Category: Language

A professional interpreter’s job isn’t as simple as you think

July 17, 2016

“For example, in 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was translated as telling Western ambassadors, “We will bury you.” But what Khrushchev actually meant was, “We will live to see you buried,” meaning that communism will outlast capitalism. That’s still not a very nice thing to say, but not quite the death threat it was initially understood as.”

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/12/11902592/interpreter-how-to-become?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

How miscommunication happens (and how to avoid it)

July 17, 2016

“Have you ever talked with a friend about a problem, only to realize that he just doesn’t seem to grasp why the issue is so important to you? Have you ever presented an idea to a group, and it’s met with utter confusion? What’s going on here? Katherine Hampsten describes why miscommunication occurs so frequently, and how we can minimize frustration while expressing ourselves better.”

Stop Saying ‘I Feel Like’

May 2, 2016

“The imperfect data that linguists have collected indicates that ‘I feel like’ became more common toward the end of the last century. In North American English, it seems to have become a synonym for “I think” or “I believe” only in the last decade or so. Languages constantly evolve, and curmudgeons like me are always taking umbrage at some new idiom. But make no mistake: “I feel like” is not a harmless tic. George Orwell put the point simply: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” The phrase says a great deal about our muddled ideas about reason, emotion and argument — a muddle that has political consequences.

“Natasha Pangarkar, a senior at Williams College, hears “I feel like” “in the classroom on a daily basis,” she said. “When you use the phrase ‘I feel like,’ it gives you an out. You’re not stating a fact so much as giving an opinion,” she told me. “It’s an effort to make our ideas more palatable to the other person.'”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/opinion/sunday/stop-saying-i-feel-like.html

The world’s first thesaurus of colour shades: What kind of yellow is an egg yolk?

March 6, 2016

thesaurus-red

“I started to fall in love with words that could do double duty,” admits Sundberg, “colours you could load with metaphorical meaning and would give a reader more information than simply hue.

“For example, ‘porcelain white’ evokes stature, texture, possibly even a time period. ‘Watermelon pink’ makes you think of summer, sweet things, makes your mouth water. ‘Chartreuse’ feels sharp and bold, adds a hint of magic. My goal became to create a spectrum of words that I could endow with meaning and help add new layers to my stories.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/design/the-world-s-first-thesaurus-of-colour-shades-what-kind-of-yellow-is-an-egg-yolk-a6877791.html?mc_cid=c28053bf7b&mc_eid=34e2887073

The Man Who Studies Ignorance

March 6, 2016

“A new era of ignorance

““We live in a world of radical ignorance, and the marvel is that any kind of truth cuts through the noise,” says Proctor. Even though knowledge is ‘accessible’, it does not mean it is accessed, he warns.

““Although for most things this is trivial – like, for example, the boiling point of mercury – but for bigger questions of political and philosophical import, the knowledge people have often comes from faith or tradition, or propaganda, more than anywhere else.”

“Proctor found that ignorance spreads when firstly, many people do not understand a concept or fact and secondly, when special interest groups – like a commercial firm or a political group – then work hard to create confusion about an issue. In the case of ignorance about tobacco and climate change, a scientifically illiterate society will probably be more susceptible to the tactics used by those wishing to confuse and cloud the truth.”

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160105-the-man-who-studies-the-spread-of-ignorance?mc_cid=c28053bf7b&mc_eid=34e2887073

Poland plans to punish use of the phrase ‘Polish death camps’

February 21, 2016

“Poland has long sought to eliminate the misleading phrase from historical and newspaper accounts since it suggests the country, which was occupied by Nazi Germany during the second world war, was responsible for concentration camps on its territory.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/13/poland-plans-ban-phrase-polish-death-camps?CMP=twt_gu

No food is healthy. Not even kale.

February 2, 2016

““ ‘Healthy’ is a bankrupt word,” Roxanne Sukol, preventive medicine specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, medical director of its Wellness Enterprise and a nutrition autodidact (“They didn’t teach us anything about nutrition in medical school”), told me as we strolled the aisles of a grocery store. “Our food isn’t healthy. We are healthy. Our food is nutritious. I’m all about the words. Words are the key to giving people the tools they need to figure out what to eat. Everyone’s so confused.”

“Last March, the Food and Drug Administration sent the nut-bar maker Kind a letter saying their use of the word “healthy” on their packaging was a violation (too much fat in the almonds). Kind responded with a citizens’ petition asking the FDA to reevaluate its definition of the word.

“If I may rephrase the doctor’s words: Our food is not healthy; we will be healthy if we eat nutritious food. Words matter. And those that we apply to food matter more than ever.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/no-food-is-healthy-not-even-kale/2016/01/15/4a5c2d24-ba52-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d_story.html

How Language Influences Emotion

January 5, 2016

“Do you feel something less strongly if you don’t have a word for it?”

“There’s plenty of disagreement over how to define emotions, but at least one thing is certain: They are intensely personal things. A flood of anger, a flash of annoyance—that feeling is yours, is a result of your own unique set of circumstances, is shaping the way you see the world at a given moment.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/12/the-book-of-human-emotions-language-feelings/420978/?mc_cid=f607b9a6a4&mc_eid=34e2887073