Metaglossia: The Translation World

La France, très protectrice envers sa langue qui fut, un temps, l’équivalent de l’anglais dans les relations internationales (elle est encore aujourd’hui langue officielle de l’ONU), a un organe bien particulier : la Commission Générale de...

«Ne dites plus hashtag mais mot-dièse», prévient Rue89. Car le fameux hashtag de Twitter vient d’être ainsi traduit en français et publié au Journal officiel dans la catégorie «vocabulaire des télécommunications et de l’informatique»....

He has the most-watched video in Youtube history, become a pop sensation with a horse-riding dance craze that has swept the world and now Korean singer Psy may cement his place in popular culture with recognition from a British dictionary.

South Korean Psy’s song was word for November – when his horse dance video became YouTube’s most popular clip

Gangnam Style fue elegida junto a fiscal cliff abismo fiscal y Romneyshambles las vacilaciones de Romney como una de las palabras del año del diccionario Collins.

A RISE in attacks on soldiers in Afghanistan has led to the term "green-on-blue" being anointed word of the year for 2012.

With the explosion of texts, tweets and posts as a daily form of communication, popular culture seems to accept the shortening and dispensing of the normal rules of written English.

English is a language that offers us myriad choices. We can be unfailingly precise, but also poetic, and even funny. A sense of humor pervades many of the newest words entering English, via the technology industry.

Comment dit-on "subprimes" en Espagnol?
La crise immobilière Espagnole risque d'être aussi saignante que sa grande soeur Américaine: Esperons que "subprimes" soit intraduisible en castillan...

C’ est pas faute de l’avoir annoncé ; dès mars 2010 nous proposions à nos lecteurs une explication originale et inédite de la crise immobilière espagnole qu’on voyait venir gros comme une maison : des milliers de permis de construire, délivrés n’importe comment par des conseillers municipaux corrompus jusqu’à la dague de la puntilla, qui allaient forcément se traduire par des milliers de programmes plus ou moins invendables sur les « costas » ensoleillées mais aussi par des ardoises copieusement impayées chez ceux qui finançaient aveuglement la fiesta…

Bref, un autre exemple de système « gagnant-gagnant » si cher aux politiques, où tout le monde devait théoriquement s’en mettre plein les fouilles : les maires et leurs adjoints chargés de l’urbanizacion, les promoteurs immobiliers ayant récupéré à la sauvette et moyennant quelques enveloppes dodues bourrées de cash, des terrains jusque là inconstructibles payés au grand maximum, le prix d’une double tournée de tapas, et enfin les banquiers dont les bonus personnels devaient augmenter au même rythme que leurs encours sur des dizaines de milliers d’emprunteurs locaux et d’européens du nord attirés par des plages aussi surpeuplés qu’ensoleillées…

NUEVA YORK.- La argentina Leticia Molinero, miembro de la Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (ANLE), ha visto cómo han tenido que pasar largos años hasta que la Real Academia de la Lengua Española ha reconocido oficialmente que en Estados Unidos existe una variante del español definida como "estadounidismo".

"Muchas veces el idioma no se puede razonar tanto; hay que aceptar lo que es una avalancha de uso", expresó en una entrevista telefónica con Associated Press Molinero, quien preside la comisión de la ANLE encargada de estudiar la norma del español de los Estados Unidos.

Con este reconocimiento, el término "estadounidismo" se incluyó recientemente en el Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (DRAE), con la siguiente definición:

"Estadounidismo: Palabra o uso propios del español hablado en los Estados Unidos de América".

Con esta inclusión, queda abierta la puerta a que se acepten como correctas palabras que en Estados Unidos tienen un significado diferente al que se les da en otros países hispanohablantes. Por ejemplo, es el caso del término "parada" ("parade" en inglés) y que en el español de Estados Unidos se utiliza comúnmente para referirse a un desfile.

I am writing today from my old dorm room in Jägermeister Hall at my alma mater, the Biloxi School of Bartending. It's Homecoming Weekend at BSB. I haven't been to campus for homecoming in 34 years. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the most recent issue of our alumni magazine, The Taproom. Leafing through its glossy pages, I found myself waxing nostalgic about my time here. Those were the best eight years of my life.

When I was a student, the Department of Lexicography occupied a corner of the third floor in the Haig & Haig Liberal Arts Building. I could see if from my dorm window back then, but the trees are bigger now. Although I never did work in the field, I am proud of my B.S. in Lexicography from BSB.

