[:en]For posts on languages and the use of language.[:de]Einträge über Sprachen und Sprachgebrauch
This post is also available in English.
Wenn unsere Welt nur von seltsamen Sprachen wimmelt, welche ist die seltsamste? Ersetzen wir das Wort „seltsam“ durch „schwierig“, dann haben wir eine der Kernfragen, die sich jeder Sprachlernende irgendwann stellt: „Welche Sprache ist denn die schwierigste?“
Stirring story of Marie Wilcox, last surviving speaker of Wukchumni, who took it upon herself to document the language she spoke as a child and attempt to keep it alive for future generations. The short documentary film tells of her compiling a dictionary, including oral recordings of traditional parable tales to preserve the memory of the culture, and make it easier for new learners.
[via NYT]
What do you call Barbs who works at the beer bar where the beard barber for the barbarians who eat rhubarb pie at Barbara’s bar drinks beer? Why Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbarbärbel of course!
In recent years the media enjoyed regaling us with the search for the Higgs boson, but I’m sure many people wondered what was so special about Mr Higg’s boson that we should all be so interested in him finding it again, let alone curious about how he lost it in the first place. Postulate a new thesis or make a new discovery and you’re liable to have your name enter the vernacular. Found a company associated with a new invention, and the name may even become standard for the innovation. Yet at what point does it all stop being yours? We all learn about Newton’s laws of gravitation in the classroom, whilst some go on to read up on Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Archimedes’ buoyancy principle, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion – it all seems so predictable, until it comes unstuck with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Not the laws of physics, the laws of English.
I’ve been translating on the side for some time, but have only recently decided to make this a steadier form of income. As part of that, I wanted to investigate some of the CAT tools currently on the market. Aside from tinkering with the open source offering OmegaT some years ago, until now I hadn’t tried any of the tools listed.
As with many software niches there are a lot of options in this market, and not many straightforward answers. It sometimes seems that the smaller the niche, the more choices there are. On my list to try out were SDL Trados Studio 2011, memoQ 2013, Wordfast Anywhere, OmegaT, Déjà Vu X2 Professional and Across Personal Edition ((I didn’t actually get to try out Across’ free software option, as it immediately complained that it couldn’t open my documents as I don’t own Microsoft Word, but rather use OpenOffice. Nevertheless most reviews suggest it is software to be avoided.)). In this post I look at the market leader’s offering SDL Trados Studio 2011.
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