My muse, what ails this ardour? Mine eys be dym, my lymbs shake, My voice is hoarse, my throte scorcht, My tong to this roofe cleaves, My fancy amazde, my thoughtes dull’d, My head doth ake, my life faints My sowle begins to take leave, So greate a passion all feele,...
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Palindromes!
Today, some brain candy - palindromes! As any fule kno, a palindrome is a word or phrase which mirrors itself; in other words, which can be read backwards and forwards, as in the case of the famous opening gambit of the First Man to his ex-rib: Madam, I'm Adam....
The etymology of slave (and robot)
The word slave comes from the Byzantine Greek σκλάβος, via Middle Latin Sclavus, from which root Italian gets schiavo, French esclave, and Spanish esclavo. The original meaning of the word was ‘Slav’, as in ‘Slavic’: apparently a certain Otto the Great was such a...
Myriad myriads
Yesterday, in Mario Vargas Llosa’s La Fiesta del Chivo, I came across a word I didn’t know. It was: miríada. For my sins, I am accustomed to skipping over words that I don’t recognise, particularly in a long book like this one. My Spanish is of a sufficiently...
Our favourite translation/language blogs
Today we'd like to share with you a list of our favourite language/translation/grammar blogs...perfect for when you don't want to work but need to maintain a semblance of productivity... Dialect blog: http://dialectblog.com/ Language Log, of course:...
Vindaloo, Palaver, Marmalade: Lusitanianisms in English
Caipirinha, Capoeira, Samba - everyone knows a few words that English has adopted from Portuguese. But there is a notably extensive sub-strata of words which English owes to Portuguese. In the days of their vast maritime empire, the Portuguese propagated many new...
The ‘modern’ translation cycle
Perhaps what happened was that the industry finally caught up with the potential of the new tools. Perhaps the expansion of the global economy into previously under-exploited markets led to a change in perception of the importance of translation. Or perhaps this model...
Building ‘retroactive’ translation memories
We have emphasised the benefits and savings associated with building a Translation Memory (TM) for a particular customer, and the way that the TM gets better and better the more documents are processed using it. But a TM can also be built 'retroactively' - that is,...
Translation: commodity or service?
Often, the first thing people want to know when they need a professional translation is how much it is going to cost. This is clearly a crucial question, but one which becomes more nuanced as we start delving deeper into the nature of translation. In short, there are...
break the ice
As regular readers of this blog will be aware, the difference - or lack thereof - between European and Latin American Spanish is a vexed issue. We've said it before, but it bears repeating: there is such a thing as neutral Spanish, just as there is a more-or-less...