Happy 2021!

Let’s hope that 2016 and 2020 were the bookend years of an evil period that is now over, and that 2021 makes up for the past year. The years ahead can only be better.

Best wishes to one and all from Linguistic Alchemy!

All Work and Play

This year, as the world was suddenly put on hold, the great majority of us have had to find ways of making use of our time, if only to try and stay sane. In my case, I spent more time on my photography.

Somewhat compensating for the frustration of not being able to go out with my camera, I entered a few competitions, some of which successfully, with several photos being selected for group exhibitions in Athens in October, and Rome in

Rewards for the Translator-Photographer

The dull lockdown period, with limited activities and less work, has been brightened up by a couple of perks this month.

This past winter (and the winter before), I translated the catalogue and other texts for the pan-European photography festival CIRCULATION(S), which takes place in Paris and a few other EU countries each spring. This year,

Of Bluebells and Translators

Every spring, my local group of translators (the ITI WRG) organises a bluebell walk in the Forest of Dean. By association, whenever I look at the bluebells that have found their way into my garden at the foot of the rowan tree, I always think of my wonderful colleagues.

Of course, this year, given the pandemic situation, the walk and our other social and professional activities have had to be cancelled. Translators are used to

Interview

As a member of a local group of translators (ITI WRG), I have recently taken part in our “Ask a Member” activity. Here is the interview. Read on to see what I’m up to outside of my box-standard duties!

Our ASK A MEMBER series continues! Every Monday we publish a new WRG member profile, in order to showcase our colleagues’ skills, talents and passions. Read on!
This week, we hear from 𝑲𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝑳𝒆𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒙.
You can contact Karine at www.linguistic-alchemy.co.uk

When Work and Fun Come Together

As a translator specialising in visual arts, pictures on my website are a must. The issue is that translation does not quite lend itself to pictures, hence the plethora of translation websites displaying either photos of shelves loaded with language books and dictionaries or images of foreign countries. While both themes are perfectly relevant and can look really good, the first can

Happy 2019!

Sending ‘Happy New Year’ messages to my clients of the past year is a chance for me to reflect on the exciting projects I have been part of and the wonderful people I have had the pleasure to work with through the year in an effort to share inspiring art and interesting events celebrating our shared human culture. Among them:

Milestone: 100 Followers!

Launched in June 2013, Linguistic Alchemy’s blog has recently reached the milestone of 100 followers! Thank you to all my loyal readers. It makes the time and effort to write these posts all the more worthwhile. As work and life seem to have accelerated for me in the past year, the blog has gone fairly quiet, but I still hope to add to it on occasion, so do stay tuned!

Translating Chinese Whispers

We all know the hackneyed expression “lost in translation”. Yet, some seem to expect translation to work like an exact science.

I was recently working on an exhibition catalogue and one of the texts, written by a German artist, had been translated into English for me to translate into French. Not having been offered to see the German text, and my German being limited anyway, I had to

Translation May Not Be What You Need

Just like being able to speak English is not enough to be the next Oscar Wilde, not every job that involves a foreign language can be allocated to a translator. There are times when a translator is the wrong person for the job.

To come up with a snappy slogan or a memorable acronym, you have probably delegated the task to a skilled person within your marketing department or even hired a professional copywriter. Many translators can

Trust Me, I’m a Linguist

Each language has its own logic, sets of rules and exquisite weirdnesses. If something looks strange to you in the translation, it may be due to such idiosyncrasies rather than a translator’s mistake.

For example, in French there is a hard space in front of certain items of punctuation such as question and exclamation marks, colons and semicolons, and quotation marks. Also note that the latter

A Plea for Small Things

Accents are important in life and deserve your respect. They are not exotic decorations that you sprinkle about like glitter over the Christmas tree. They have their place in this world and many languages would not be the same without them. So when writing or typing foreign words, don’t forget to