modiblog

20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:10:00 +0100

20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World:

… to think that English – or any language – could hold enough expression to convey the entirety of the human experience is as arrogant of an assumption as it is naive.

Here are a few examples of instances where other languages have found the right word and English simply falls speechless.

Lexiophiles' Top 100 Language Blogs for 2010

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:14:00 +0200

Lexiophiles' Top 100 Language Blogs for 2010:

Lexiophiles, a project by the Hamburg-based language portal bab.la, has compiled a list of the Top 100 Language Blogs in 2010 based on over 20,000 reader votes and recommendations. A few translation blogs made it into the list, which can be found here.

The Subjunctive Mood

Wed, 19 May 2010 13:14:18 +0200

Cute drawing, but poor grammar. Wishes, imaginary or hypothetical thoughts are expressed with the subjunctive mood, which couples singular subjects with verbs we otherwise regard as plural.

In this case, what the French bulldog on the left really means is:

I wish I were beautiful.

Here are some other examples of the subjunctive mood:

The library requested that she return the book.

The subjunctive is used here because a wish is being expressed.

If he were healthy, he would run the marathon.

Here the subjunctive is used because a desire is expressed which does not reflect the actual condition or state of the subject.

Drawing by Mischief Champion (via jenna)

وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر Takes the Non-Latin Dive

Fri, 07 May 2010 20:26:00 +0200

وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر Takes the Non-Latin Dive:

The ICANN has rolled out the first non-Latin TLDs and the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, previously online at <http://www.mcit.gov.eg>, was apparently the first to go online with its new Arabic URL:

<وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر>”

And if that’s rendering as gibberish in your browser, well, then you might want to consider an update.

100 Free Foreign Language Classes Online

Wed, 05 May 2010 13:57:00 +0200

100 Free Foreign Language Classes Online:

(via Brave New Words)

100 Fantastic Blogs for Language Lovers

Tue, 04 May 2010 09:28:00 +0200

100 Fantastic Blogs for Language Lovers:

Don’t let the title fool you, this huge list features quite a diverse collection of links to not only to blogs, but also to communities, platforms, tools and podcasts all geared to language, linguistics, learning English, vocabulary, grammar and more.

Fully Booked – How to Retain Capacity for New Projects When You’re Very Busy

Mon, 03 May 2010 15:54:44 +0200

Fully Booked – How to Retain Capacity for New Projects When You’re Very Busy:

The title says it all. Author Randy Murray over at A Better Freelancer has a few good tips for keeping your calendar comfortably full no matter what line of trade you freelance in.

Frankfurt Book Fair

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0200

The translators centre at the 60th Frankfurt Book Fair is located in hall 5.0. You can find an overview of translation as one of the fair’s key foci here, which includes lots of links to various associations, programmes and partners around the globe.

If you’re in or near Frankfurt am Main this week, the fair will be running until the 19th of October and you might want to stop by. A day pass for translators as trade visitors runs at 36 euros. Regular (non-trade) visitors may attend the fair on the 18th and 19th only.

Addendum: there is also an English blog on the FBF website. It’s obviously modest in scope considering the short duration of the book fair, but nicely written all the same.

New Book on Personal Publishing and the Public Sphere

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0200

By the wayside, I’m pleased to announce that my (German) book in the field of communication and media studies, Persönliches Publizieren im Web 2.0, has just been published by vwh - Fachverlag für Medientechnik und -wirtschaft, a small publishing house for academic literature in the area of media technology and media management. The book examines the relation between personal web publishing and the public sphere while also exploring the derogatory attitude towards personal publishing so prevalent in German media. You can find it on Amazon or order it directly (postage free) from my publisher, vwh-Verlag. The front matter and preface are also available for download here (in German), as is an English-language abstract.

Website Relaunch: Kudos to Rebwebdesign

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0200

The relaunch of modilingua.com had been on the back burner for an awful long time, but things finally fell into place last week. The entire German version of the website is online and once some larger client projects have been attended to, I’ll be porting the English content bit by bit.

I’d like to take the opportunity to thank Rebecca of Rebwebdesign for her help with the template design and work in the backend. Reb is a Wordpress specialist who’s adept in PHP, MySQL, CSS and XHTML, and I can recommend her services if you’re looking for a designer who is easy to communicate with, responsive to specific ideas and offers great prices.

I’m excited about the website’s new look and hope that our visitors find the navigational structure as clean and comfortable as we do.

Wordfast und Translations.com Strengthen Alliance

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Wordfast LLC has been working together with Translations.com for two years now on the development of compatible translation tools. As announced in yesterday’s press release, both companies have decided to strengthen their alliance by merging their marketing programmes, working on tighter product integration and expanding their collaborative efforts to include another new partner, Alchemy Software Development.

As a long-term end-user of Wordfast, this news doesn’t particularly mean that much to me if it’s not going to speed up the release of the new Wordfast version. Ever since Microsoft dumped all Visual Basic support in its Office 2008 packet—at least until the next time around—, Mac users like myself have been forced to trudge along with Word 2004 in order to keep using our Wordfast macros. The new platform-independent, Java-based Wordfast 6.0 version is therefore very warmly welcomed. Originally, the rumour mill had it that 6.0 was to be released in Q3 this year. Yet since the summer, things have been mum with Yves Champollion, head of Wordfast. Let’s hope that the development of 6.0 will be given precedence despite the efforts currently being made in the name of marketing and product integration. Until then, we’ll have to sit back and wait while dealing with the aggravation of working with Word 2004 on a daily basis. Or I suppose we could migrate to Swordfish or Heartsome…

Back to Blogging

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Work on the long overdue relaunch of modilingua.com is still going on in the backend, but I thought I’d take the opportunity to go ahead and set the blog up. For technical reasons, the English and German posts will be published in two separate blogs here at modilingua.com. So you might want to take note of the German blog, as it could contain entirely different contents.

Both blogs are to act as a filing cabinet of sorts for thoughts on the daily grind of translation. A special emphasis will be placed on freelancing and SOHOs. Because I have also always worked in a Mac network, readers will likely be able to find some hardware/software discussions and tips here from time to time.

Enjoy!