October | 2021 | A Smart Translator's Reunion

October 10th saw me celebrate the milestone of ten years since I relaunched Smart Translate! In 1994 I created the company that would later become Smart Translate, before putting it on hold after a few years to pursue my career in business and then abroad. It was only in 2011 on my return to Reunion after three years in South Korea that I seized the opportunity to fulfil my long-held dream of becoming a full-time professional translator. Have you celebrated any milestones recently? Anyway, here are this October’s most popular news articles, blog posts, and stories about translation and language.

Many of October’s news stories were about the “botched” English closed captions subtitling the Korean show Squid Game. This Multilingual Magazine article took an overview of the situation.

Squid Game smashes barriers and records, highlights importance of translation

The upside is that the show has spurred an interest in learning Korean
Why translators deserve a better deal
Maybe accents are only in the mind of the listener?

Is accent in the mind of the listener?

How do you convey the gravity of ‘tornado warning’ in Spanish?
The science that isn’t seen because it’s not in English
“English is unusually rich in consonant clusters that are, in practice, not allowed in other languages” writes Lane Greene in the The Economist

Why you have an accent in a foreign language

85% to 88% of the UK population (i.e. “native speakers of English”) speak non-standard forms of the language. This article debunks 5 major myths about standard English.