Those were heady times back then to be in college. The controversy over the Permissive approach in Webster's Third International Dictionary, first published in 1961, was criticized by many lexicographers, including the Cecil Baker, Ph.D., chairman of the department, and raged in his heart almost 20 years later.

Dr. Baker was a "dictionary man." He was an original member of the Usage Panel for the first edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the American Language, which was published in 1969. His only use for "The Third," as he referred to the Webster's dictionary, was as an endless source of negative comparison with the "The First" edition of the AHD.

I, too, was a "dictionary man," albeit one of seven, including two girls. Together, we dictionary men comprised the entire student body of the lexicography program at the Biloxi School of Bartending.

"Let us consider the political implications of adding 'ain't' to 'The Third,' shall we?" Dr. Baker would say, and off we'd go. My classmates and I were thrilled by the glitz and glamour of lexicography.

Kirk Lytle was the usage guy. He was my roommate. If someone was confused about effect and affect, Kirk was the guy who knew the usage rules. We lost touch after graduation. I think he fell in love with a hippie chick in the biology department and moved to Costa Rica after graduation. Or he's dead.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Thanks to technology and popular culture, new words enter the language each year, while other words go the way of bell-bottom jeans and daily newspapers and gradually fade from the scene.

An official source of acceptance for new words is the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, which recently released its list of 25 words to be added to the 2012 edition of the popular reference book.

Oprah Winfrey can be credited/blamed for the first word in this year's alphabetically arranged list. Her signature phrase "aha moment," meaning a flash of sudden insight, is now an officially recognized noun. An Oprah-sanctioned job description, "life coach," was also anointed as a noun.

Abbreviation for BlackBerry Messenger Service enters the modern-day vernacular.BBM, the abbreviated form of the popular BlackBerry Messenger Service that is used by 56m people worldwide, has been included in the Collins English Dictionary.

Some 70% of customers with BlackBerry smartphones 'BBM' each other every day, sending instant messages to their friends, family and colleagues.

© PA Images

After winning the Gold in the 100m final at the London 2012 Olympics, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt said in a live TV interview: "All I gotta do is thank a few people on my BBM with my congrats and that's pretty much it."

Music artists Tinie Tempah and Sean Kingston have both mentioned BBM in their respective songs, 'Miami to Ibiza' and 'BBM'.

However, the BBM service also hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons last year after it was blamed as being the conduit for communications between rioters during the unrest across English cities in August.

But the global awareness of the term BBM has meant it has officially entered modern-day vernacular, leading to the announcement that it will be included in the latest edition of the Collins English Dictionary.

BBM began as a business messaging tool, but today it is used by 56 million people worldwide, including over 80% of UK BlackBerry customers.

Crowdsourcing has its appeal, but without professional lexicographers these reference works will lose the authority we want them for...

A small thing in the larger world perhaps but Collins, the dictionary publisher, may have set a revolution going. If so it's because they just announced the first instance of a dictionary allowing input not only from the usual suspects – staff lexicographers – but from the public, or to use the pertinent language: the crowd.

Crowdsourcing, at least partially inspired by James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds, Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few, is first recorded in 2004. The philosophy of the more the merrier. And more creative. Now that task could include lexicography.

Everyone, we know, and thanks to self-publishing can now see, seems to have a novel in them. Maybe there's a dictionary too. For the last couple of months Collins has thrown open their files to all-comers. Suggest a word that qualifies for their dictionary and win a prize! Examples include Twittersphere, sexting, cyberstalking and captcha. Other contenders include mantyhose and photobombing. And amazeballs, an expression of enthusiasm.

Such shout-outs are the antithesis of traditional lexicography. "The dictionary" represents authority. "Is it in the dictionary?", "I'll look it up in the dictionary", and so on. If the dictionary-maker is a humble archivist while the lexicon is being created, they become a deity – or at least a cut-rate Moses – once it appears and becomes a source of supposedly trustworthy information.

Collins says that the cultural influences that led to the addition all of BBM's mentions in contemporary music as well as when Olympic gold medal sprint Usain Bolt mentioned that he would be contacting his friends and family via BBM in an interview...

09/11/2012
CollinsDictionary.com's crowd-sourcing and the shopping lexicon
This week the blogosphere is responding with bemused appreciation to the initial results of CollinsDictionary.com's crowd-sourcing. Taking a tip from the original Oxford English Dictionary, which more than a century ago recruited contributions from word-enthusiasts, Collins editors invited the public to submit words for review and possible inclusion. In the first two months, more than 4,400 words were proposed, according to a press release. Editors selected 86.

