Around the web – March 2022

Unsurprisingly, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine occurring late February, the March 2022 round-up has a number of language and translation-related articles, blog posts, and stories about the war.

• How translators are supporting Ukraine: a list of resources translators, interpreters and professional organisations have created to support Ukrainians. Also see these pages on Proz and the ITI website

• A linguistic power struggle was playing out in Ukraine long before shots were fired. (Also in The Conversation: Ukrainian and Russian: how similar are the two languages?)
• In this article a Ukrainian interpreter based in the UK revealed what her job involves and why her role is so important
• An interview with Russian translator Max Lawton (carried out before the invasion of Ukraine) on reading Russian literature, translating Sorokin, books in need of translation and retranslation, learning languages, and ambitious projects
• Paulo Scott and his translator Daniel Hahn and talk about Blackness and the experience of Blackness
• UK publishers are being called on to pay literary translators royalties on the sales of books they translate
• The US Interior Department is taking steps to strip an offensive term from the names of 660 sites

The US Interior Department is looking to rename 660 federal sites that use an offensive term

• We need more speculative fiction in translation, says Rachel Cordasco

Fantasy awards, among others, rarely ever feature a work of long-form or short-form fiction originally written in another language or translated into English

• If you’re looking for books on translation, language and thought, language and the mind, grammar and punctuation, or US and UK English, the 5 Books website has recommendations from experts in each of these fields.
• 18 words for St  Patrick’s Day

It’s said that if you find a four-leaf clover, it will bring you good luck

In other news, I was honoured to be featured in the “Meet our members” section of ITI’s FrenchNet newsletter: you can see the interview here. At the beginning of March I enjoyed participating in a careers event at a local high school with a class of penultimate year pupils. And I’ve also signed up for the BP22 conference in Lisbon: will I see you there?

Elsewhere on the blog:

• Around the web – February 2022
• Around the web – December 2021 & January 2022

Around the web – February 2022

Here’s your February 2022 round-up with the month’s most popular news articles, blog posts, and stories about translation and language.

• In this article, AFP’s Head of the French Desk for North America talks about the challenges of translating political figures’ swear words (blog post also available in French)

How do you translate a profanity said by an American president for the benefit of non-English speakers?

• Can a literary translation be better than the original book?
• Philip Crowther, a Luxembourg-born British-German works as a broadcast journalist in English, German, Luxembourgish, Portuguese, Spanish, and French. A montage of his coverage for different outlets has received almost 25 million views and 200,000 likes on Twitter.
• From humans to animals: is your dog bilingual? A new study suggests their brains can tell languages apart

Kun Kun the border collie takes a test to tell if dogs can distinguish languages from each other

• A new gender-neutral pronoun is likely to enter Norwegian dictionaries
• Colleague Kate Stansfield explores ways in which translators and interpreters can make their practice more environmentally sustainable
• Lexicographer, slang specialist, and new language recorder Tony Thorne looked at the themes of 2022 so far through 10 keywords
• Do you play Wordle? From Cantonese to Hebrew, the race is on to translate the popular game into different languages
  • By the way, did you know Google has hidden an Easter Egg? Simply search for “Wordle” and see for yourself
• February 2nd was Candlemas (when the French eat pancakes) and March 1st is Shrove Tuesday (when the Brits eat pancakes). North Americans do eat pancakes, although they don’t celebrate Shrove Tuesday (see comments), and this blog post from Lynne Murphy looks at US vs UK differences when talking about flapjacks and pancakes.

Easy honey flapjacks

• February was also the month of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, so here are 9 Winter Olympics terms and their origins

Opening ceremony of 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games

On a final note, I celebrated a landmark 500 followers over at Instagram!

Elsewhere on the blog:

• Around the web – December 2021 & January 2022
• In honour of Valentine’s Day: 7 things only those in a bilingual relationship can understand
• Reunion experienced two cyclones during February (not too much damage, fortunately), so here’s a post from the archives about cyclones and their names

Around the web – December 2021 & January 2022

I was away at the end of December and for part of January, so I’ve decided to do a combined post with the most popular news articles, blog posts, and stories about translation, interpreting and language for both months.

