Although February is a short month even in a leap year, there were plenty of language-related news stories and articles. Here’s your round-up of the most popular:
- February 21st was annual International Mother Language Day. This year the theme was Languages without borders.
- The work of award-winning translator Sam Garrett has been pivotal in bringing Dutch literature to a new, English-speaking audience.
- Parasite‘s winning streak has awakened many to the importance of well-crafted subtitles in effectively delivering a movie to people of different cultures and languages.
- “If [artificial speech translation] technology matures into seamless, ubiquitous artificial speech translation … it will actually add value to [human] language skills” says Marek Kohn in The Guardian.
Interpreters work in a booth in Singapore.
- Marek Kohn also penned this article about how conflict is all too common when intolerant eavesdroppers hear foreign languages being spoken.
- Chinese doctors translating WHO coronavirus guidance is a textbook case of non-professional translators stepping in when there is an emergency.
- Incidentally, it’s a lot more complicated than it seems to name a virus.
- The inside story of how Harry Potter was translated into Yiddish.
How do you say “quidditch” in Yiddish?
- Separated by a common language: is it pigs in blankets or pigs in a blanket? A look at the many and varied differences about how people in the UK & US discuss eggs. And dicing with death.
Boiled eggs, British (left) and US style
- Has talk of eggs wetted [sic] your appetite for eggcorns?
Hare’s breath or hair’s breadth?
- Finally some well-needed humour: if other countries decided to leave the European Union, would they have catchier names than Brexit?
Further reading:
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