Around the web – November 2018

Here’s a look at the most popular stories about translation, interpreting, and language for November.

• Language problems: interpreters need to grasp cultural differences as well as linguistic ones when responding to crises.
• The art of hyping machine translation (or when the media take a well-spun PR message at face value).
• When is it time to bade farewell to a client? asks colleague Claire Cox.

Claire Cox: “As a professional translator, I don’t want to work for an outfit that regards me as an interchangeable cog in a large machine”.

• International trade: without the language industry, most exporting and importing would stop (see also follow-up post here).
• How do the French convey excitement linguistically and culturally?
• Geoffrey Pullum has written a brief ‘Brexicon’ – a glossary of recent Brexit-related coinages that may help any non-Brits confused about the language used to talk about the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. (see also this guide in The Guardian, published the same week)

Do you know the meaning of ‘Brino’, ‘ERG’ ‘remoaner’ or ‘Maybot’?

• Does the ‘wright’ in ‘playwright’ have anything to do with ‘write’?
• Should we say octopuses or octopi? Can we finally resolve the debate?

Eight tentacles, three plural forms, and only one right way to say it.

• Why the time is now for foreign language music hits in the English-speaking world.
• Take a look at these beautiful linguistic maps of Europe, Asia and Africa dating from 1741.

Eighteenth-century German linguist Hensel probably had to use second-hand and third-hand transcriptions for languages he was unfamiliar with.

• Try your hand this trending words 2018 quiz. How did you do? Many of the terms aren’t particularly new, but have become popular this year.

 

Further reading:

• Around the web – October 2018
• Around the web – September 2018