Here is your April round-up of popular stories about language and translation.
- How do you know if a novel has been successfully translated? Translator and author Sam Taylor offers suggestions.
- The Economist has finally ended its ban on split infinitives. It explains why here.
The Economist: boldly going where grammarians have feared to tread
- Another specialist publication, The Financial Times, looks at “how to speak millennial“.
A user’s guide to the new lexicon of the young from the FT.
- Brazilian colleague Carol Alberoni continued her ‘Greatest Women’ series with an interview with Chinese and Swedish to English translator Anna Holmwood.
- Another colleague, Spanish to English translator Gary Smith, wrote an eyewateringly funny take on translator vs (agency) client negotiations.
- This article looks at the challenges of going back to university as a mature student to study an MA in Translation Studies.
- These two quizzes look at how well you might know American English if you’re a Brit, and British English if you’re American.
Is this game board for ludo, chinese checkers, parcheesi, or sorry?
- Another month, another AI interpreting/translating failure story: this time at the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan. Find out more at Language Log.
- This Fijian Tourist Board translation – or rather proofreading – failure (a word that means ‘holy place’ was said to mean ‘toilet’) is, for once, being blamed on a graphic design error, and not the translator!
The offending Fijian ad that confused worship and WC
- Lastly, here are 9 innocent-sounding words with surprisingly dubious origins. You’ll never be able to look at them the same again.
Further reading:
A Smart Translator's Reunion 