Browsing the list of these new words, I was struck by the format for each entry that CollinsDictionary.com is employing. Since at least the 18th century, a dictionary entry typically has included the word to be defined, the part of speech, labels, and a definition. Sometimes entries offer a guide to pronunciation, etymology, synonyms, and an example of usage (in the case of historical dictionaries, evidence of when, where and how the word was used in the past).

CollinsDictionary.com entries for the words on the crowd-sourced list supply a definition, part of speech, and some labels... plus a "Sponsored Links" section, and a "Comment" section (which includes the username of the person who proposed the word). In many cases, the Links and Comment sections are blank. I guess I am relieved that there is no Sponsored Link for "mummy porn" or "geekism,", but still, the blank space creates an oddly forlorn effect, as if a word doesn't have any friends.

Maybe what makes Sponsored words popular is that they are concrete--or can be perceived as such. Look up the definition of "shabby chic" and Google will invite you to check out Shabby Chic decor, Shabby Chic painted furniture and (one shudders to think) Shabby Chic mattresses. Wondering what "K-pop" means, you find your attention directed to K-pop radio and Toyota Camrys.

What's your word?
Posted by Collins Language @ Monday 10 September 2012

Has your new word suggestion been added to Collinsdictionary.com?

Since 17th July CollinsDictionary.com has been accepting new word suggestions from anyone who wants to be part of the evolution of the English language. Our hard-working dictionary editors have been busy sorting through more than four thousand entries since then, and can now reveal a list of eighty-six new words and senses that have been added to CollinsDictionary.com.
If your word is one of them you will be credited on the word's definition page as the person who suggested the word. If you haven't been successful this time though, don't give up, we're still accepting new word suggestions, and will update the site regularly with the latest words to enter the English language.

New words added to CollinsDictionary.com this month
amazeballs, submitted by tanya1981
bake in, submitted by joe_easton3
banjolele, submitted bt JonGrandin
bashtag, submitted by emile_diderot
BBM, submitted by BlackBerry
Bing, submitted by DarthMengon
bioarchaeology, submitted by JonGrandin
blootered, submitted by Pharmachris
bridezilla, submitted by bhumit176
bunbury, submitted by jcowburn
throw someone under the bus, submitted by Daved
captcha, submitted by tiki-taka
chef de mission, submitted by tikitaka
claustrophilia, submitted by ssbhatti
confirmee, submitted by dsp
crowdfunding, submitted by monkjack
cyberbully, submitted by chrisia.kellynichols
cyberstalking, submitted by collinsdict
daal, submitted by madhava.peraje
data cap, submitted by YasinSoliman
denialist, submitted by bmsmpppousa
dosa, submitted by madhava.peraje

Words like ‘amazeballs’, ‘Facebook’, ‘totes’ and ‘frenemy’ are officially part of the English language.
In July 2012 the Collins English Dictionary decided to “crowdsource” new words to the English Language by allowing the public to submit words (and definitions) they thought had become part of our everyday lexicon. Late yesterday, it released a list of approximately 80 words that would be added to its online dictionary.
What constitutes an English word or not has more been in the realm of scholars and professors (most notably from Oxford), but the move from Collins certainly shows how much the world has changed. For the first time real people, laymen, the ones who actually use the language, get to have a say in what is legitimate vernacular and what isn’t.
The move would be considered heretical for purists who like the idea that English should remain English and to allow colonials and foreigners to have a say would be downright unthinkable. Then there are those who would think that English should become a more refined language, harking back to the days of Shakespeare and thees and thous. It would be the same English people who forget that the queen herself is of German descent and that the official language of the aristocracy for years was French!

Blootered, amazeballs and mummy porn are among dozens of words and terms which have been added to a Glasgow-based online dictionary.

Publisher Collins invited people to become "word-spotters" and suggest new and emerging words for inclusion.

A total of 86 were chosen and can now be seen at www.collinsdictionary.com.

Collins said it received thousands of entries and opening the normally closed process would make recording the English language more democratic.

The online dictionary website was launched last year and is based in Glasgow, where Collins English Dictionary print editions and other best-selling reference titles are produced.

The term mummy porn was coined when the novel Fifty Shades of Grey, by British author EL James, shot to popularity this year.