• Struggling for credit where credit is due: more visibility is needed when it comes to crediting translators
• Mona Kareem: “What poets who are not translators fail to understand is that it is exactly ‘style, tone, and content’ that makes or breaks a translator”
• In this Ted Talk, The Language Game, former UN chief interpreter Ewandro Magalhaes explores how interpreters connect the world:

• There was much talk recently about the Greek alphabet and how to pronounce “omicron”

A slab on display at the Acropolis Museum in Athens shows decrees written in the Greek alphabet around 446 B.C. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

• Also in the news was Emmanuel Macron’s use of “emmerder”, and how to translate it …
• … then the international press also struggled to make sense of the “Pork Pie Plot” taking place on the other side of the Channel
• Even Boris Johnson’ critics reproduce the image he has chosen to project by repeatedly using language that reinforces it, said Deborah Cameron in December
• 5 striking ways the internet era has changed British English, according to new research

• Lynne Murphy took a(nother) look at the UK vs US differences to do with cake. She also reviewed some of 2021’s best language books, (see here for my review of Alex Bellos’ Language Puzzles in May), and designated her annual UK to US and US to UK words of the year

• The Strong Language blog recognised 2021 annual “achievements” in swearing
• Ever wonder how certain herbs and spices got their names?

On a personal level, in December I was delighted to see my status as a court-appointed sworn translator renewed for another five years!

Elsewhere on the blog

• Around the web – November 2021
• Around the web – October 2021
• Bastard Tongues (I reshared this blog post on December 20th to commemorate the 173rd anniversary of the abolition of slavery on Reunion Island).

“The Galapagos of translation blogs”

I was both touched and flattered by colleague Luke Spear‘s glowing recommendation of this blog in the latest issue of The Linguist, the professional journal of the UK’s Chartered Institute of Linguists. Here’s what he had to say:

As channels for online publishing proliferate, certain blogs continue to offer the depth and breadth professionals seek. Over the years, one person has regularly offers up general interest and industry posts. Through an award-winning blog and social media combination, Catharine Cellier-Smart authors a valuable and continually updated resource for language lovers and professionals alike.

Published from the remote Reunion Island, some distance off the east coast of Africa, this blog is a reliable broadcast service to the rest of the world. It is the Galapagos of translation blogs, having evolved uniquely and likely out of necessity. It is not unimaginable to think that we might all feel a little remote at times regardless of where we live. A Smart Translator’s Reunion stands as an example to us all, should we wish to introduce new clients to businesses through a common interest. As a curation of language-related topics, you are in very safe hands with Catharine’s blog.

 

You can find the current issue of The Linguist (issue 60/6 for December 2021 and January 2022) as well as archived issues online at https://xl8.link/ervjqv.

And don’t forget to check out the other blogs in the article if you don’t know them already:

• All Things Linguistic, recommended by Graciana Machiwa
• Dotted and Crossed, recommended by Simon Berrill
• Linguist Directory, recommended by Mohamed Noor
• My Words for A Change, recommended by Gwen Jones of The Translator’s Studio

 

Around the web – November 2021

Here are November’s most popular news articles, blog posts, and stories about translation and language.

• The end of the year is fast approaching, and Oxford Languages as well as Cambridge Dictionaries  have both announced their Word(s) of the Year.

