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Translating idioms is one of the hardest challenges a translator will face. Often there is no direct equivalent in the target language, or you may find the most obvious alternative simply does not work in the relevant context. I wrote previously in this blog about the care needed when deploying…

The world is awash with obscure celebratory days to mark pretty much anything you can think of, and languages are no exception. There’s the European Day of Languages on 26th September, originally conjured up in 2001 by the European Union and the Council of Europe. Specific languages often have their…

Reviewing translation work is an essential part of the QA process to ensure no errors have slipped through and the text is of a sufficiently high quality to deliver to the client. It’s tricky work for a freelancer to take on because when you agree to a review assignment you…

My daughter recently revealed that a friend had become an unlikely corona virus lockdown hero by adopting two geckos that were due to be “disposed of” due to the closure of her local pet store. This was the perfect excuse for my husband to recount for the thousandth time the…

When the world undergoes rapid change, language also evolves at pace to keep up. As the obvious recent example, Covid-19 and language change have gone hand-in-hand. Over the last few months, we have all seen our vocabulary enriched with various scientific and sociological terminology to describe the experience of dealing…

Typos can crop up even in documents that have been carefully proofed, particularly if the typographic mistake involves a real alternative word. So, translators should not be surprised to come across them in their source texts. The number of typos can be a good indication of how much care the…

The recent blog post about portmanteaus could have included the ubiquitous “podcast”, a blend of iPod and broadcast, coined in about 2004 to describe digital audio files available to download for listening. You might be less familiar with another portmanteau phenomenon: the “podfasters”. These are people whose time is so…

Vocal fry has been my latest experience of frequency illusion, or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, as it is sometimes known. In other words, the experience of learning about something new then encountering references to it absolutely everywhere. Maybe this blog post will trigger a similar experience for you. Anyway, back to…

  In 2002 David and Ben Crystal published “Shakespeare’s words: a glossary and language companion”, a detailed linguistic analysis of Shakespeare’s texts, giving up-to-date definitions of vocabulary and links to source quotations. Professor Jonathan Bate praised the book as “the most comprehensive guide to Shakespeare's astonishing linguistic inventiveness”. The book…

    Over the Christmas season this blog debated politically correct seasonal greetings, reflecting on a phenomenon that has been referred to a as a “manufactroversy” or manufactured controversy (or more pithily perhaps a “nontroversy”). Both these lexical items are fine examples of portmanteaus, “a linguistic blend of words, in…

The fun of colour etymology: the colour orange or the fruit My previous blog on the differences between languages in the way they categorise the colour spectrum prompted an exploration of the etymological origins of colour words in English. Maybe you’ve always wondered which came first: the colour orange or…

  A while ago, esteemed linguistic tweeter @HaggardHawks recounted: “Not all languages have words for all the basic colours. But a study in 1969 found that some constants in translating the colour spectrum: all languages have words for BLACK and WHITE—and if a language has a third colour in its…

Earlier this year, women’s rights activist Maria Beatrice Giovanardi found herself looking for synonyms for the word “woman” using various online search engines. She was unimpressed with the results and reports on her experience in an article for the online publishing platform Medium. Describing the dictionary outputs as “patronising, misogynistic,…

A trip abroad offers ripe pickings for the travelling translator. On our recent trip to Spain my kids developed a real knack for tracking down comedy English text, usually in the form of a dodgy translation from the original Spanish. Amateur translations in hotel rooms are always worth a chuckle:…

Let me introduce Saint Jerome, the patron saint of translation. Who knew we translators even had one? Not me, that’s for sure. I first stumbled upon Jerome in a casual mention by David Bellos in his book “Is that a fish in your ear? The amazing adventure of translation”. Jerome…

The mystique of untranslatable words A while ago a friend gifted me a little box set of “Untranslatable words”. Inside is a set of cards, each with a word in a foreign language describing a concept for which there is no direct equivalent in English. Even non-linguists seem to enjoy…

Over the years I have translated a number of cookery books and back in 2017 I wrote about some of the challenges involved in this area. My most recent immersion in the world of food and recipe translation prompted me to reflect again on how subject-area expertise is crucial for…

What on earth is a malaphor? At school I remember rather tedious lessons learning the distinction between a metaphor and a simile. How much more fun it would have been to devote some time to exploring the wonderful world of mixed up metaphors. So I was delighted to stumble across…

When it comes to translations, turning to an external partner isn’t always a company’s first move. So why outsource my translations, and to whom? For businesses with international offices, multilingual staff and overseas distributors, it often feels like the logical thing to keep the work in house and leverage the…

Were you one of those kids who effortlessly scored 10/10 in spelling tests at school? Me too! My husband, on the other hand, has an uncanny ability to remember phone numbers, vehicle licence plates and passport numbers, but still struggles with getting the double letters correct in “carrots” and “broccoli”…

“Language poisoning” is a term used to describe a phenomenon I’m sure all translators will have experienced, namely the insidious influence the source language can have on your skills as a writer in the target language. Examples of foreign language poisoning are rife in poor-quality translations. In fact, if you…

Linguistic fluency for translators “So, are you fluent in X?” Translators have surely all been asked that question by their non-translator friends. Personally I’ve often wriggled around these queries in a way that disappoints the questioner. Because the truth is that fluency means any number of things. And fluency in…

I spend much of my day grappling with German texts, wrestling complex sentences into passable English and cursing the German penchant for burying the verb several miles off from its companion. So when I sit down for supper with the family, it can be frustrating to find that I need…

“Freelance translator”: it’s hardly a thrilling job description. Imagine how much more exciting it would be to have “Knight adventurer” printed on your business cards. And a tweet by Susie Dent suggests that this is precisely the origin of the now mundanely used freelancer: “a knight-adventurer who used his lance…

