How To Tell Your Browser What Languages You Speak
Posted on Thursday, 22 March, 2007
This is the first of two entries I have planned to write on language and content negotiation. A lot of non-techies do not even know what content negotiation means – which is not really a problem –, but they also miss out on an opportunity to improve their user experience on the Internet. Since in this post I am going to limit myself to language negotiation – as opposed to content negotiation in general –, I believe that it is particularly relevant to language professionals.
Categories: Language and Translation Web Development and Programming
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Back to the top of this pageQuite Some Characters: A Unicode Primer for Linguists
Posted on Monday, 19 March, 2007
For people who are part of a creation process as is the case for us linguists it often proves helpful to have at least a basic idea of the other aspects involved in that process even if, strictly speaking, they are outside our own responsibility. Since computers have become such an integral part of our lives and working environments, computer-related aspects of multilingual content should be of interest to anyone involved in a translation process. This knowledge may not be directly required for our linguistic work, but it can greatly facilitate collaboration and communication with engineers, graphic designers, etc. and make it easier to identify and analyse obstacles that we may encounter from time to time. Yes, you guessed it right, this article is dedicated to the horribly dull and nasty topic of text encodings, in particular, Unicode.
Categories: Language and Translation Localization and Internationalization
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Back to the top of this pageRegional Differences In Written German
Posted on Friday, 19 January, 2007
Now that I am doing freelance translation again, I notice that a lot of clients get confused by my regional adaptation skills. But also there is a lot of confusion in the industry as to when it makes sense to adapt copy specifically for a Swiss or an Austrian target audience rather than just to use a generic German version. Note that this post is about written German, not about spoken language.Categories: Language and Translation Localization and Internationalization
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Back to the top of this pageThe Nicaraguan Sign Language
Posted on Friday, 3 November, 2006
Today's article on the popular “Damn Interesting” blog – nomen est omen – by Marisa Brook is about a phenomenon that is of particular interest to linguists. Marisa writes about the spontaneous creation of a highly complex sign language by deaf, illiterate children without any appropriate training in Nicaragua. To learn more about this exciting story, you may want to read Marisa's article.
What I found most interesting was one particular aspect:
Categories: Language and Translation
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