Making sense: language and translation blog

Celebrate International Translation Day 2010 with our e-card

By admin | Published: 29 September 2010

Tomorrow is International Translation Day, and we have produced a free e-card for you to download or pass on. Each year the day takes a theme, highlighting a different area of translation. This year’s theme is “Translation Quality for a Variety of Voices”.

Posted in foreign language, International Translation Day, multilingual, professional, translation | 4 Comments

Arabic typesetting: fonts of wisdom

By admin | Published: 5 August 2010

Arabic typesetting London samples

The business demand for any particular language can ebb and flow but, perhaps not surprisingly, one that’s busier than ever is Arabic. After all, Arabic is the official language of 26 countries, the first language of nearly 300 million people and a second language of nearly 280 million more. Our studio often find themselves working away on several Arabic typesetting projects at any given time. Given this expertise, I’ve been reflecting on the broader history, my pick of professional Arabic fonts and how the field is developing.
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Posted in Arabic, fonts, graphic design, typesetting | 6 Comments

C’est un fair cop: Mounties throw machine translation

By admin | Published: 4 August 2010

Today’s Vancouver Sun reports that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia have removed the automated Google translation from their website after complaints from franophones.
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Posted in French, professional, translation | Leave a comment

Taking Translation to Clerkenwell Design Week

By admin | Published: 26 May 2010

The signs are up, the windows dressed, the installations in place.“Clerkenwell Design Week” started yesterday and is set to finish tomorrow. Now that’s somewhat short of a week, but no less interesting for it as the streets are full of “design” of all sorts.

Trendy furniture, trendy Clerkenwell
image: Clerkenwell Design Week
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Posted in Clerkenwell, graphic design, London, translation | Leave a comment

It’s all Greek to them

By admin | Published: 25 May 2010

One of our studio spotted a howler on the behalf of his alma mater. Cambridge University classics faculty has just opened a shiny extension building. In keeping with their studies, the doors have been decorated with a quotation in ancient Greek.

Ancient Greek inscription on door

The quote is Aristotle, meaning “All men by nature desire to know”. Unfortunately whoever was responsible for lettering the door did not know Read More »

Posted in funny, Greek, typesetting | 1 Comment

Indian Alchemy is no fool’s gold

By admin | Published: 7 April 2010

A poster campaign caught my eye recently – for two very different reasons.

Posted in graphic design, Hindi, India, Punjabi | 1 Comment

Seeking a French buzz

By admin | Published: 1 April 2010

The extent that other languages are permeated by English is in the news again, with an interesting article in yesterday’s Independent: “France tries to halt march of English”.

The French government is keen to replace currently used anglicisms for 21st century phenomena with French-sounding words. This week saw the results of a competition open to schoolchildren and students to do just that.
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Posted in French, language | 1 Comment

New design for our translation blog

By admin | Published: 31 March 2010

Regular readers will notice this blog has a new look. We have tried to keep a very simple look that is easy on the eye and hopefully a stimulating read.
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Posted in graphic design, translation | Leave a comment

Oh! What a lovely translation design

By admin | Published: 22 March 2010

I came across this picture gallery of classic movie posters, as part of a recent Guardian article called ‘The Story of O’, a diverting little piece about the letter O in type and design.

Designers would probably start thinking how about how the ‘O’ cleverly combines textual and visual representation to deliver a single message, as with this poster for The Simpsons Movie:

English poster for The Simpsons Movie

We, on the hand, tutted knowingly, Read More »

Posted in graphic design, localisation, multilingual | 3 Comments

Tragedy of dying languages article raises interesting questions

By admin | Published: 5 February 2010

There’s an interesting item on the BBC News site today about languages becoming extinct. It’s by Professor K David Harrison who some may know from the film The Linguists Read More »

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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