There are a lot of these lists of 'untranslatable' words on the internet. Of course, it's not that they are untranslatable, simply that there is no precise (i.e. one-word-long) equivalent in English, hence their charm - they seem to compress an entire perspective on...
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Machine Translation vs. Translation Memory
What is the difference between Machine Translation and Translation Memory? There seems to be some confusion about what, precisely, distinguishes Machine Translation from Translation Memory. This may be the result of the similarity of their acronyms in English - MT and...
What is a guiri?
I had a strange experience the other day: I ascended to my roof terrace to take the afternoon Barcelona sun, and someone shouted at me. He was one of a group of young guys standing on another roof terrace, about a football pitch away, and what he shouted was: ‘¡Ei!...
Humours, saudade, sawda, melancholy
Ancient Greek medicine held that the human body was filled with four basic substances. These bodily fluids are known today as humours, which in a healthy person were maintained in balance. All diseases and disabilities sprung from an excess or deficit of one or more...
The audience of a translation
It may seem obvious, but it is vitally important that from the outset both you and your language service provider (LSP) have a clear idea of exactly who the 'target audience' of the translation will be. All business documentation is directed at one or more groups of...
The etymology of route
The words ‘root’ and ‘route’ are homophones in British English (in other words, they are pronounced in the same way), whilst most Americans would pronounce 'route' to rhyme with 'out' or 'shout'. The root is that part of a plant which grows downward into the soil,...
Guesswork in translation
Translators are usually quite good at guessing what words and expressions mean, and at QuickSilver we sometimes have to work hard to prevent them using this "skill". Why does this happen? Qualified translators generally have university degrees which include some study...
The etymology of the dollar
The word dollar has a curious and convoluted history. It is derived, as a word, from Thaler, which itself comes from the the Joachimsthal silver mine in Bohemia. In 1519, the silver from Joachimsthal was first used to mint the Bohemian coin Guldengroschen (‘great...
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SEO and multi-lingual websites
One of the most important aspects of Internet marketing is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), the name given to techniques, which increase a website's ranking in search engines. These techniques fall into two categories: 'white hat' and 'black hat' SEO. 'White hat' SEO...