My banal cosmopolitan fridge magnets In response to my post about the banal cosmopolitanism of multilingual welcome signs last week, a number of people suggested that they quite enjoy finding…
We all have childhood dreams. Mine was to become a writer, which, unfortunately, was not well received by my parents because it is a “hungry” job. Due to the absence…
Something has been nagging at me recently. I read a lot of tech news, and it seems automated translation is about to get a whole lot better, and a whole…
Jinhyun Cho was awarded her PhD for her thesis about "Interpreting English language ideologies in Korea: dreams vs. realities" Many people around the world dream of learning English. The pursuit of…
Images of glamorous interpreters in the recent Chinese movie “Les Interprètes” (Source: dramafever.com) I recently volunteered to give a presentation on the profession of translation and interpreting as a parent…
Supposedly Kriol signage at Rapid Creek, Darwin When I shared this Kriol sign on Facebook as an example of a bad Kriol translation, a first language Kriol speaker commented: Im…
Nizaqete Bislimi (Source: DuMont Verlag / Franz Brück) Some of the most striking images from the refugees who have been trekking across Europe are of families and children. Beyond the…
"A translator's profession can never only entail rendering meaning from one language to another but always involves translating from one culture to another" (www.pictllp.eu/) The ever-more globalised world of today…
Excerpt from "The Haunted Lotus" by Australian-Hazara artist Khadim Ali (Source: Milani Gallery) An objection that is commonly raised against Esperanto and other auxiliary languages is that they are “invented.”…
Speak English, people! says British politician Ed Miliband (Source: msn.com) Every ten years the UK government conducts a census, which every British resident is obliged by law to take part…
Eatery on Kat Hing St, Wuhan, site of Chi Li's Life Show (Source: city.ifeng.com) I am very much looking forward to attending the Intercultural Literacy, Communication, and Competence in the…
Much of my work in recent years around language learning and migrant settlement has questioned the straightforward link between language learning and settlement success. Policy makers as well as migrants…
Condoms in translation It’s been impossible to escape this week’s media coverage of the pope’s comments about condoms and male prostitutes. There has been a lot of debate about what…
Commemorative stamp, German Federal Post, 1989: 300 years French School Berlin I’ve been teaching about bilingualism for more than a decade and when I speak about bilingual education and dual-immersion…
If you read English-language news, you could be forgiven for thinking that Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel recently came out strongly against multiculturalism and immigration. You could be forgiven, but you'd…
The social networking market research site Inside Facebook has some intriguing language stats. In July, the fastest-growing languages on Facebook were Portuguese, Arabic, Spanish and French. The Portuguese growth rate…