10. NIM CHIMPSKY: SIGNS OF COMMUNICATION?
19/02/2020
Is communication the capacity to use symbols to refer to objects and states or is it the capacity to use these symbols in an order that creates meaning? "Eat Nim" and "Nim eat" mean very different things but were used interchangeably by Nim Chimpsky the chimpanzee.
The last time I scored 20:20 for my eyesight test must have been in my early teens. Since then, it's been a series of spectacles and contact lenses that have helped me see the world around me. And as we enter 2020, the first year of this third decade, twenty-twenty vision takes on a different and crucial meaning.
Business mixes with pleasure in Barcelona
I've always felt that in conveying information - moving it from one language to another - it is essential to actually understand what it is you are conveying. In other words, the substance.
6. THE GREAT TOMATO DEBATE
22/10/2019
When people from the United States and United Kingdom mix, it's hard not to eventually reach the subject of the 'divide' between the two types of English. It's an interesting line of conversation - our language often shapes our behaviour (and behavior), so looking at it from a fresh angle sometimes helps us to better understand ourselves.
'Hyggelig' in Danish, 'gezellig' in Dutch...words that describe a particular sense of being, concepts that are so inherent to the national culture that all one can do in trying to find an equivalent translation is to come up with an approximation that describes the feeling of cosiness and familiarity you experience in a warm home, the joy of being...
4. WEIRDNESS VERSUS DIFFICULTY
27/08/2019
Can you read Gerard Nolst Trenité's The Chaos without tearing your hair out? This 1922 poem contains over 800 examples of irregular spelling in the English language, including gems such as:
3. TRANSLATION TOOLING
23/07/2019
I was recently asked whether I use any kind of translation tools. My immediate reaction was - who doesn't? I already did more than 25 years ago when I first started translating, although then 'digital' and 'online' were not part of our daily language. The tools I had when starting out comprised a rainbow of dictionaries, glossaries, thesauri and...
2. BREXITS, QEXITS AND BEYOND
11/06/2019