Last year Oxford languages decided it was impossible to sum up 2020 in a single word

• Last month there was a lot of talk about the subtitling of “Squid Games”. This has now progressed to more far-reaching discussions about the “shortage” of subtitle translators, which is in fact simply due to a lack of fair working conditions
• This month I took a class in how to create videos, so I was interested to see Madalena Zampaulo’s article about 5 ways to use video content to market our translation or interpreting businesses
• Staying on the subject of video, ZingWord asked whether YouTube is a worthwhile resource for translators

Video content is all the rage on the internet nowadays

• The winner of the 2021 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation has been announced
• 50% of Americans admit to using slang without knowing what it means
• A study has shown that language switching is natural for those who are bilingual “because the brain has a mechanism that does not detect that the language has switched“

Korean steak tacos with cabbage cilantro exemplify natural biculturalism

• Why is the latest COVID variant called “Omicron”?
• Here’s a man who refuses to treat one language as deserving of a louder voice or bigger platform than any other language

What chocolate Kinder Surprise Eggs can tell us about language

• Why has the entry of “iel” in the online edition of France’s Le Petit Robert dictionary stoked the ire of many French politicians, intellectuals & journalists?

Elsewhere on the blog

• Around the web – October 2021
• Around the web – September 2021

Around the web – October 2021

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.

5 things people get wrong about standard English

• Punctuation matters: in a recent court case for defamation, a missing apostrophe could cost a disgruntled employee dearly …
• Why your family’s secret language is good for children

A familect can strengthen bonds and develop language skills.

• It’s Not Just You. The Sparkles Emoji is ✨Everywhere✨

The sparkles emoji has been with us for over a decade, yet is now more popular than ever

Elsewhere on the blog

• Around the web – September 2021
• Around the web – August 2021
• October 9th was Hangeul Day: Here are a few facts about the Korean language

Around the web – September 2021

Happy International Translation Day! Here are the ten most popular news articles, blog posts, and stories about translation and language for September 2021.

• Is a graduate degree in translation or interpreting worthwhile? asks Corinne McKay
• In honour of World Translation Day, Words Without Borders published a list of 10 translated books about translators

10 translated books that feature translators as characters

• Why translators aren’t like ninjas, and why they should be named on book covers

Hidden from view … a calligrapher with an early Chinese translation of Robert Burns. (Photograph: David Cheskin/University of Edinburgh/PA)

• The Royal Literary fund published a two-part podcast episode  (part of its Writers Aloud series) in which Ann Morgan interviewed Sarah Ardizzone (for more about Ann Morgan see my blog post here)
• Talking about literary translators, how do you become one? Some answers in this article
• Here’s a look at the role of French in Haiti, where it serves as an official language alongside Haitian Creole

French in Haiti: Is It Time for a Change?

• Some hand gestures are even older than spoken languages

The hand gestures that last longer than spoken languages
(Image credit: Emmanuel Lafont/BBC)

• China is increasingly rejecting English (and thus the world)

A movement against Western influence threatens to close off a nation that succeeded in part by welcoming new ideas.

• On the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, this article looked at some of the ways the event shaped language, and unpacks some of the consequences

The linguistic legacy of 9/11

• Map/infographic: the most translated book from every country

 

Elsewhere on the blog

• Around the web – August 2021
• Around the web – July 2021
• Books about Reunion and worldwide literature
• Bastard Tongues

Around the web – August 2021

Here are the most popular news articles, blog posts, and stories about language and translation for August 2021.

• Many news stories this month talked about the plight of Afghan interpreters. Here are articles on the subject from The Guardian, the BBC in the UK and USA, and Australia’s ABC 

Australian military evacuated Afghan interpreters and contractors who served alongside Australian Defence Force troops

• Corinne McKay blogged about work/life balance (or “work/life clarity” as they call it on the Smart Habits for Translators podcast!)
• Should you ever do a free test translation for a potential client?
• Using the example of NY State Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation, Debbie Cameron wrote about how miscommunication is a weapon in the ongoing conflict between men who feel entitled to harass women, and women who challenge that

New York State Executive Mansion, home to New York State governors

• RuPaul’s Drag Race demands translation sensitive to global and local queer cultures
• Many words common to science have never been written in African languages. Now, researchers from across Africa are changing that

Researchers want to expand scientific terms in African languages including Luganda, which is spoken in East Africa.

