The History of Sign Language: The Deaf Community of Martha’s Vineyard The history of the early settlers to Martha’s Vineyard, shows us what a Utopian deaf community could look like! Furthermore, it displays the adaptive capability of both the human mind, and our human...
Language Curiosities
SEO Tools for WordPress
Using WordPress with WPML can boost your site When you use WordPress to build your site, a lot of the SEO work is already done for you. WordPress produces simple HTML, which Google easily understands. Furthermore, many themes come with fields for SEO. If your theme...
What is Multilingual SEO and how to manage it
An introduction to Multilingual SEO One of the major benefits in running a multilingual site is appearing high on Google search results in different languages. The process of promoting your site to the top is called Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO. When it’s...
Coronavirus pandemic: Can we learn from the Plague?
Separated by centuries and yet there are many similarities The coronavirus pandemic is not the world's first! Nor, sadly, will it be the last. So what lessons can we learn from the epidemics, and pandemics, that came before? The Bubonic Plague spread throughout Europe...
A Brief History of Sign Language: Part Two
After being recognized as a reliable method of communication, sign language was adopted by countries across the globe. People who previously were not able to hear or speak now used this newfound language to express their feelings. This is the second part of a two-part...
Translating a Sacred Tree Bark?
The other day we were translating a text about the gods of the Nile from Spanish into French. According to the source text, the god was accustomed to sailing down the river "en una corteza sagrada". This literally means "a piece of sacred tree bark". The French was,...
The Etymology of Privilege
Origins and History of the word ‘Privilege’ According to the Oxford dictionary, etymology is the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history. It allows us to see, when and how a certain word appeared in the...
Grammatical Gender: a mystery to many!
For most native English speakers, grammatical gender is a mysterious thing. Why, they say, should an inanimate object like a chair be feminine in Italian but masculine in Russian? The first thing to note is that the gender isn't so much a property of the object...
A Brief History of Sign Language
The origin of sign language remains a mystery. Some date its origin to Christianity and the Renaissance, while others speculate it to be even older. The scientific evidence at hand sheds light on this practice from all sorts of angles. From research on hominid bones,...
Lost in Translation: When Translators Fail!
Not all translations are the same – be careful with your words! Being able to speak two or more languages doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re good at translation. Sure, being able to speak two languages allows you to communicate. However, in important situations...