Cockney rhyming slang is a group of expressions developed by market traders in East London during the 1800s. To disguise their conversation from passers-by, they created a group of expressions which rhymed with their original meaning.
Today I’m writing about the importance of translators getting together and the difficulties some face to do so. Being a translator is an amazing job, but it is also a very lonely one. Especially if you work as a freelancer. We spend our days in our offices and we have very little physical interaction with …
Why do language variants exist? Translating language variants and different dialects can be a sore subject for translators. Land yourself in the deep Scottish highlands and you will soon find out that you don’t need to cross over the Atlantic to find words and expressions you’ve never heard before. Language variants happen in English, Portuguese, …
Night shift. Quite often, I get asked if I work at night. I know a lot of my colleagues do and I commend them for that, as it is very hard. I don’t do it, but I know all about the difficulties of a night shift. Our job requires concentration and a fully functioning mind, …
If you’re a writer like me, chances are you abhor writing synopses. A synopsis is a one or two-page maximum summary of your book story and it’s a piece of work requested by most literary agents to evaluate your manuscript. You’ve put all your effort writing over 75, 000 words and an agent wants you …
In the past 3 years, I’ve done a lot of proofreading and revision work. It is a complex and time-consuming job. It’s not just correcting errors, it is way more than that, one has to understand the source and translated text, to find possible errors and categorise them accordingly. Most times, I find localisation errors. …
There’s much speculation whether in Arts and Languages qualifications are really needed. In subjective areas like Arts, especially, it seems degrees are useless and nothing but fillers because what matters is innate talent. In Languages, degrees are slightly more valued as they present “proof” of the person’s knowledge and ability. We have discussed previously how …
A trust relationship. In every industry, customer service is very important to build up a clientele and, most importantly, to keep that clientele. So, for translators and interpreters is no different. Since I started my career, this has always been a very important part of my business model. I put myself in the client’s shoes …
People who work in the field of languages are used to having their skills devalued. After all, language is not a field seen as specific enough like medicine, chemistry or law. Go to any preschool and ask the kids what they want to be when they grow up: scientist, footballer, singer, teacher, plumber… You will …
One of the great aspects of migration is the opportunity to learn new languages. Today, some children are brought up bilingual and that is great since a language is a great tool to have. But when is the right time to learn a second language? There are quite different views on this. Some scientists believe …
