Around the web – April 2014

Here’s April’s round-up of interesting articles about language and translation that have been published on the web this past month and that you may have not have had time to see:

• April 1st was of course April Fool’s Day. But where exactly does the ‘Fool’ come from? And while we’re on the subject, was this the best April Fool’s ever?
• You could say that companies who don’t use professional translators are fools. Here’s a good example, spotted in this Language Log article:

For those that don’t speak French: here ‘mug’ in the sense “A drinking cup” is translated into French as if it were the verbal sense “to rob with threat of violence” (and ‘auto’ in the sense of “automobile” is translated as if it were “automatic”)!

• Separated By A Common Language blog looked at the differences between the use of ‘hire’ and ‘rent‘ in UK and US English.
• Staying with the transatlantic theme, BBC America discussed five small phrases with opposite meanings on different sides of the pond.
• Breaking rules: how many words do you know in the OED where Q is not followed by U?
• Do you pay attention to parallelism in your translations? Parallelism is the use of parallel grammar to arrange ideas and elements to make a sentence feel more balanced and coordinated. You can find out more in this Macmillan Dictionary article.
• How many of France’s favourite idioms do you know?

The French idiom “donner de la confiture aux cochons” translates literally as “to give the jam to pigs”  i.e. to cast pearls before swine (photo Shutterstock)

• Spanish and Portuguese translator Jethro Soutar talked about the concept of co-translation at Words Without Borders, where there was also an interesting article about writing and translating in Korea today.
• Catherine Christaki, of LinguaGreca fame, was invited onto Alessandra Vita’s virtual ‘red carpet’ for an interview.
• April saw a general election in India, the world’s largest democracy. This article in The Guardian‘s Mind Your Language Blog looked at the difficulties candidates faced appealing to voters who speak 447 mother tongues.

A boy wearing a mask of Indian Hindu nationalist election candidate Narendra Modi.

• Finally, how well do you know your grammatical terminology? Test it with this quiz in The Telegraph.

 

Related articles:

• Around the Web – March 2014
• Around the Web – January 2014
• Most popular tweets of 2014