Last month I wrote a blog post about the title of the latest instalment in the Star Wars movies series, "The Last Jedi". I confessed my almost complete ignorance when it comes to this particular movie franchise as I have somehow reached middle age without ever having seen any of…

English winter weather words are more fun than the season The British weather has a certain notoriety and for me January and February are when it truly tests the spirit. Short, dark days combined with damp and chilly conditions have me daydreaming about relocating somewhere more hospitable. Even any snow…

As an avid knitter and occasional crocheter, I was really excited recently to deploy my yarn-related knowledge to translating knitting patterns for a publishing company. Technique The target audience for the translated patterns was very much the general crafter and hobby knitter rather than an advanced fairisle sock knitting maestro.…

  For a little while now, I have been contemplating writing something about the way different languages are related to each other. Then I stumbled across this beautiful linguistic family tree and I knew this was the moment. What a glorious thing it is. If ever a non-linguist asks you…

“The babel fish is a small, leech-like, yellow fish, and by putting this into one's ear one can instantly understand anything said in any language” Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Techno-geeks and travellers are eagerly anticipating Google’s latest product launch this autumn – the Pixel Buds are “smart…

Rather belatedly on September 1st I stumbled upon an article informing me that August had been Women in Translation Month. In a spirit of “better late than never”, this blog post looks back at some of the highlights from the social media and newspaper articles written to celebrate the literary…

  Unless you have been living under a rock for the past seven years, it will not come as a shock that the fantasy world of Game of Thrones, created by the genius of George R. R. Martin and brought to life – or rather, TV – by David Benioff…

  Scanlation refers to the process where foreign language comics are scanned, translated and then edited to make them available to a wider audience beyond their country of origin. It is most commonly associated with the production of English language versions of Japanese “manga” comics, particularly in the USA. The…

  What could be more British than an afternoon cup of tea and a scone with jam and cream? Visitors to Britain need to be aware that this innocent baked item is the source of all sorts of contentious debate: jam or cream first, double cream or clotted, is it…

Previously in this blog I wrote about the Oscars Best Foreign Language Film and, in particular, the somewhat arcane nomination process for this award. Here I thought I would look more closely at the three main approaches taken by the linguists who make these films accessible to foreign audiences: subtitling,…

              I’ll confess up front that I’ve always been something of a sceptic when it comes to claims that speech recognition is about to become the next big thing. During my time as an academic phonetician I did a placement with a speech technology…

Rosetta’s London office is located on Whitechapel High Street near Aldgate, very much in the heart of cockney London. The traditional definition of a cockney is someone who was born within the sound of Bow bells, which ring out from the church of Saint Mary le Bow in Cheapside just…

Recently I have done several projects which involved translating recipes. On the face of it this seems like a simple task: take the list of ingredients and convert into the target language; then simply do the same for the recipe method. Recipes tend to be very well structured, written in…

  Can prejudice against a dialect potentially influence decisions made in the criminal justice system? That is the question at the heart of a fascinating paper by John Rickford and Sharese King published in Language: A Journal of the American Linguistic Society. The paper investigates whether a jury’s attitude towards…

Excitement is mounting in the film industry at the prospect of the annual Oscars ceremony on February 26th and there is one award category in particular which will be of interest to those working in translation: the Best Foreign Film award. To be eligible for the award each film must…

I spent Christmas in my home town of Aberystwyth in Wales and this gave me a chance to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes, flicking through my parents’ back copies of the local newspaper The Cambrian News. Regional newspapers are always a delight for the London escapee with the…

We naturally assume that being a native speaker brings advantages in terms of being able to communicate clearly. Native English speakers, in particular, often feel that their prowess in a global language gives them a straightforward channel of communication to business colleagues all around the world. But a recent conversation…

Choosing a translation provider can be a daunting and intimidating experience for some. For anyone who hasn’t used a language services provider before or needed to have a document translated, knowing what questions to ask, what red flags to look for and how much the services will cost will all…

As we’ve said before in this blog, just being able to speak another language does not make you an interpreter. Professional interpreters have done much training and study to get into the field, they may have also spent a significant amount of time in another field such as law or…

At Rosetta Translation, we value proofreading. We handle myriad of documents on a daily basis for varying purposes, audiences and publications. Often, a translation only service will be sufficient for our customers’ needs, particularly if the document in question is for information purposes only and won’t be published anywhere noteworthy.…

The mighty United States of America is never far away from our news pages, particularly recently with the pending presidential election. The next few weeks will be an interesting time for Americans as the candidates ramp up their campaigns even more. November will be crunch time for voters to decide…

The origins of English sayings: The Rule of Thumb   A friend and I recently went on a Jack the Ripper walking tour of London (which I would highly recommend, particularly on a warm day!) and, aside from learning the stories and conspiracies surrounding this notorious murderer, also learned some…

Languages in focus: Basque   I’m spent a few days in Northern Spain (around Bilbao) this August with some Spanish family and friends who speak Basque. I’m intrigued by this language; an ‘island’ of a language surrounded by others which have nothing to do with it. Having also walked some…

Facebook: paving the way for intelligent auto translation We’ve discussed in several previous posts about the perils of auto translation, machine translation, the delights of Google Translate and so on. We have also looked at what poor translations cost to businesses and individuals, and have even highlighted some particularly bad…

Top 10 interesting facts about translation With all the doom and gloom we’ve been experiencing in recent times with an uncertain political and economic climate I thought we’d keep it upbeat and light-hearted in today’s blog post. Let’s dive into some interesting facts about translation! Translation is a Latin word…

What is the Moses machine translation system? Recently, I was talking with a translator friend of mine about machine-assisted translation (Google Translate in particular) and she mentioned Moses as a translation tool growing in popularity. I was a little bemused, as Moses, to me, is an important figure in Judaism…