One interesting way to consider the art of the translator is to compare it to that of a poet. Both attempt to express ideas in writing within some very specific constraints. The poet constrains his own work by setting rules such as metre and rhyme within which to...
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Manual d’estil – La redacció i l’edició de textos
My favourite book on translation – Hofstadter
It's time I mentioned my favourite book on translation: Le Ton beau de Marot - In Praise of the Music of Language, by Douglas Hofstadter, whom many will know as the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Le Ton Beau (a play on words on "tombeau")...
Enjoy some fruit
Here's some of the etymology of orange from www.etymonline.com: c.1300, from O.Fr. orenge (12c.), from M.L. pomum de orenge, from It. arancia, originally narancia (Venetian naranza), alt. of Arabic naranj, from Pers. narang, from Skt. naranga-s "orange tree," of...
Translation: Institutionalised airport mistake
A number of years ago, AENA, the Spanish airports authority, installed some software to announce flights. It involves piecing together bits of pre-recorded speech in various languages to compose messages which are read out on the public address system. It has to be...
Sprachbund: Europe in America
I think I've found a curious example of Sprachbund* in America. It concerns the use of the present perfect and simple past tense. Consider these pairs: I have just had breakfast (typical of British English) I just had breakfast (typical of US English) This is an...
False friends – serial music
In the early 20th century, the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (= beautiful mountain) devised a famous composition system based on giving equal weight to each of the twelve notes of the modern European scale. (He took pairs such as C-sharp and D-flat to be the...
Translation: An unborn metric baby?
Yesterday I was taken aback by reading about a metric baby. It was in a museum exhibit about pregnancy and babies. The original Spanish said the foetus, at a particular stage of its development "tenía medidas milimétricas" [literally "had millimetric...
“中文”，“汉语”，“普通话”，“国语”“中国话”
“中文”，“汉语”，“普通话”，“国语”“中国话” This entry discusses about the differences between some conceptions about the Chinese language which are often mixed up by foreigners. 很多朋友经常把上面几个概念混淆，以为这几个词差不多都是“Chinese”的意思。这里给大家详细地介绍一下，以正视听。...
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shakespeare's comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream" takes place on Midsummer' Night, the magical night of the summer solstice when anything can happen, including "A Dream". The indefinite article refers to the dream, not to the night, which is not just any summer night...