While President Obama has long been lauded for his eloquent speech (see my post “Obama and Power of Words”), as well as his intellect and professionalism, he has also been slammed for his grammar. Obama’s most widely criticized “mistake” is doubtlessly his “misuse” of pronouns.
Like so many American English speakers, myself included, Obama often uses [...]
Archive for February, 2009
Obama and the Grammar Police
Friday, February 27th, 2009What is a Linguistic Loan?
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
This type of word is one that is taken from one language and used in another without translation, demonstrating a lexical vacuum in the latter.
What is the difference between a foreign word and a loan word? A foreign word tends to, at first, remain unchanged and then undergo a phonetic and morphological adaptation. With [...]
Split Infinitives and the Monster of Prescriptive Grammar
Friday, February 13th, 2009Yes, the Monster of Prescriptive Grammar has reared its ugly head, and boy did it choose the occasion to do so – the inauguration of the first African-American president of the United States. For those who watched President Obama take the oath of office, I’m sure you found it awkward, ridiculous, shameful or just bizarre [...]
How to Translate in 2009 (First Part)
Friday, February 6th, 2009When we were studying in the university, the professors constantly reminded us that one must have dictionaries on his/her desk in order to translate since the research work required of translators is very important in order to validate our work.
Nevertheless, today our bosses and clients don’t see a single dictionary on our desk most of [...]
The importance of expert translators
Friday, February 6th, 2009After my post from last week discussing translation experts and the role they play, I was reminded by a friend about the Madeleine McCann case. For those who are not familiar with this story, Madeleine was a three-year-old girl vacationing with her family in Portugal in 2007 when she disappeared one night while her parents [...]
English-only hurts immigrants and translators
Thursday, February 5th, 2009Last month, voters in the City of Nashville, Tennessee went to the voting booths to decide whether to make English the city’s official language. And, thank goodness, they voted against the proposal that would have made “Music City” the biggest U.S. city with such official language legislation. This is good news, not just for the [...]
References for legal writing
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009Recently I had to work on a long translation of a legal document, which is not the field I work with most often. I found myself once again working very hard on conforming to the standards and practices of “legal writing” in English. The concept is quite vague, since many options exist for word choice, [...]
