Musings of the Mad Wordsmith (and other things)

This is from a friend of mine, a Japanese translator and interpreter, Yoko. Compilation of personal episodes, comments, and tweets from eart...

Rufoof... Shelves... Called a "flagship project" - more like flagging-stone. Or is it flogging? What am I raving about, you ask? W...

It is interesting to see how, at the time Arabic-speaking Gulf countries complain about the morbidity of their own language, an American uni...

I read with interest the address by Joris de Bres, Race Relations Commissioner, at the Annual General Meeting of Interpreting New Zealand, ...

First we had Dubya.. Now we have Wasilla. "Now, some of you may think Sarah introduced “refudiate” to our common language last Sunday, ...

Prof. Lera Boroditsky on how language shapes thinking (or is it the other way round?). Absolutely must read! Read the comments, they are as...

In Australia's professional LSP sector, the standard (and of course lazily comfortable) response to the question "Can translators b...

I love Barbara Jungwirth posting on writing source text in "grammatically correct, clear structures free of spelling and punctuation ...

The Government Accountability Office reported on Thursday that Federal agencies must do more to improve employees' foreign language prof...

A book I would love to translate (are you listening, Alon?) into Arabic. A book that MUST be translated into Arabic, and translated well. Ho...

Ken of the 1-800 Translate company is blogging about Speed.. not the kind that makes you unwell, but the kind that makes you productive. ...

Here is an excerpt from a recent interview with Mark Tappling , the CEO of L anguage Weaver , a venture-backed firm which develops languag...

Boston Globe interviewed Marian Schwartz, the Austin-based acclaimed translator of Russian fiction, history, biography, and criticism. Her ...

Back to Dr. David Harrison and endangered languages - Harrison believes language revitalization will be one of the most important trends in...

I wrote about the Meedan Project just a few weeks ago. The site has been launched, and although the translations are not brilliant, they ar...

Hard to believe, but it seems that it could be true. In United Arab Emirates, 80% of the population are expats, and Arabic is trailing behin...

The British Guardian asks if the spirit of the original religious text can be adequately conveyed in a different language. Alexander Goldbe...

Jeffrey Henning of VoVici has a series of excellent articles about preparing multilingual surveys and questionnaires. He does not start at ...

"Multilingualism, which can be defined as the harmonious accommodation of different languages spoken within a common space, therefore b...

L.D. Mitchell (book collector, professional librarian, author, photographer) did everyone a great favour by posting a ten part introduction...