The World Atlas of Language Structures

I’m loving this website, The World Atlas of Language Structures. I’m a linguaphile nerd, and it really speaks to me, plus it’s useful!

Historical Thesaurus of English

I recently learned about the Historical Thesaurus of English. What a wonderful reference tool!

Chambers Thesaurus, 4th Edition

I just got a copy of the new fourth edition of the Chambers Thesaurus and I can say that this is definitely a keeper. It has over 1100 pages of fantastic information and it is the kind of reference book that you just want to spend time skimming. Here are some of the things I like about this thesaurus.

It explains synonym nuances, so you understand the difference between, well, “difference” and “dissimilarity”, “diversity”, “variety”, “distinction”, “unlikeness”, “contrast”, “discrepancy”, and “divergence”. This will be especially helpful to people who are learning English as a foreign language, I think. When I taught English as a foreign language, I noticed how common it was for people to simply use synonyms they found in a thesaurus without actually understanding these nuances. But of course even native speakers need this sort of information.

The book also includes idioms, so you can find ways of varying them (“once in a while” or “sail through” or “a sticky situation”). People tend to overuse clichés, so being able to look them up in a thesaurus is really helpful.

The Chambers thesaurus also says if a term is technical, old-fashioned, formal, or colloquial, which is essential information when writing or translating. I have found that university students often get confused about formal versus informal language, so I will recommend that they check this thesaurus to get advice.

Another helpful feature is that the thesaurus gives extra information. “Carriage” doesn’t just give synonyms but also offers a list of forty different types of carriage, which can be especially helpful for writers or translators who need just the right kind of carriage in their text. Similarly, “zodiac” also gives the signs of the zodiac and their symbols, and you can learn which “rhetorical devices” exist.

The thesaurus also has quotations. For example, Harper Lee’s “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience” illustrates “conscience” very well, but it is also a quotation worth knowing.

One of the most entertaining parts is the “word lover’s gallimaufry”, which has over 50 pages of lists and explanations. What’s the difference between a flexitarian and a pescatarian? How can you express disbelief (“what a load of cobblers!” or “pull the other one!”)? What terms might an estate agent or a gamer use? What are some global English words you can use to spice up your language usage (“bergie” or “pom”)? What do you call someone who collects cigar bands and who is a “vecturist”? What are some types of extreme sports (“tombstoning” and “zorbing” are among them)? This section is fascinating and amusing.

Since the Chambers thesaurus is so big, it covers a lot of territory. That means the book takes up quite a bit of space on the shelf, but I think it’s worth it.

In short, this thesaurus (or “lexicon”, “dictionary”, “wordbook”, “vocabulary”, “repository”, or “wordfinder”) is really practical (and “valuable” and “worthwhile”). It is definitely the thesaurus I’ll be using from now on, and the one I’ll recommend to my students and my fellow writers, editors, and translators.

Linguee Reference Site

The Linguee website might be of use to some of you, as it is an online bilingual dictionary for the language pairs English-German, English-French, English-Spanish, and English-Portuguese. It’s become quite popular and it might help those of you who work with those languages. Perhaps Linguee will expand beyond those tongues in the near future.

A Cultural Heritage Dictionary

I’m always interested in new and useful reference materials, so I thought I’d point out TermDoc, which focuses on terminology related to cultural heritage. So far, the languages on the site are pretty limited (Spanish, Italian, Catalan, French, German, and Dutch), but if the site expands, it could be quite helpful one day.

Cookbooks and a Give-Away

CSN Stores is offering a £50 gift voucher give-away to one lucky reader of Brave New Words. At CSN, you can find everything from cookware items to chest of drawers to lighting.

How does this relate to translation? Well, readers of Brave New Words might remember a post from over a year ago, where I wrote about translating cookbooks. One of the challenges I mentioned in that post was knowing what tools and implements are available in various countries and what the names of said items might be.

For a cookbook I was translating recently, I struggled with a couple of very specific cookware items. I knew what the items were in Swedish but I wasn’t sure if they necessarily existed in English. One way of approaching this, especially if you don’t even know what the original item looks like, is by using Google images, and then studying sites that sell cookware, such as CSN. These sites are also a great resource for reminding yourself what different items might be called (that’s particularly handy for those of us who work with both US and UK English, because the UK and the US don’t always use the same terminology), or they can give you inspiration for products you could use in recipes should the original product not be available.

In order to win this generous gift voucher, leave a comment on this post. Mention your favorite tip for translating cookbooks/recipes or your favorite food-related resource. Do this by 15 November and then a winner will be chosen randomly to receive the gift voucher.

