a good role model for translators?

Saints Alive, a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London, features “large-scale kinetic sculptures by Michael Landy that bring a contemporary twist to the lives of the saints”. The saints on display include St. Jerome, renowned for his translation of the Bible and the patron saint of translators. St. Jerome (borrowed from a painting by Cosimo Tura from 1470) is shown …

Didn’t make it to the ITI conference? Check out these snapshots

A very quick post – a few links to blogs and videos, essentially – for those of you who didn’t make it to the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) conference in Gatwick in May and are curious to know what everyone got up to. Here are some snapshots: Reflections on the ITI Conference, by …

Fee wizardry: a free online conversion tool

No, Dorothy, we’re in Kirkudbrightshire. And they use £ here (for now, anyway), not $ I spent a lot of time the other day (way too much time) on preparing quotes for translation jobs. Some were based on fee(£)/word, and a couple on fee(€)/standard page (which in my case equates to 1500 characters including spaces, …

How good is your grammar?

Primary-school pupils in England have been sitting a new grammar, spelling and punctuation test (check out the specimen questions) as part of their final year assessment. Teachers have criticised the test, saying that there are better ways of assessing pupils’ English-language skills: Grammar is vital but you test someone’s writing skills by examining their writing. Just …