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Translating: Is there method in the madness?
How do translators work? How do I work? Are the two the same? Earlier today, I got on to thinking about these exact questions and almost instantly decided to write a post looking at how I actually translate. However, rather than getting into discussions over personal preferences for certain terminology resources or how to set…
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Key Translation Skills: Write Right
Translators as professional writers When it comes to improving your translation skills, the natural reaction is often to devote additional hours to that all-important source language savvy. However, despite the undoubted centrality of this skill set, there remains another area that is often inexplicably relegated to an afterthought in translator training in spite of its…
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2014 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here's an excerpt: The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many…
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The 12 Days of Christmas (for language lovers everywhere)
With the holidays almost upon us, I thought I’d get into the festive spirit and have a little fun with today’s post. Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know that I can’t resist a silly translation/language/grammar-related pun and, in what is fast becoming a JALTranslation tradition, here are 12 of my favourite punny images…
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Book Review: Experiences in Translation – Umberto Eco
Having recently picked up a copy of Umberto Eco’s Experiences in Translation during one of my all-too-frequent book buying sessions, today I thought I’d share a quick review with you lovely people. For those of you who have never come across Eco before, he is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, novelist and (most…
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Guest Post: Ten common French-English false friends
Today we have a real treat in the form of a guest post courtesy of the team at Textualis, a linguistic services company based in Montreal. So, without further ado, let’s get into the post! False friends, or “faux amis”, are an obstacle that many of us encounter when we negotiate the vagaries of another…
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Theory and Practice: Forever Alone?
Wow, how time flies. La rentrée has been and gone, International Translation Day has left us for another year and the tepid English summer has given way to the six months of wind and rain that we call winter (a sudden transition that, for me at least, always coincides with the arrival of Hull Fair,…
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Bass Solos and Job Satisfaction
Before getting into today’s post, I want to quickly share a link. A short while back, one of my posts (Translation’s Identity Crisis) was translated into Spanish and posted on the Júramelo blog as ‘La crisis de identidad de la traducción‘. It’s brilliant to be able to read yourself in another language and it’s a great…
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What’s in a word? La rentrée in translation
If there’s one word that stands out for me as a French translator when September comes around, it has to be la rentrée. Literally meaning the return, there’s a surprising amount of depth hidden in this little word and several reasons for its current relevance. At this time of year, the French term la rentrée is…