Tag Archives: translation
Mademoiselle in Song, and Translating Jargon
The French government has turned its back on Mademoiselle, eliminating the title from official forms. Mademoiselle roughly equates to Miss. Though it means unmarried woman, it also implies that said woman is young—25 or younger. And that just doesn’t fit … Continue reading
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The battle to own Bin Laden’s story
Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, a new battle has begun: the rhetorical fight to frame his legacy. The White House got off to a bad start, with its initial claims about the circumstances of the killing. We offer … Continue reading
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Supermarket French, Chanson French, and Arabic in repose
The French of Anna Sam and that of Juliette Gréco could hardly be more different. The French of Gréco (pictured) is moody and melodramatic, as befits this veteran chanteuse. Her pitch swoops to low octave depths and her Rs rrrrroll, … Continue reading
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Translating disaster and disastrous translations
In this podcast, Carol Hills and I pick a few stories that had previously passed us by. We dust them off and turn them into out Top Five Language Stories of the month. 5.Translating Iceland’s economic collapse into English. Iceland … Continue reading
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An American family, an Indonesian tribe, an oral language and its first book
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Google’s humanoid translator, accent phobia, and misleading job titles
In this podcast, our monthly top-five roundup of language stories: 5. Why Google Translate rules (and why human translators shouldn’t feel threatened.) Google, as we’ve come to expect by now, does things differently. And that includes translation. We tend to … Continue reading
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Windows 7 in African languages, unfortunate name translations, and the new Klingon
For the latest podcast, I have five language news stories from the past month: 5. African languages to get their versions of Windows. Microsoft says by 2011 it will release versions of its new Windows 7 operating system in ten … Continue reading
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Rosetta Stone: the method behind the hype, a spelling bee with a twist, and Hillary’s Congo adventure
This week, the rise and rise of Rosetta Stone. With big government contracts and a huge advertising campaign, Rosetta Stone is now America‘s #1 language teacher. It offers software-based language teaching programs in 31 languages (their assumption — perhaps well-founded … Continue reading
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