Today is International Translation Day, a day picked because 30 September is the feast day for St Jerome. The Catholic Church regards him as the patron saint of translators—and also of archaeologists, Biblical scholars, librarians and students. For more information about International Translation Day, please see the following information produced by the International Federation of…… Continue reading International Translation Day
Month: September 2023
A tricky legal translation problem: food packaging
I’ve written before about a court case which concluded that UK retailer Tesco mis-translated the phrase chocolate powder into Czech. Translation and food packaging – Language Miscellany The judgement of the EU Court of Justice was produced in French. When I wrote before on this case, the official English translation wasn’t yet available. The English…… Continue reading A tricky legal translation problem: food packaging
Scrapping non-proposals
Last week, the UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, announced he would scrap some proposals relating to climate change. The next day, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme interviewed Mr Sunak. The interviewer (Nick Robinson) said the UK government had never made the ‘proposals’ that Mr Sunak said he would now scrap. He asked why the…… Continue reading Scrapping non-proposals
Who Put the ‘a’ in ‘Thomas a Becket’?
At primary school, I learned that 4 knights murdered Archbishop Thomas á Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Famously, the murderers had supposedly heard English king Henry II saying ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest’. It wasn’t clear whether Henry was asking the knights to kill Thomas, or whether he was just venting…… Continue reading Who Put the ‘a’ in ‘Thomas a Becket’?
S and sz in Polish and Hungarian
It is easy to be confused by the opposing spelling conventions used in Polish and Hungarian for the sounds /s/ and /ʃ/: Polish uses the symbol <s> for the sound /s/ and the digraph (letter sequence) <sz> for the sound /ʃ/. conversely, Hungarian uses the digraph <sz> for the sound /s/ and the symbol <s>…… Continue reading S and sz in Polish and Hungarian
All and only
The phrase ‘all and only’ is concise and expresses a precise logical meaning, but it is too compressed for most people to understood it. I first came across the set phrase ‘all and only’ at the age of 25 when I began working in continental Europe. One of my new colleagues often drafted letters containing…… Continue reading All and only
Where dialects of American English came from
A recent post by Rosemarie Ostler on the OUP blog summarises the historical roots of today’s American dialects. Four main groups of colonists arrived in British North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. They came from different regions, bringing their own dialects: Puritans arrived in Massachusetts from 1629, coming mainly from East Anglia in…… Continue reading Where dialects of American English came from
ULEZ, uljez, izlaz
London has just extended the boundary of its Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). Drivers of motor vehicles causing heavy emissions must pay to drive in the ULEZ. The word ULEZ has the shape and feel of some Croatian words. The common prefix u- means ‘in’ or ‘into’ and is derived from the preposition u. (In other…… Continue reading ULEZ, uljez, izlaz