'Really cool'
The book explores themes of a sexual nature and has a reputation for being popular with women.

Blootered, an adjective commonly used in Scotland to describe someone who is drunk, was added, along with Facebook, cyber bullying and floordrobe, which is defined as "a pile of clothes left on the floor of a room".

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

We were...blown away by the volume and variety of submissions”

Alex Brown
Collins Publishers
Tanya Clarke, 30, from Nottingham, submitted the successful entry "amazeballs", which is a slang word for giving approval to something.

"I first saw it on Facebook and I just thought it was really cool," she said.

"My daughter is 10 and she uses it all the time. I think it is one of those words that will be used a lot by teenagers and pre-teens.

"I think the opportunity offered by Collins to submit words is really good as it means people have the chance to give their views on things that people are actually saying and the terms they are using. It will keep things up-to-date."

More than 80 words and terms including "blootered", "amazeballs" and "mummy porn" have been added to an online dictionary.

Publisher Collins said on Tuesday it was "blown away" by the thousands of entries it received for its online resource, after inviting all English-speaking members of the public to become "word-spotters" and suggest new and emerging words for inclusion.

A total of 86 were chosen and can now be seen at www.collinsdictionary.com.

The site was launched last year and is based in Glasgow, where Collins English Dictionary print editions and other best-selling reference titles are produced.

Collins said opening the normally closed process would make the way the English language is recorded more democratic.

The term "mummy porn" was coined when the novel Fifty Shades of Grey, by British author EL James, shot to popularity this year.

The book explores themes of a sexual nature and has a reputation for being popular with women.

"Blootered", an adjective commonly used in Scotland to describe someone who is drunk, was added, along with "Facebook", "cyber bullying" and "floordrobe", which is defined as "a pile of clothes left on the floor of a room".

Tanya Clarke, 30, from Nottingham, submitted the successful entry "amazeballs", which is a slang word for giving approval to something.

 

Mummy porn – the term coined by detractors for steamy novels such as Fifty Shades Of Grey – has now been given a literary seal of approval after making it into the dictionary.

Mummy porn is used to describe books like Fifty Shades of Grey (Picture: File)
The phrase has been added to the dictionary after editors decided it was so commonly understood it should no longer be viewed as slang.
Also making an appearance is blootered, a Scottish word for drunk, and amazeballs – a term of approval which was submitted to publisher Collins by Tanya Clarke, 30, of Nottingham.
‘I first saw it on Facebook and I just thought it was really cool,’ Ms Clarke said. ‘My daughter is ten and she uses it all the time. I think it is one of those words that will be used a lot by teenagers and pre-teens.’
Frenemy (a friend and rival) and tiger mother (a demanding parent) were also among the 86 words sent in via the web and accepted for the Collins online dictionary, after the public were invited to suggest words for the first time.

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/911455-mummy-porn-and-amazeballs-make-it-into-dictionary#ixzz269aF8FqQ

Languages are continually changing, not just words but also grammar. A recent study examines how such changes happen and what the changes can tell us about how speakers' grammars work.

The study, "The course of actualization", to be published in the September 2012 issue of the scholarly journal Language, is authored by Hendrik De Smet of the University of Leuven /Research Foundation Flanders.

...more about:
> course of actualization > Dutch landscape > Historical linguists > Language > LSA > scholarly journal Language > sneaky quality
A preprint version is available online at: http://lsadc.org/info/documents/2012/press-releases/de-smet.pdf

Historical linguists, who document and study language change, have long noticed that language changes have a sneaky quality, starting small and unobtrusive and then gradually conquering more ground, a process termed 'actualization'. De Smet's study investigates how actualization proceeds by tracking and comparing different language changes, using large collections of digitized historical texts. This way, it is shown that any actualization process consists of a series of smaller changes with each new change building on and following from the previous ones, each time making only a minimal adjustment. A crucial role in this is played by similarity.

Consider the development of so-called downtoners – grammatical elements that minimize the force of the word they accompany. Nineteenth-century English saw the emergence of a new downtoner, all but, meaning 'almost'. All but started out being used only with adjectives, as in her escape was all but miraculous. But later it also began to turn up with verbs, as in until his clothes all but dropped from him. In grammatical terms, that is a fairly big leap, but when looked at closely the leap is found to go in smaller steps. Before all but spread to verbs, it appeared with past participles, which very much resemble both adjectives and verbs, as in her breath was all but gone. So, changes can sneak into a language and spread from context to context by exploiting the similarities between contexts.

