December 2006
Brushing up my Spanish
December 20, 2006
I’m off on Saturday to spend two weeks in Cuba. In anticipation of this trip, I’ve been trying to resurrect my moribund Spanish. This hasn’t been as straightforward as I had hoped. Ideally, I wanted to take a course with...
RSS feeds
December 19, 2006
Who says I never listen to my readers and fellow bloggers? You'll now find not one, but TWO RSS feeds on the right hand side of this blog....
La Javanaise
December 18, 2006
On Friday evening I was lucky enough, along with a few friends, to have tickets to see Madeleine Peyroux at The Dome in Brighton. She performed songs from her latest album, Half The Perfect World, including a cover of "La...
Le petit prince
December 15, 2006
Frequent commenter bathrobe has a site on the translations of Saint Exupéry's Le Petit Prince. A very interesting, in-depth analysis. Extracts of Le Petit Prince read in 100 languages Le Petit Prince in Wikipedia...
Translation costing public £100 million in the UK
December 13, 2006
"When you are trying to help us you are actually harming. Even before we ask, all we have to do is say hello, they are here with their interpreters. We just sit here doing nothing and we don't need to...
The evolution of the Queen's English
December 12, 2006
As the common tongue continues its inexorable slide towards a new dark age of glottal stops and "innits", news comes that even the Queen is drifting slowly down river towards Estuary English....
Language and familiarity
December 8, 2006
During my first tea-break today, I was saying to a friend that although I have a fairly wide vocabulary, which I rely on heavily in my work, I actually don’t make use of it in everyday speech. I tend to...
France24
December 4, 2006
Thanks a lot Ron for letting me know about France24, a new 24 hour French news channel which will broadcast from December 6. Chirac wants it to be a "French CNN", which is quite an exciting idea, but... there doesn't...
What does it take to be a freelance translator?
December 1, 2006
My friend Paul recommended Karyn Greenstreet’s website to me. It contains lots of resources and articles on freelancing, including one called Are you cut out to be your own boss?, in which she gives a list of desired personality traits...