In honour of Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’ 400th anniversaries, twelve authors have written a new story inspired by their work – six each in English and Spanish – with an introduction by Salman Rushdie. As Rushdie points out, since England was still…
Blog Archives
Lunatics, lovers and poets in translation
Tagged with: And Other Stories, Cervantes, Christina MacSweeney, Deborah Levy, English, Kamila Shamsie, Nell Leyshon, Rosalind Harvey, Shakespeare, Soledad Puértolas, Spanish, Valeria Luiselli
Posted in books, literature, short stories, translation
Posted in books, literature, short stories, translation
Do Geese See God?
Do geese see God? (English) Knit again and you’ll get a beer (Neulo taas niin saat oluen, Finnish) It was raining bread in the garden (Aias sadas saia, Estonian) Maybe tomorrow that lady will give a cake to the hedgehogs…
Tagged with: English, Esperanto, Estonian, European Day of Languages, Finnish, Free Word Centre, German, Latin, Palindromes, Polish
Posted in language, translation, words
Posted in language, translation, words
Workers of the world unite: you have nothing to lose in translation
Billy Bragg had a 24-hour job at a moment’s notice. He was not going to get paid for his overtime. But he was on a mission. And he made the deadline. Hear him tell the story and sing his translation.…
Tagged with: American, Billy Bragg, British, Charles Hope Kerr, Chinese, English, Eugene Pottier, Finnish, French, German, internationale, Pertti Uotila, Pete Seeger, Polish, Russian, Tagalog, Thomas Nicholas, Tiananmen Square, Translation, Welsh
Posted in international, translation
Posted in international, translation
Visualising the translation: subtitling Pawlikowski’s Ida
Poland’s first Oscar for a ‘foreign language film’ went to Pawlikowski’s Ida this morning. Turning it from ‘foreign’ into English was not an easy process even for a film that the director, Paweł Pawlikowski, himself said in his acceptance speech…
Tagged with: English, Film, German, Ida, Oscars, Paweł Pawlikowski, Polish, subtitling, Translation
Posted in film, international, language, translation
Posted in film, international, language, translation
sounds British? Save our Sounds!
If, like me, you still regret getting rid of your lovingly created mix cassette tapes, complete with breath of radio 1 DJ at the end of each song, even though you haven’t had anything to play them on for years,…
Tagged with: British, British Library, English, Language, Save our Sounds, sound, Translation, Welsh
Posted in language, translation
Posted in language, translation
Rilke’s Advent
No-one does Advent better than the Germans. The Leo German dictionary usually has an excellent online advent calendar (in German, with poems and pictures for every day). So who better, I thought, to start Advent, than the German poet Rainer…
Tagged with: advent, English, German, Leo.org, Poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell, Translation
Posted in translation
Posted in translation
The Newest New Words
(Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, 1872, with John Tenniel’s illustration) To be master or mistress of meanings, you need to be up to date with good sources. You might remember that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) will deliver a new…
Tagged with: Alice in Wonderland, English, German, John Tenniel, Language, Lewis Carroll, neologisms, Through the Looking Glass, Translation, words
Posted in language
Posted in language
keeping the language alive: polari, manx, cornish
When I was a teenager in Cardiff, the family next door spoke Welsh, but most people around spoke English. When I went to babysit, the boys were in shock: how could this other person speak their home language too? They…
Tagged with: Cornish, Endangered Languages Project, English, Gaelic, Manx, Mick Paynter, Morrissey, Ned Maddrell, Polari, Welsh
Posted in international, translation, words
Posted in international, translation, words
100 years of pacifism 1914-2014
100 years ago today, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was shot in Sarajevo, triggering what H.G. Wells called the “war that will end war”; it wasn’t long before the irony of that phrase was felt. The Oxford English Dictionary has…
Tagged with: Émile Arnaud, English, First World War, French, Language, Oxford English Dictionary, Pacifism, Translation, words
Posted in history, international, language, words
Posted in history, international, language, words
moral language?
If you speak a language well enough to get along, but not really well, it’s an effort. You need time to think and process and a lot of energy can go into making sure you get the grammar right. As…
Tagged with: Albert Costa, English, French, international, Korean, language learning, moral language, Spanish, Translation
Posted in international, language, translation
Posted in international, language, translation
