The trouble with first impressions is that they tend to stick around and settle down. So it’s imperative we take special care when meeting someone for the first time, especially if this is a person we wish to establish a social, professional or diplomatic relationship with. In other words, our approach has to ensure mutual […]
Every once in awhile, we receive a translation project that has to do with one of my favorite hobbies: music. And although anyone familiar with music may think, “Easy! All music is in Italian!”, it’s not quite so simple. It is true that during the renaissance, Italian musical invention revolutionized Western music and more or […]
Located in the north of South America, above Brazil and between Guyana and French Guiana, is the Republic of Suriname. You might assume that if you speak Spanish or Portuguese you would be able to understand and be understood in all of Latin America. However, this small but multilingual country breaks that rule a bit. […]
As languages may differ in terms of structure, gender, and syntax; there’s something that most languages have in common (there are a few exceptions to the rule): they need Punctuation. Punctuation is what helps us make sense of what we read and say, a necessary evil which serves to contain the chaos inherent in language. […]
Is it fair to say that a language is non-inclusive or sexist? Most languages (mainly those derived from Latin and Greek) have a somewhat special quirk: grammatical gender. For example, one of the tricky things when learning French as a second language – at least for Spanish speakers – is when the same word has […]
Information density, as awkward as it sounds, is a term accepted by the academic community to describe how much information can be encoded in the elements of language. It is a measurement of the amount of data transmitted by a word or syllable or singular sound. Listen closely to a sound clip in Italian. If […]
This cheerful Latin phrase literally translates to, “Cesar has no power over grammarians.” And while it’s original intent may be to describe all the natural limits imposed on a ruler, I will wholeheartedly take it out of context in order to explain why I like it. I like it because it legitimizes a sort of […]
There are thousands of words and expressions that, for linguistic or cultural reasons, don’t have an exact equivalent in other languages. When translating, we must use our imagination and our linguistic abilities to incorporate them into the target text in the most natural way possible. In an earlier post in our collection of linguistic curiosities, […]
A few days ago I was struck by a sign that was written as: BEWARE OF “DOG”. This sparked a thought on the correct uses of quotation marks. Many times, they are used to draw attention to a word, as in this case; however, this option is not among the uses mentioned by the Real […]
Is the English language perfect as it is? As it continuously evolves (and sometimes regresses) and transforms, should there be a body in charge of regulating it? These are some of the questions that are being asked when it comes to establishing rules regarding the use of our widely spread language. The French language has […]