· December, 2013

Stories about Language from December, 2013

Dishing on Sino-American Relations

  27 December 2013

Chinese food culture constitutes a significant part in the Chinese language. Below is a part of an online fictional story on a conversation between Obama and Xi Jinping on Sino American relation explained and translated by Mary Ann O'Donnell: With respect to the importance of Sino-American relations, we will eat...

Innovation: A Spell Checker for Bambara Language

  22 December 2013

Fasokan in Mali reports on the creation of an app to help spell check texts in Bambara [fr] : Il est disponible sur les traitements de texte et outils bureautiques libres et gratuit : Open Office, Libre Office, Néo Office, et sur les ordinateurs Windows, Mac, et Linux. Qu’est-ce qui...

Ukraine: Translators Organize on Facebook to Provide Live #Euromaidan Updates

  9 December 2013

Volunteer translators following the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine have organized on Facebook, setting up pages like Maidan Needs Translators and Euromaidan Translators where urgent news from the protests that require translation to reach a wider international audience are shared and Euro-Maidan As It Is, where translated content is published. The...

A Pastebin for Arabic Content on the Web

  3 December 2013

“Arabic is the seventh most spoken language by Internet users but only three per cent of digital content on the web comprises of Arabic material,” estimate experts. Among the most frequent web usages is sharing text, through Pastebin and similar services. Yet these do not properly support Arabic text. Developed...

Blogging the Simple and Impossible Task of Literary Translation

  2 December 2013

British writer, editor and translator Daniel Hahn is blogging his progress as he translates Blue Flowers, a novel by Brazilian writer Carola Saavedra, from Portuguese into English, a process that “is both simple and impossible”: So over these next couple of months I’m going to try to articulate what for me are the delights...