If you haven’t yet seen Alejandro Moreno-Ramos’ latest Mox cartoon on Obsessive-compulsive grammar disorder, do not miss it! Even funnier is Alejandro’s reply to the person who pointed out a spelling error in the cartoon. Last year, I wrote a post about my personal struggle with grammar and spelling perfectionism, and I think that nearly [...]
Archive for the ‘Humor’ Category
The best Mox yet
Posted in Humor on September 28, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Great translator vacation photo
Posted in Humor, Nubbin on July 19, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Summer always brings great opportunities for travel, especially in our internationally-minded industry. And along with those travels come some great vacation photos from colleagues! Here (reprinted with Jiri’s permission) is one that made me laugh out loud: former ATA President Jiri Stejskal having trouble getting any work done during his vacation to the Czech Republic, [...]
Links: video interview and code talker cartoon
Posted in Humor, Links, tagged Alexander Totz, Eve Bodeux, Judy Jenner, Navajo code talkers on January 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Hello and happy 2010 to everyone out in the blogosphere! After some much-enjoyed vacation time spent skiing, cooking and relaxing, Thoughts on Translation is ready for another year of posts. To start things off: At the ATA conference in New York this fall, French>English audiovisual translator Alexander Totz did video interviews with Judy Jenner of [...]
The elusive Mr. Driver’s License
Posted in Humor, Nubbin on February 19, 2009 | 5 Comments »
This one will probably make the rounds as fast as the Welsh roadsign/autoresponder, but today’s post on Language Log has a wonderful and humorous warning about the dangers of monolingualism. The BBC News reports that Irish police have been frantically hunting for one “Prawo Jazdy,” a Polish man who had, according to the police, accumulated [...]
The trouble with auto-responders
Posted in Humor on November 3, 2008 | 2 Comments »
In advance of the ATA conference and all of those e-mail auto-responders being turned on, Wendy Hoover of eLocale sent this link to the CTA list serve. The article, from the BBC’s website, tells the woeful tale of a road sign in Wales (“No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only”) for which the [...]
I want to neglect the remainder of my life with you
Posted in Humor on July 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
At some point, mocking bad machine translation will surely get old (or machine translation will improve to the point that it won’t be so funny anymore). But since that point hasn’t yet arrived, take a coffee break and hop on over to Jill Sommer’s blog for a YouTube video about machine-translated love gone wrong.
Machine translation has its uses, but…
Posted in Humor, Links, Nubbin on April 16, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Thanks to reader (and outstanding colleague!) Jill Sommer for sending the link to this post from the blog “Resumé Hell” (amusing takes on job searching, written by a recruiter), featuring a cover letter produced by an online translation tool.
The grass is always greener…
Posted in Humor, Links on February 13, 2008 | 3 Comments »
As translators, I think we often feel that we have toughest job in the document workflow; we don’t get to choose what to write, but we have to make the translation sound at least as good as the original and deal with issues like cultural connotations, idioms and untranslatable linguistic tricks. On the other hand, [...]
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Corinne McKay is an ATA-certified French to English translator specializing in international development, law and non-fiction books. She launched Thoughts on Translation in February, 2008 as a way to connect and share ideas with freelance translators around the world.
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