Cangjie(仓颉) was an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of Chinese characters. According to legend he had four eyes and eight pupils. It was said that on the day the characters were born, Chinese heard the devil … Continue reading
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China worries too few foreigners learning Chinese
By Ben Blanchard (Reuters) – There has been a big rise in the number of foreigners learning Chinese, but still too few are studying the language, officials said on Thursday, worried this may affect efforts to soften China’s global image. … Continue reading
Did you know how exciting is translation business?
Did you know how exciting is translation business? Continue reading
English in the Age of SMS
The more technology is used in writing and communication, the more difficulties people have with language.
Text editors like Microsoft Word automatically show and correct spelling and grammar mistakes. Apart from the basics, there is little reason for users to remember linguistic rules nowadays.
Emails are written in a fast and communicative way, with efficiency taking precedence over quality. Punctuation, capitals and sentence structure only matter to the extent that they influence the understanding of the message.
But probably ‘worst’ of all are the text messages sent through mobile phones and short messaging on microblogs like Twitter and Tumblr due to the ‘challenge of the small screen’, which forces users to write in the simplest and shortest manner possible. Continue reading
Italian Translation Services
The Italian Translation Center provides professional human translation services which are subjected to strict quality control procedures. We keep the turnaround time as short as possible but at the same time ensure a top-class product, saving you time and money.
Below please find some useful facts about Italian:
• Italians is spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by some 70 million around the world;
• Italian is the official language in Italy, San Marino and the Vatican City and one of the official languages in Switzerland and Slovenia;
• Italian is written using the Latin alphabet;
• Unlike English, Italian defines everything as being either male or female;
• You have to be very careful with the pronunciation of some words in Italian because it can completely change their meaning;
• Many dialects of Italian are so different from standard Italian that they are considered separate languages, e.g.: Sardinian Continue reading
Spanglish and Llanito: threat to the purity of the language?
The contact between two worlds and the coexistence of different cultures and traditions always generate some kind of exchange and also accelerate the emergence of new ideas artistic, philosophical or ideological movements. The language is a set of expression and communication systems subject to the experience of reality, situations, goals and groups of speakers, it is also affected by this phenomenon. Good examples of the cultural interference between languages are Spanglish and Llanito, result of the contact between English and Spanish. Continue reading
The gentleman and the personal development: the evolution of “image de marque”
From its first uses, in Old French, la marque (mark) has the meaning of sign that proves the singularity. It also has the sense of reference or boundary. La marque may become a sign of infamy: from the Middle Ages, it is affixed to prostitutes or criminals. One of the highlights of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas was when the D’Artagnan has discovered the fleur-de-lis that was branded with a hot iron on the shoulder of Milady, which designated her as a former convicted prisoner of the king (although in reality the beauty has never stood trial) Continue reading
On the periphery of language
Although numerous studies have been devoted to bilingualism, relatively few have focused on the phenomenon of the pidgin languages. Philologists, theorists and historians of these languages tend to ignore them and prefer to focus on the primary languages. This is especially surprising since there are many forms of pidgin used daily in the world, particularly in ethnically diverse areas.
Pidgin is considered to be a very basic and simplified form of speech, an auxiliary and contact language, which means it is used for communication between different cultures and speakers of mutually unintelligible languages and dialects.
The term ‘pidgin’ originally referred to Chinese Pidgin English, a variety of English spoken by the Chinese and British as a trade language. With the passage of time, the term became generalized and now refers to any kind of simplified, combined language. The origin of the name itself is not clear. It probably derives from the Cantonese pronunciation of the English word business or from the English word pigeon, thereby referring to the use of birds for carrying messages. Continue reading
What is the language learning policy in your country?
The question of multilingualism and culture diversity are brought to attention of authorities of European countries and decision makers in education field. The majority of Europeans appreciates language skills, but still most of them will not be able to speak in any other language except their own. However, accordingly to a survey conducted by the British Council in Europe, USA and Russia among highly educated young people at average age of 29, everyone speaks fluently at least one foreign language and about 40% of them speak two foreign languages. Continue reading
Transenter’s blog strikes again!
Transenter is a B2B translation agency with a wide network of translators, interpreters and language freaks. On our blog we write about the recent news in translation business, translation traps & tricks, services provided to the specialist market sectors, security in everyday translations, and many, many more translation related topics… Continue reading