• Why is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? asks Arika Okrent in this essay 
• The smiley face that isn’t: To Gen Z, emojis often have a quite different meaning than for older people. (See also Emojis aren’t debasing language – they’re enriching it)

Apparently emojis now mean different things to different people

• In France the passe sanitaire has been in the news a lot this month. The Academie Française has decided that the gender of passe is feminine, and reconfirmed that it should be written with an “e”. (Here are two articles in French about the word: Ça pass(e) ou ça casse  and N’écrivez plus «pass sanitaire» mais…)

Would there be fewer protests if the pass became a passe?

• Staying on the C-subject, what happens when we run out of Greek letters for variants?
• Last but not least, a must-read from colleague Nikki Graham, who tells how Twitter punished her for getting hacked. Don’t hesitate to share!

Elsewhere on the blog

• Around the web – July 2021
• Around the web – June 2021
• Language podcasts

Around the web – July 2021

Here are the most popular news articles, blog posts, and stories about language, interpreting and translation for July 2021.

• What’s the best way to get that project you want to translate? How do you make your proposal stand out? Are rates the secret? Answers here
• Fees or rates? Here’s a discussion on translation prices

(photo by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay)

• The US will be evacuating endangered interpreters from Afghanistan
• Sporting slang has spilled over into other areas of life in every country of the world

The Tokyo Olympics is on. Can you outrun the jargon?

• Metaphors (such as “wave”) have helped us understand the COVID pandemic. But they can also create confusion and complacency
• How the Rosetta Stone – which scholars raced to translate – unlocked the secrets of ancient civilisations

The letters and symbols of the Rosetta Stone helped scholars crack the code of an ancient Egyptian writing system

• Intimacies, by Katie Kitamura, is a novel about the arts of translation and power
• North Korea warns young people against using slang from the South
• The icing the cake vs the frosting on the cake: differences between British and American idioms

(valentinrussanov/E+/GettyImages)

• German airline Lufthansa is doing away with its traditional onboard salutation and has come up with a list of alternative greetings
• Chinese-speaking autism campaigners are looking for a better name for autism (see also here)
• By compiling a cookbook, an 18th-century priest united regional dialects and helped save the Slovene language

The cookbook contained decadent recipes—such as rich chocolate soup—that weren’t traditional fare

 

Elsewhere on the blog

• Around the web – May 2021
• Around the web – June 2021

Around the web – June 2021

I’ve been working with a new office buddy this month, but what about you, do you work alone or with company? Anyway here are the most popular news articles, blog posts, and stories about language and translation for June.

• Translators and interpreters are the unacknowledged facilitators of the world, but we rarely get our due
• The International Booker Prize – announced on 2nd June this year – is an award for translated fiction that is gradually growing in stature

The winner of the2021 International Booker Prize At Night All Blood Is Black is about a Senegalese soldier fighting for France in World War I (Credit: Corbis via Getty Images)

• Kaitlin Rees, a literary translator from Vietnamese, talks about magic parallels in translation in this interview, while Bulgarian translator Stefan Rusinov says all literature is worth investigating
• Fifty Sounds recounts Polly Barton’s experiences in Japan as she learned the language and became a literary translator. Here’s a book review

Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton recounts her experiences in Japan (Picture: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP via Getty Images)

• Corinne McKay gives some tips on how to go on holiday while still managing our businesses
• Newly proposed legislation in Quebec may boost demand for translation into Canadian French

The new Quebec language reform bill may boost demand for Canadian French translation

• Is French set to replace English as the EU’s ‘working language’ when France takes over European Council presidency in 2022?
• What makes someone bilingual? There’s no easy answer

There are a million different ways to be bilingual
(Gerd Altmann/Pixabay, CC BY-SA)

• Language matters, so shouldn’t we be more selective about what we label ‘hate’, and what we pathologise as ‘phobia’?
• As endangered languages die out, so does knowledge of medicinal plants

A Sateré-Mawé leader gathers caferana, a native plant of the Amazon rainforest used as a medicinal herb (Photograph: Ricardo Oliveira/AFP/Getty)

Elsewhere on the blog

• Around the web – May 2021
• Around the web – April 2021