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Did you know?
.. that technical translation now accounts for 80 to 90% of all translation work.. »»
Interesting and amusing items on the topic of translations.
Did you know .. ?
.. that language is a means of conveying thoughts, feelings and desires, not rooted in the instinct, and using a system of freely created symbols, which is peculiar to humans (E. Sapir, 1921).
.. that the oldest alphabetic inscriptions known to us, according to the latest knowledge, originate from south-west Sinai. These are around 30 protosinaitic inscriptions, found in the remains of temple buildings of the goddess, Hathor. For a long time it was believed that the oldest inscriptions were the hieroglyph scripts from southern Egypt.
.. that Pintupi is an Aboriginal language. There are up to 14 different terms for the word "hole" in this language. Here are some examples:
| Kartalpa: | A small hole in the ground |
| Mutara: | A hole in a spear |
| Nyarrkalpa: | A hole or burrow of small animals |
| Pirti: | A hole in the ground |
| Pirnki: | A hole in the rock ledge |
| Pulpa: | Rabbit burrow |
| Yarla: | A hole in an artefact |
.. that English is the language with the greatest number of irregular verbs, i.e. 283 to be exact.
.. that Noah Webster's "An American Dictionary of the English Language" (1758-1843) was the first description of American English. Published in 1828, it incorporated two volumes with a total of around 70,000 entries. Scientific terms attracted particular interest.
.. that the EU is the largest employer in the sphere of languages. It employs around 2,000 people as translators and interpreters.
.. that "translator" and "interpreter" are not official occupational titles, i.e. anyone can designate themselves thus.
.. that as a result of global technology transfer, technical translation now accounts for 80 to 90% of all translation work. Therefore, this now far outstrips the traditional translation text categories (Bible and literary translation).
.. that over 5,000 years ago, two different civilisations invented writing at almost the same time: Mesopotamia with cuneiform writing and Egypt with hieroglyphs.
.. that the Arabic script runs from right to left and is one of the most widely used scripts on earth. It is the basis of the Persian, Urdu and Berber scripts. Up to 1928 when the Latin script was introduced, it had also been used for the Turkish script.
.. that Swahili is spoken in Kenya. Swahili has a Latin alphabet. The characters q and x are additional (only used for foreign words).
.. that there are countless dialects in Rhaeto-Romanic, even from village to village. Nowadays, the artificially created "rumantsch grischun", understood by all, is used for translation.
.. that European languages have also been enriched by many Arabic words. The words alcohol, chemistry, algebra, coffee, damask, natron, etc., come from the great influence of Arabian culture in Medieval Europe. Nor should we forget the Arabic numbering system.
.. that Taiwan and Hong Kong still use traditional Chinese, whereas the Peoples' Republic of China uses simplified characters and an (officially) reduced character set. Chinese can be written vertically but the modern way is to write horizontally (either from left to right or right to left).
.. than an editor checks the quality, content and style of a written text. This is primarily concerned with the composition, subtleties of language, any errors in content and misspellings. The editor also checks chapter headings, headings and sub-headings.
.. that it took millennia for the pictographs of the Ice Age to be developed into a written script and for this to emerge as the Greek alphabet, which is the basis for the Latin script that is still used today on all continents and in more than 60 countries.