Blog Archives

Gendered gloss

At the end of women in translation month, where are all the women in the translator’s toolbox? Glossarissimo collates glossaries and resources on EVERYTHING from watermark terminology to a dictionary of Victorian slang. It really is useful and comprehensive. When you’re

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Posted in international, language

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

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Posted in language

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

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Posted in history, international, language, words

april fish!

Happy April Fool’s Day! If you’re English, you’ve only got till noon to play your tricks or you’re the fool. If you’re over the channel, your day may involve April Fish, usually made of paper and attached to someone’s back

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Posted in April Fool's Day, international, language, words

¡habla conmigo! – talk with me!

If you want someone’s mind to grow, you have to start a conversation with them as soon as they’re born. It’s not enough for them to hear language around them, adults talking to each other, people talking on TV or

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Posted in Illustration, language, words

world book day 2014: binge-read or savour?

World Book Day today, and there’s a £1 book for everyone under 18 in the British Isles (discussion of the politics of that short-hand term another time, please). There’s an app, there are trailers for the books, you can win a

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Posted in books, language, literature, Word of the Year 2013, words, World Book Day

more gender pronouns: they

Facebook has finally broadened its pronoun options from 2 to 50. This should theoretically stop those odd posts with the “wrong” gender assignment, and make a lot of transgendered and queer people very happy. The only problem is that you have to

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Posted in gender, language, translation, words

divided by a common language

I started teaching English while living in Poznań in 1999. I only knew two other native speakers there at the time, Peter and Peter, who were both from the East Coast of the US. And sometimes, we simply didn’t understand

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Posted in international, language, President's Day, translation

year of the horse: China in 10 words

Happy Chinese New Year – Xin Nian Kuai Le! Gong Hey Fat Choy! To celebrate the dawning of the Year of the Horse, it’s time to read about China. The London Review Bookshop recommends an introduction to Chinese poetry, including

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Posted in international, language, literature, poetry, translation, words, Year of the Horse

more stories, more words

“One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.”— Evelyn Waugh “Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced

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Posted in international, language, literature, words
advent Alice in Wonderland American And Other Stories Antonia Lloyd-Jones Arabic Argentina Beowulf Berlin Best Translated Book Award Bible books Brazil Brazilian Portuguese British British Library Buddhism Catalan Children's Books China Chinese Christmas Christmas Carols Contemporary Czesław Miłosz Danish Dari David Hackston Dublin Literary Award English Estonian Fantasy Farsi Fiction Finland Finland 100 Finlandia Prize Finnish Flemish Free Word Centre French George Szirtes German Greek Hebrew Herbert Lomas Herta Müller history Hungarian Iceland Idioms Illustration India international International Translation Day Irish Gaelic Italian J. R. R. Tolkien Japanese Jenny Erpenbeck Johanna Sinisalo Korean Language language learning Languages Latin Literature Lola Rogers Lord of the Rings Mabinogion Man Booker International Prize Maori Maria Turtschaninoff Moomins New Year Nobel Prize Nobel Prize for Literature Norwegian Old English Olga Tokarczuk Owen Witesman Oxford English Dictionary Penguin PEN Translation Prize Persian Philip Boehm Phoneme Media Poetry Poetry Translation Centre Polish Portuguese Pushkin Press Queer Romanian Rosa Liksom Russian Salla Simukka Second World War Short Stories Sofi Oksanen Spanish Stanisław Barańczak Suomi100 Susan Bernofsky Svetlana Alexievich Swedish Switzerland Thomas Teal Tibetan Tove Jansson transation Translation translator Translators Without Borders Valentine's Day Wales Warsaw Welsh Wisława Szymborska Witold Szabłowski Women in Translation Month words Words without Borders writing YA

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