I’ve talked before about the list of glossaries that a friend of mine put together (and which I’m sure she’ll add to in the future). While going through these glossaries, I came across a couple of little grammar problems in Spanish that can be troublesome. The first topic is the use of the personal pronoun
Bad Santa — USA A Not so Saintly Santa — Argentina Santa is a Pervert — Czech Republic With such a straight forward original title, is such a liberal (and odd) translation of a movie title necessary? Marketing research and recent trends say yes. The title may be changed to account for cultural differences,
I’ve touched on the topic briefly before, but a recent project led me to further investigate the differences between British English and American English. A quick Internet search on American and British spelling differences provided me with more information than I could possibly digest in a year. This topic is apparen
Veo arboles verdes, rosas rojas tambien Las veo florecer para ti y para mi Y pienso para mi mismo, que mundo tan maravilloso. Sound familiar? I came across a site last week called Song Translator that while entertaining, shows just how difficult it is to produce a top-notch song translation. Like poetry, music lyrics have [
Poetry translations are notoriously difficult and force a translator to walk the fine line between accuracy and beauty. In a similar vein, song translations frequently receive a mixed reception. Case in point: the US National Anthem in Spanish. There have been a number of “Star Spangled Banner” translations, t
I found this nice little comic strip at Mox’s blog, a site put up by a fellow translator. I liked it because I feel like, to at least some extent, it shows what we translators go through at some point. When we are up to our eyes with work, an upcoming interview, when we can’t […]
Accent marks can be somewhat of a mystery to non-Spanish speakers. Even if the Spanish student (or translator…) remembers where in the word to put the accent mark, he or she still might not be sure how to do so. There are three basic ways to write Spanish accent marks. 1. Keyboard Setup (Windows) –Go […]
The Apple Ipod has taken the world by storm and, along with its sibling the Iphone, become the must have accessory for the 21st century. Each new Ipod has brought along a fresh idea, be it video capabilities or an insanely compact size. It has been heralded for much more than its entertainment capabilities, with […]
Twitter, tweet and tweak your heart out globally now with a number of new products and services. If you have not yet heard, Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows people to stay connected, and according to the New York Times, Twitter is “one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet.” Friends kee
George Bernard Shaw once said that “England and the United States are two languages separated by a common language,” and in the Canterville Ghost Oscar Wilde stated, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.” I don’t know who was first, but it’
The idea of machine translation was introduced to the general public on the 7th of January, 1954. The project was a collaboration between the University of Georgetown and IBM, who provided a model 701 to serve as the “brain” for the translation. The machine was fed over 60 relatively simple sentences in Russian
What is a glossary? A glossary is basically a catalog of words from a select discipline or area of study in which the terms are arranged alphabetically and defined, discussed and/or translated into another language. There are general glossaries on subjects like medicine, economics or art, for example, and then there are mor
Every word has a meaning, but some words have more than one, such as homonyms: bark, bear, groom, etc. Sometimes a word means or symbolizes “something more” and the author can give it a special meaning or name (the best example is “Rosebud” from Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane). The dictionary defi
I often wonder about the future of language. And yes, the singular “language.” In 2003, Hollywood released Code 46m a film that discusses something very similar to what I’d been wondering about. The movie takes place in the not-so-distant future with people “inside” and “outside” of
Some kids in the U.S. these days are helping their parents in a unique way: by serving as their personal interpreters and translators. Parents that do not speak or understand English get assistance from their kids in everything from ordering a pizza to medical exams. Is this a useful skill for kids or does it […]
The subject of bilingual education in the US is a hotly debated topic, but news source are frequently unclear in their definitions of what exactly bilingual education is. The general public is largely unaware that there exist a wide variety of programs for students whose native language is not English and assume that biling
After having received several valuable comments from readers, I’ve looked into Ideal Nol and Esperanto a bit more in an effort to differentiate their purposes, current and projected usage, and challenges that the languages face. Esperanto was created with the most honorable of ambitions: promote international understa
In the same vein as ttyl, lmao and gr8, Ideal Nol is a new language created by Enric Cabrejas that combines the simplicity (confusion) of abbreviated text messages and messenger conversations with the simplistic rules of Esperanto. The new form of expression was devised as a way for individuals without a common language to
How many words are there in Spanish? How about in English? Depending on who you ask, there are different answers… There is a certain tendency (among Spanish-speakers) to overestimate the number of words in Spanish as well as the overall variety of the language’s forms. Some say that it is out of a need to [&hell
This little box here is the prototype for what Fuji Xerox claims will revolutionize the translation industry. How does it work? You put a document written in one language into it and the translated version pops out in the EXACT SAME FORMAT. Currently, the machine only “reads” Japanese, but can translate into Eng