Monthly Archives: December 2020

Around the Web – December 2020

Posted by Catharine Cellier-Smart (Smart Translate) in language, translation

Here are December‘s most popular news stories and blog articles about language and translation.

French actresses who collaborated on the book “Noire n’est pas mon metier” (Black is not my job) pose at the 71st Cannes Film Festival in 2018.

  • Which words did readers of Lynne Murphy’s Separated by a Common Language blog designate as the 2020 US-to-UK and UK-to-US words of the year?
  • The Nazis eliminated Jewish names from the German spelling alphabet. Now the names are to return, at least symbolically

Could you spell that please? The phonetic alphabet makes it easier

  • Is the expression ‘Just Deserts’ or ‘Just Desserts’? And what does it mean?

‘Just desserts’ is popular, but it’s not right

When was writing invented?

Elsewhere on the blog:

Most popular tweets of 2020

Posted by Catharine Cellier-Smart (Smart Translate) in language, social media, translation, tweets of the year

Here, in ascending order, are the ten most popular* tweets about language and translation that I shared during 2020 on my @Smart_Translate Twitter account:

10. Beauty & Violence: Sophie Hughes on translating Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season

9.  Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales have been published in Scots, translated by writers including Val McDermid

8.  The meaning of ‘Just Deserts/Just Desserts’

7.  Un lexique éclectique de Le Monde diplomatique qui collectionne des problèmes dont la solution n’est pas mentionnée dans les dictionnaires usuels

6.  What does ‘Zhuzh’ mean (and why is it so hard to spell)?

5. On pourrait croire qu’il est facile de traduire l’un des incipits les plus connus de la littérature française, « Aujourd’hui, maman est morte »

4. Cameroon’s language barriers: Linguistic divides underpin conflict and poor translation is now hampering the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic

3. Eastern Parlance: delightful Asian words with no straightforward English equivalent

2. Les leçons linguistiques de la crise du coronavirus

  1. And the winning tweet: Cambridge Words Dictionary has announced its Word of the Year for 2020

Interestingly three of the tweets are in French (which is a higher proportion than the number of tweets I send in French), two of them being from Slate France. And of the seven others, two are from the Grammar Girl blog.

Do you have a favourite article published in 2020 that you’d like to share? Don’t hesitate to mention it in the comments below.

* ‘most popular’ = top tweets (most engagement & impressions) according to Twitter Analytics.

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