Voting is now open for the Top 100 Language Blogs 2010 competition organised by LexioPhiles, for which we’ve been nominated in the “Language Professionals” category. Voting takes place from 12-24 May 2010. If you’d like to vote for Words to good effect, you can do so here. Thank you! By Marian Dougan
Tag archives: translation
Top 100 Language Blogs 2010: we’ve been nominated!
We’ve been nominated as one of the Top 100 Language Blogs 2010 competition organised by LexioPhiles. As you can imagine, we’re well chuffed! Nominations are open until 11 May (23:59 hours German time). Voting will then take place from 12-24 May 2010. If you’d like to nominate Words to good effect (and we hope you …
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How to be a good client (1)
I’m currently translating a speech for a government speech-writer who’s a delight to work with. Here’s why. First, he gave us advance warning (of about 10 days) that he’d be working on a speech to be delivered in mid-April. He asked if we could be on stand-by over the Easter period to translate it. So …
Localisation, Kiwi style.
I received an email recently from BT encouraging me to sign up to the Terminate the Rate campaign. This aims to end the fee applied to landline calls to mobile phones, or to calls from mobiles to users on a different network. My first reaction was suspicion – a utilities company urging me to join …
Languages as they is spoke, by Catherine Tate
A little light relief for anyone working or sitting exams on this Spring Bank Holiday. And for long-suffering language teachers! and With thanks to Jill Sommer – I found these links on her Translation Musings blog, where I also learned that today’s a public holiday in the US too: Memorial Day. By Marian Dougan
Translators’ time warp – again
Once again my work days are out of kilter with the rest of the country – it’s a bank holiday here in the UK but business as usual for my clients in Italy. Today, however, my kids are out of synch too – like many of their schoolmates they’ve got Scottish Qualifications Authority exams. Why …
Faster typing and fewer typos
A productivity tip on typing expansion software “From the Desk of David Pogue” at the New York Times. Typing expansion applications work like Microsoft Office’s “AutoCorrect” feature but are system-wide and include a web-address shortening function: “Just copy some huge address, for example, and then type ‘/bitly’ into any program; TextExpander pastes in a tiny …
Ideas worth translating (2): a web that speaks your language
More from the New York Times on Web translation projects (this time from Leslie Berlin, writing in the Business pages). Projects featured include Lingua, the Global Voices translation project; Google in your language; Meedan.net and TED. As a professional translator, I have mixed feelings about such projects. Not that I fear for my job: Machine …
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Holey moly!
Dutch creative communications company Spranq has developed an ecofont that they say saves money and helps the environment by using less ink than other fonts. You can download the font free here. A professional version is also available for large organisations (Spranq will essentially punch holes in your corporate typeface to produce an environmentally-friendlier version). For people …
Ideas worth translating
TED: Ideas worth spreading is a web site featuring “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world”. To give you a flavour of the quality of the talks, you can rank them on the home page as: jaw-dropping, persuasive, courageous, ingenious, fascinating, inspiring, beautiful, funny or informative. The “Wow!” factor indeed. TED (which stands …