Asterix was one of my first devotions as a reader. I started reading the comic so young that, even before understanding that the story takes place somewhere in Europe two thousand years ago, I noticed that the coexistence of different languages was a very present element throughout the strip. This occurs between the language to […]
As language professionals—translators, writers, editors, literature students, etc.—we tend to feel outraged whenever we hear or see grammatical, spelling or semantic errors, which unfortunately are becoming more common and generally accepted by laypersons, including friends and family. What’s worse, this is also happening in many media outlets. We are often shocked by the unrefined turn […]
If you’re someone who can’t stand the punctuation errors and spelling mistakes that are abundant in print media, or someone who finds himself or herself constantly correcting journalists on TV for using the wrong tense, then March 4 is your day! Since 2008, this day has been recognized in the United States as the “National […]
Noam Chomsky is a celebrity in many fields. Some translators get surprised when I mention that he is also well known in Computer Science. He invented (discovered?) a classification of grammars as formal systems according to their power of expression (or processing): the Chomsky Hierarchy. This scheme classifies the languages generated by the grammars in […]
A delightful example illustrates well one of the earliest myths about the problems that may arise when trying to translate text using a computer. The biblical sentence “The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak” was translated into Russian by a machine, and then back into English. The result was “The vodka is good, but […]
There is little consensus in the English world on the distinction between acronyms and abbreviations when dealing with shortened versions of words and phrases. Here are some aspects to consider: Abbreviation The most general term, which loosely applies to all shortening of words or phrases, is “abbreviation”. This term covers all examples, from contracting the […]
I have already touched upon how our simian relatives seem to be making strides in communication with language here. Now word comes from the Ivory Coast that it appears that the Campbell’s monkey in the Tai National Park there is able to take its simple calls (“hok hok hok!” or “boom boom”) and combine them […]
In my last post I covered how a professional proofreading covers the aspects of style, cohesion, and grammar in a work of any size. There is one other aspect that I failed to mention that definitely does deserve a mention: clarity. Translators and, to a lesser extent, editors can easily get lost in the content, […]
The term “proofreading” is bandied about in our industry when dealing with translations or simple publications of writings in one language that are not translated. Yet many of the people I have encountered have no real training in the craft, so it is important to establish exactly what a professional agency would be looking for […]