A blog about translation, writing and language in all its glorious aspects
January will soon be here and it’ll be time to make yet another New Year’s Resolution to declutter. But sometimes it pays to be selective about what you throw out. I submitted a bid recently for a contract to translate “documents relating to the policies and administration of the European Union”. To take part, you had …
Continue reading “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath-water. Or, go easy on the decluttering”
How do graphic designers do it? I’m working on a new logo, for personal rather than business use. Or rather, Zoë Shuttleworth of Rude Goose is working on it, and I’m no doubt driving her round the bend with my contradictory input. This probably sounds like a vanity project but there’s a motivational reason behind …
I’ve been a Macintosh user since 1987 — the photo above shows my very first Mac and the one I’m using now. I bought the first one purely for its size — we lived in a 2-room flat and I needed a computer that would fit on the desk in the corner of our living/dining …
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 …
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 …
The title of my post on “bamboozled” comes from the wonderful song “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered“, from the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey. From a language perspective, here’s the Online Etymology Dictionary again, on “glamour”: glamour (n.) 1720, Scottish, “magic, enchantment” (especially in phrase to cast the glamor), a variant of Scottish gramarye “magic, enchantment, …
Continue reading “Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – and true glamour”
Back in October 2010 I wrote a post on Internet gems. One of the “gems” was DOSANKODEBBIE’S ETEGAMI NOTEBOOK, written by Deborah Davidson, an Etegami artist and Japanese to English translator. Since the earthquaki and tsunami of 11 March, Deborah has written a series of blog posts on “humanizing the quake”. They celebrate Japan’s people and customs, and …
Two celebrations today: Italy’s birthday (150th anniversary of Italian Unification) and St. Patrick’s Day. To continue the theme of my last two posts, Kate Smith suggests in the blog Live in Full Colour that St. Patrick’s colour is not green, but blue. Indeed, the emerald tones of the Chicago river and celebratory St. Patrick’s day beer are …
One of the messages I try to convey to school pupils when I talk to them about language learning is that languages are relevant and might actually help them in later life. So I was delighted to read about a study (by Panos Athanasopoulos of Newcastle University, and others) on how language affects the way we see …
Continue reading “Yet another business case for teaching the language love”
I wrote a post last June entitled “La plume de ma tante…”, about the associations of the word “plume”. In 2010 we had the ash plume from Eyjafjallajökull, in Iceland, and the plume produced by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And now we’re hearing about a radioactive plume from Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear …