Accidental Death of a Language

On February 4th 2010, most of the world’s press reported the death of the Bo language. With the passing of Boa Sr, the last surviving speaker of the language, Bo became extinct. Sadly, this was of no surprise to linguists and anthropologists around the world as the death knell for Bo had been sounded around […]

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Taking the Biscuit

Language professionals are often amazed by the similarities that can be found between languages. As we are all aware, groups of languages belong to language families and therefore invariably share the same characteristics and/or structures. It is arguably easier, for example, to translate French into Italian than French into Polish, or, to take it a […]

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Another (Systemic) Perspective

If translation is an attempt to ‘remove the veil’ from a text then the knowledge translators possess must be the tool needed to reveal what is behind this veil. Our task is to see through the linguistic and cultural veil and interpret what lies beyond. Our ability to visit a text with ‘new eyes’ is […]

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In Praise of Grammar-Translation

The teaching of foreign languages has come on leaps and bounds in the period following World War II. Advances in applied linguistics, psychology, education and technology have all combined to make the late twentieth century one of the most exciting times for foreign language teaching (FLT). English teaching and the field of Teaching English as […]

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Bilingualism – Blessing or Curse?

There are a thousand and one ‘myths’ about what needs to be undertaken to become a good translator. One of these is the opinion that the ideal translator needs to be bilingual. But is this really the case? Is the mark of a great translator the fact that he or she is bilingual (or even […]

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Translating in the Silly Season

For many freelance translators there is a time for sowing and a time for reaping. There is also a time for waiting; the doldrums; a lull in work where little happens and offers of work are few and far between. What should translators do in this time of stagnation? If we treat this period as […]

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Vote for transubstantiation

Transubstantiation has the honour of announcing that we have been nominated for the prestigious, international Lexiophiles Top 100 Language Blogs competition. Transubstantiation has the chance to be inducted into the language blog hall of fame if it makes the Top 100. If you are interested in helping Transubstantiation become one of the Top 100 language […]

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Language Purity

Linguists and translators in Europe are perplexed at the news that Slovakia is implementing a controversial new Language Act which will change the attitude of the authorities to the freedom of language use in this small Central European country which has a population of just over 5 million. Such legislation may not mean a great […]

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World’s Easiest Language

In response to a post concerning the Most Difficult Language, 2009 begins with a post discussing what might be the world’s easiest language, whatever that might mean. A quick scan of the internet yields surprising results which seem to have absolutely no linguistic support. Answers include Spanish, German, Indonesian, Japanese, English, Esperanto and Pirahã. Let […]