Polyglot Blog

Alex Rawlings is a polyglot who blogs about it here and also teaches workshops on it.

Tony’s Reading List

This blog is all about reading in translation and it has lots of great reading suggestions.

Arrant Pedantry

Check out this blog. It has a lot of fascinating posts about “editing, usage, prescriptivism and descriptivism, and other language issues.”

SELTA Blog

SELTA is the Swedish-English Literary Translators’ Association, of which I’m a member. SELTA has recently updated its website, adding more material, including a blog.

The Translator Writes Back

In my last post, I mentioned scholar and Chinese-to-English translator Lucas Klein. Lucas told me about The Translator Writes Back, a new blog where translators can respond to reviews/reviewers. There isn’t yet too much action on this blog, but it looks promising and I hope more people contribute.

Lucas Klein and Chinese Lit

In June, there was an East Asian translation studies conference held at my university. While attending some of the interesting sessions, I got a chance to catch up with Lucas Klein. Lucas and I went to high school and worked on the literary magazine together in Chicago and he subsequently went on to become a translator from Chinese to English. He lives, teaches, and translates in Hong Kong.

Lucas told me about an event he participated in, which involved a fascinating series of translations. You can read about it in this article. You might also want to check out Lucas’s blog on translation and Chinese literature.

Translators Anonymous

Thanks to Daina for sending me the link to the funny Translators Anonymous blog.

Blog on Language

I recently discovered this blog on language and I’d definitely recommend it. Lots of interesting articles there.

Creative Translation Blog

Eugenia Loffredo and Manuela Perteghella, who both have connections to the university where I work (the University of East Anglia), have started a new blog on translation.

This is how they describe it:

This is a “blog on creative translation and the art of text making in general, which we hope will become a useful and exciting resource for everyone interested and passionate about writing and translation.

The blog is envisaged as a 'studio' where issues about text making are discussed, theorized and put into practice. In fact, creations are possible and encouraged. We actually ask our readers to contribute by sending us their experimental and creative translations which will be published on the blog.

The studio will also build a list of resources and links to relevant events, conferences and experiments.”

Check out this new blog.

Versatile Blogger Award

I was really pleased to receive a Versatile Blogger Award from translator Judith Carrera a few months ago. I’ve had so many other things to post in the meantime that I failed to acknowledge Judith’s kindness.

My Spanish skills have faded quite a bit over the years, but from what I can understand of Judith’s blog and website, she has some interesting thoughts, so do check out her site if you can read Spanish.

Pardon My Dictionary

An English teacher in France sent me the link to her blog, Pardon My Dictionary, which she describes as “a very modest collection of "how not to translate" examples provided by my pupils and students who have not yet grasped that the dictionary is a marvelous tool providing you use it correctly, and that online translation resources cannot make silk purses out of sows’ ears”.

As a former English as a foreign language teacher myself, I recognize this phenomenon. I can’t tell you the number of times I’d get in homework from students that would say things such as “You sheep food at a restaurant.” Sheep, you ask? Yes, because my students would translate “Man får mat på en restaurang” directly from Swedish, where “får” means both “sheep” and “get”. Again and again, I had to ask my students to use the dictionary, but use it wisely; in other words, don’t just pick the first definition or translation offered in it.

So check out Pardon My Dictionary; it will make you laugh or, possibly, cry.

A Round-Up of Blogs/Websites

Here are a few blogs/websites you might want to check out.

This collection of awful library books might make you laugh. My childhood friend Yvette, who used to work at a library, sent me the link.

Those of us who are bibliophiles will enjoy this bookshelf “porn”.

Another link for the bibliophiles. This is called the Joy of Books, and rightfully so. My mother, who is a librarian, sent me this.

I think Leah Palmer Preiss’s art is beautiful and it clearly appeals to literary types.

Finally, here’s a new blog on audiovisual translation.

Top 10 Blogs on Translation

’Tis the season for blog and website awards! Brave New Words has been listed as one of the top 10 blogs on translation. See the list here, and ignore the fact that I’ve been referred to as male, even though I’m actually female.

All these nominations and awards are much appreciated. Thanks so much to all my readers for reading, commenting, and nominating this blog!

Best Blog Award

Brave New Words has been nominated for the best blog about the English language by Macmillan dictionary. Please vote for BNW here (on the second page of the list).

Diacritics Blog

I was recently sent the link to Diacritics, a new blog run by former linguistics students who are now in law school. They have posted a number of long, interesting pieces. Through their blog, I also read an interesting article about the speed of languages, and that led me to another article on how knowing more than one language can help delay the onset of Alzheimer’s. Lots of stuff to read here!

La Rassegna del traduttore

I’ve recently learned about La Rassegna del traduttore, a site that is a collection of blogs and other online texts about translation. You can see the list of feeds, which is quite extensive and happens to include Brave New Words. It’s a good resource!

Vote for Brave New Words

Brave New Words has been nominated as one of the top language blogs. Please vote for BNW.

Thank you!

A Few Articles/Websites

Here are a few articles/websites you might find interesting.

The first website has a list of TED talks on language.

Then here is an article about the history of language, using mathematical modelling and analyzing the number of phonemes a language has.

You might enjoy the Macmillan dictionary blog.

Here’s a short piece on how far 100 words of English would get you.

And finally, here is a blog post on what it means to do an MA in children’s literature.

An Unusual Lexicon

I really like this blog, which defines unusual (okay, and some slightly more common) words, because “poetry is language made strange.”

Top 50 Linguistics Blogs

Someone sent me this list of the top 50 linguistics blogs. I’m happy to see Brave New Words there and I also enjoyed looking at some of the other links mentioned in the list.