Swedish References

I maintain a list of references on my main website and that prompted someone to let me know about this other list of mainly Swedish references. I also note that Sweden.se is tweeting a Swedish word each day at WordSweden. Are other countries doing the same with their languages?

Word Nerds ‘R’ Us

This list of the “50 Coolest Online Tools for Word Nerds” is definitely for me. It has links to references sites and sites where you can play games, among many other things. As a proud word nerd who plays Scrabble regularly and works with language on a daily basis, I enjoyed the list.

References on Translating Children’s Literature

For my second list of references (the first list was on translation in general), I thought I’d offer a list of books on translating children’s literature, which happens to be my area of special.

Hallford, Deborah, and Edgardo Zaghini, Outside In: Children’s Books in Translation (London: Milet, 2005).

Klingberg, Göte, Barn- och ungdomslitteraturforskning: områden, metoder, terminologi [Research on Children’s Literature: Areas, Methods, Terminology] (Göteborg: Lärarhögskolan, 1969).

Klingberg, Göte, Barn- och ungdomslitteraturen [Children’s Literature] (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 1970).

Klingberg, Göte, Barnlitteraturforskning. En introduktion [Research on Children’s Literature: An Introduction] (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1972).

Klingberg, Göte, Översättningen av barn- och ungdomsböcker: en metodisk förundersökning [The Translation of Children’s Literature: A Methodological Preliminary Investigation] (Göteborg : Lärarhögskolan, 1974).

Klingberg, Göte, Att översätta barn- och ungdomsböcker: empiriska studier och rekommendationer [Translating Children’s Literature: Empirical Studies and Recommendations] (Mölndal: Lärarhögskolan, 1977).

Klingberg, Göte, ed., Children’s Books in Translation: the Situation and the Problems. Proceedings of the third symposium of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1978).

Klingberg, Göte, De främmande världarna i barn- och ungdomslitteraturen [Strange Worlds in Children’s Literature] (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1980).

Klingberg, Göte, Children’s Fiction in the Hands of Translators (Stockholm: CWK, 1986).

Gillian Lathey, ed. The Translation of Children’s Literature (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006).

Oittinen, Riitta, I am Me – I am Other. On the Dialogics of Translating for Children (Tampere: University of Tampere, 1993).

Oittinen, Riitta, Translating for Children (New York: Garland, Inc., 2000).

O’Sullivan, Emer, Comparative Children's Literature, trans. Anthea Bell (London: Routledge, 2005).

Jan Van Coillie and Walter P. Verschueren, eds., Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies (Manchester: St. Jerome, 2006).

Links on Children’s Literature

My last post discussed what it means to study children’s literature, so here I want to offer a few links that might be useful or interesting.

Outside In is about children’s literature and translation and Deborah Hallford and Edgardo Zaghini, who run the site, edited a collection of articles about and summaries of children’s literature in translation.

Write Away has many reviews of children’s literature and runs a conference and other activities.

Two organizations dedicated to the study and promotion of children’s literature are IRSCL and IBBY (note that I’ve given the link to IBBY in the UK, but there are branches all over the world).

Here are some major academic journals on children’s lit:

IRCL, which is run by IRSCL

Barnboken

Looking Glass

Papers

New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship

Write4Children

If you know of any other useful links, let me know!

Useful References and Links

Now that I’ve changed the look of the blog, I no longer have the blog and reference list running down the side of the page. Instead, I will keep this post updated with useful links for you.

Translator Associations

Sveriges Facköversättarförening/ Swedish Association of Professional Translations

American Literary Translators Association

American Translators Association

Föreningen Auktoriserade Translatorer/ Federation of Authorized Translators

International Federation of Translators

Institute of Translation and Interpreting

The Translators and Interpreters Guild

Reference

Dictionary and Thesaurus

Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus

Swedish-English Dictionary

Svenska Akademiens Ordbok/Swedish Academy's Dictionary

Scandinavian Dictionary

Online Etymology Dictionary

Fact Index

Library Spot

Online Conversion

World Wide Words

Bartleby

Other Blogs

Practicing Writing

Ur språkens tunnlar

Översättarbloggen

Translation Times

Nordic Voices

Three Percent

Poems Found in Translation

Beyond Words

ALTalk Blog

Language Log

David Crystal's Blog

Language Hat

Omniglot

From Our Lips

Web Translations

Word du Jour

Life In Translation

Translating is an Art

Masked Translator

About Translation

if:book

Separated by a Common Language

Spanish Legal Translation

George Szirtes's blog

Other Translation-Related Links

Swansea University Translation Links

Inttranews Translation News

PEN's Guidelines for Reviewing Translations

Center for the Art of Translation