Lost In Translation. This is an interesting article from a reader's perspective. We translators will always do better to remember the audience for whom we are translating. Allison
A&A confusion
In my world A&A is shorthand for all those jolly acronyms and abbreviations one has to straddle with elegance when translating. Time was I had the English and French A&As for all United Nations organizations, and their long versions down pat. Ditto arbitrary bits of German legislation. Green-eggs-and-ham style, I could say them standing on... Continue Reading →
Mnah-mnah
Assumption As a point of departure, let's just assume I am nuts on two counts: I have decided to participate seriously this year in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which promises, "thirty days and nights of literary abandon". The goal is to write a novel within the month of November of 50,000 words or longer.... Continue Reading →
Aha! Nataly Kelly: 10 Ways Translation Shapes Your Life
Nataly Kelly: 10 Ways Translation Shapes Your Life. So many have shared this article one way or other today. I am simply joining the crowd by reblogging this excellent article. So much of the time, translators remain invisible. We are the unnamed writers of press articles, we are the ones who fixed the clause numbering... Continue Reading →
I ♥ Adobe Reader X
A few days ago, patenttranslator admitted that his new best dictionary-friend is Google Translate in a well-balanced and well-reasoned post. —Yes, there is a relatively small population of Earthlings who have dictionaries for friends. Weird, possibly, but true. Some have had relationships with dictionaries since earliest childhood. Most adherents to this subculture conduct relationships with multiple dictionaries... Continue Reading →
Simon, Garfunkel and Yoda
It all started when a fellow translator posted an image of Yoda, of Star Wars fame, on her Facebook wall. The speech balloon said, "OOYL", which, of course, is short for "Only once, you live". Despite obvious pronunciation difficulties, I prefer Yoda's rendition to the now ubiquitous YOLO. "My favourite, he is", I commented. "Ha!",... Continue Reading →
Revise that!
WARNING: THIS ARTICLE IS DEFINITELY ABOUT THE REVISION OF TRANSLATIONS. THERE ARE NO PICTURES. JUST WORDS. YES, I USED CAPITAL LETTERS. I must have been feeling upbeat yesterday. Why else would I accept a couple of assignments involving the revision of translations from German into English? There is nothing unusual about this. The last revision I... Continue Reading →
Going dental
I was going to call this post "a day in the life" or some such, but that simply would not be true. A more apt description would be an irregular day in the life during my least productive summer on record. Whenever I have something to do which is going to disrupt my preferred pattern,... Continue Reading →
That elusive pair of jeans 