Cancha and Canchero – just what do they mean?
Argentina is a country which has been influenced by the castilla language of the first Spanish colonialists and the indigenous languages spoken by the native Indians – a mixture of Quichua, Guaraní and Mapuche, depending on the region of the country you might happen to be referring to. The rich mixture of violently opposed heritages, […]
Up the apples, she’s got a lovely pair of bacons – what do East Londoners mean?
Cockney rhyming slang is jam-packed with references to fruit, vegetables and other kinds of foods. This East London working-class slang, structured around a simple rhyming system, was the East Londoner’s language code which prevented bosses, the police and other authority figures from understanding what was being said. Some of the most popular food-related cockney rhyming […]
Upcoming translation events in April
April will be an interesting and busy month for translators. Below you will find plenty of conferences, webinars, workshops and events taking place all over the world! 1 Marcom translation process – challenges and solutions, The Localization Institute, webinar. 2 Translation Technology Showcase, TAUS, webinar. Including Localization in Your Change Management Process, The Localization Institute, […]
“Agarrate Catalina”: What does it mean and where does it come from?
“Agarrate, Catalina,” is another widely-used, Argentine lunfardo expression, probably dating back to the 1940s and the story of a young circus artist called, Catalina. The legend describes the young Catalina as one of the youngest members of a family of trapeze artists in a circus which used to frequent the Porteño neighborhoods of Buenos Aires […]
Is knowing just two languages enough?
In the 21st century, thanks to the economic and business-related effects of globalization, knowing how to speak, read, listen and write in just two languages is simply not enough. It’s not enough to guarantee success for recent graduates who are applying for a job or for professionals who are looking to climb further up the […]
Crowdsourcing translation – a positive step for the deaf and hard of hearing
Amara is a large source of non-profit, crowdsourcing translations. The platform was launched by the creators of YouTube to translate as much video content on the web as possible, into as many languages as possible, as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible. What are the positive aspects of crowdsourcing translations? More and more […]
Innovative student slang software helps UK teachers to monitor online bullying
Jonathan Valentine, the founder of Impero, is one of the brains behind a new kind of software program which is being used in schools to monitor the behavior of students who might be self-harming, engaging in under-age sexual activity and bullying via online media. Language develops fast and there’s nothing which develops at such a […]
Upcoming Translation Events in March
March will definitely be an interesting and busy month for translators. Below you will find plenty of conferences, webinars, workshops and events taking place all over the world! 1 NEUROLOGY WORKSHOP FOR MEDICAL INTERPRETERS: CONCEPTS, COMMON CONDITIONS AND TREATMENTS. Upper Midwest Translators & Interpreters Assn (UMTIA). Saint Paul, MN. USA. 2 Including Localization in Your […]
The auditory brain was designed to hear music, not speech
Charles Limb, an otolaryngological surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, has reason to believe that the human auditory system was meant for greater things than understanding language and speech. For Limb, language is nothing but “a happy byproduct” of our true aural capacity. Were we meant for more than just speech? Language, for many […]
Machine translation far from replacing human translators
Machine translation has been around for over 20 years now, with new software, programs and web applications being developed at an impressive rate. One of the main reasons for this relates to the importance of the Internet in our daily lives and its subsequent effect: globalization. However, despite the continued efforts and creative ideas of […]
