On a semi-professional note I appreciate being named last week as one of Reunion Island’s top digital influencers. Anyway here is your first round-up of the new year with January’s most popular news stories about language and translation.
- Words Without Borders interviewed Ilan Stevens, publisher of the young adult imprint Yonder, which specialises in translated books.
- Hilarious as they are, why do so many menu translations go wrong? Atlas Obscura took a look.
Cigarette pie refers to the shape, but it doesn’t translate well.
- The French Académie Française has released a new list of French tech terms to use instead of their English counterparts. But will mobile multifonction really catch on?
The French are told not to say ‘smartphone’ in an ongoing battle against English
- The Economist asked where new words come from, and explained that how words come to be used tells us a lot about different cultures.
How words come to be used tells you a lot about different cultures
- Is a knife ‘dull’ or ‘blunt’? It probably depends on whether you’re from the US or UK, says Lynne Murphy.
- Not a week (or day?) goes by without Donald Trump giving material to linguists. Mid-January saw some countries struggling to translate s***hole after his offensive remarks about certain countries.
- Two posts from Oxford Dictionaries blog were very popular this month:
- A look at English pseudo-anglicisms in other languages (pseudo-anglicisms are words in languages other than English which were borrowed from English but are used in a way native English speakers would not readily recognize or understand).
- Pseudoscience has called the third Monday in January Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the entire year. This article looks at the etymology of maudlin, a synonym for morose.
Pseudo-anglicisms are not your average English loanwords
- Dew-beaters, Phiz … Dictionary.com dug up some old slang for body parts.
- Fun: this site tries to decode your English accent. Apparently I sound 81% British and 19% American …
A few announcements:
- Participate in Nikki Graham‘s survey concerning blogs about translation & interpreting → ow.ly/Zgsa30hN0qG
- The Banff International Literary Translation Centre program offers working and professional literary translators a period of uninterrupted work on a current project. Apply by February 7 → goo.gl/paxbmi
- Ouverture des inscriptions et lancement du site dédié à la 12eme edition du SAM (Séminaire d’anglais médical) → http://ow.ly/WtSt30i2blu
- Call for application: Paul Celan fellowships for translators 2018/2019 (deadline: 18 March 2018) → http://ow.ly/qEs330huUG7
Further reading:
A Smart Translator's Reunion 