Recently some Chinese scholars have complained that the inclusion of many English abbreviations such as NBA (National Basketball Association) in a newly published Chinese dictionary violates current laws and regulations governing the use of Chinese language.

They claimed that the main body of the newly published "Modern Chinese Dictionary" includes 239 entries containing letters from the Latin alphabet, which are treated as if they are common Chinese words.

In a joint letter, around 120 scholars said that as an authority on the correct use of the Chinese language, the dictionary's inclusion of so many English words is a threat to the purity of the Chinese language, resulting in linguistic damage probably unprecedented in modern history.

While the perceived damage is yet to be assessed, I think the threat these scholars alert us to is very real.

Sadly, their initiative has not gone down well with the general populace. Most of the media comments call these scholars alarmist, conservatives who are eminently out of touch with reality, or pedants seeking attention by creating a stir.

'Practical' objections

The objections are "practical": If we're not allowed to use GDP, CPI, or CT, we would be hard pressed to find any Chinese equivalents so succinct and expressive. We might face the dilemma of never being able to suggest these wonderful things.

Or is it because these abbreviations obfuscate so well?

“Lolz,” “photobombing” and “mwahahaha” have recently been added to Oxford Dictionaries Online, prompting a discussion of our modern taste for digital jargon.

Yes, it does seem inevitable. When a cul­ture inte­grates some­thing new — a new tech­nology, for example, or an art form or belief system — new vocab­u­lary enters the lan­guage, giving us the vocab­u­lary we need to talk about it. There are many ways of han­dling this — some­times a lan­guage will borrow words from another lan­guage, but often we draw on the resources of our own lan­guage. Since the United States has been at the fore­front of devel­oping com­puter, Internet, cell phone and dig­ital tech­nolo­gies, many of the words for those tech­nolo­gies come from English.

Keeping in mind that these tech­nolo­gies have only been in wide­spread use for the last 20 or 30 years, the words that have entered the lan­guage are very new. But they are so per­va­sive and widely used that we don’t even think of them as new any­more! Think about mouse, virus, cookie, thumb­nail and icon: these words are now used in a com­pletely dif­ferent sense than had orig­i­nally been intended. Or think about all of the new com­pounds that we’ve cre­ated: upload, down­load, log-in, home­page, World Wide Web, web­site, flash­drive, smart­phone, and so on. Con­sider acronyms such as GPS, OMG, LOL, PC, DVD, CD, URL and USB; blends such as mal­ware (from mali­cious soft­ware) and blog (weblog); clip­pings such as app (short for appli­ca­tion) and net (for Internet); and the use of trade­names and prod­ucts such as Google, Skype, iPod, and iPhone.

xclusive to The Gulf Today

Last week, we learned that the Chinese were not happy with their latest dictionaries. If you happen to thumb through a copy of the most current version you might understand why if you are adamant that all languages should remain true to form. Apparently, you will come across many acronyms of English origin, acronyms such as ATM, NBA, WTO, iPhone, iPad and GDP.

Over time all languages evolve. No language is ever purely pure. But before I go on to make my case on this point, it might be an idea to tell you how one might define a “pure language.”

A pure language is one which has not been influenced by any other language. Languages that are immune to foreign inclusions are those that have the equivalent of every foreign word. In other words the purer the language, the fewer foreign words it is likely to have incorporated within it. It might be worth noting, however, that the colloquial version of many languages (meaning one that is spoken by the everyday man) tends to be a mishmash of many other languages that it has picked up over time.

It might also be useful to add that some languages are more prone to becoming a potpourri of many tongues than others. Languages that are prone to this “mixing” are those from the subcontinent. If you were not fluent in either Urdu or Hindi and you were to listen to the colloquial version being spoken the chances are that you’d understand a fair amount of it because of the extensive number of English words being thrown into the mix.

But go to Europe and then you realise what it means to speak a pure language. Listen to French, Swedish or German, for example, and there are very few foreign words in the mix. The same might not be said of the English language though.

Britain and America would both be considered as cosmopolitan. North America is a colourful mix of Italians. Latinos, African Americans and Native Americans. Each have contributed their rich culture and equally colourful language to the American way of life. As a result we hear words like Navajo, nata, mui bueno, tripping, kahuna and mi casa su casa.