When people discuss sex in English, they use certain sexual expressions that anyone familiar with sex understands. The most common and very appropriate sexual expression that should be used when talking about sex is to have sex. When you say you want to make love, you...
These days global marketing has gained in popularity. This means more and more businesses around the world are dealing with each other and often they speak different languages. It is therefore necessary for these companies to translate content from a foreign...
There is plenty of literature devoted to the beginnings of translation. From the tower of Babel in which the Bible recommends using different languages to the Age of Babel Fish, an excellent translation service, much water has flown beneath the bridge. With the advent...
“I’m bilingual (or practically bilingual) and have been translating most of my life. Will anyone pay me to translate corporate documentation from home as a freelancer?” The quick answer is, “Yes, but it’s not as easy as it sounds”. Setting up as a translator is very...
As we’ve mentioned in the past, language forms part of a country’s identity. If we lose our language or if we’re forced to speak another (due to either dictatorial reasons – as was the case in Spain under Franco, who forced the Basques, Galicians, Catalans, Valencians...
The finals of the well-known “Eurovision Song Contest” is this Saturday, May 13th, in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. I know, it's not like it's the Super Bowl and there's a halftime show with Beyoncé singing, but it's fun to watch. Just FYI, Spain has won this contest...
It seems like English is everywhere nowadays. It matters not where you go, speakers of all tongues are rapidly, and quite comfortably, incorporating new English buzzwords into their native languages. I remember being surprised two years ago when I heard a group of...
I have a small addiction to movie trailers. When I go to the cinema, I enjoy watching the trailers as much as the movie itself, and I can literally spend hours, on YouTube watching one after another. Yesterday a headline mentioning a future release caught my eye. It...
When I was young, a teacher taught us about the importance of commas with a story in Spanish: “Once upon a time, a prisoner who was about to be executed asked the king for a commutation. The king heard him out but decided he should be punished for his crimes. He wrote...
All over the news these days is talk of the Dutch elections and their so called “European Trump” – the far-right Geert Wilders, who earned his party an extra 5 seats (still too few to make him prime minister). Linguistically speaking, it’s still curious that the...