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...