Back to school: inspiring the next generation of linguists It was back to school for us recently when we dropped in at Newquay Tretherras School (NTS) to chat with a group of students about using languages at work. We’d been invited in by NTS’s careers coordinator, Sara Jeffery – herself a super-keen language teacher –
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Collaborative translation: How New Zealand’s translators came together to translate the country’s founding document into 30 languages It’s not often that I get goose bumps during a presentation at a language industry event. But as I sat and listened to Mandy Hewett’s talk entitled ‘Collaborative translation for the future of New Zealand’ about a
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Why tea is strong, not sturdy: Collocations and their crucial role in language and translation What are collocations and why are they important? If you ask the average citizen what collocations are, they may not know what you’re talking about, although they will surely use them. Well everybody uses them, but most of
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Fighting with hard bandages: 7 German sports idioms and expressions to help you raise the bar Working as a translator is obviously mostly done with your brain and not with your body. Translating can be quite exhausting sometimes, but here at AJT we never throw in the towel. We all love different sports whether
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Stiff ears and eating hairs: 5 quirky German idioms to get your head around Here at AJT, we know that language is more than just words randomly put together to form a sentence. Language is a complex and diverse organism that manifests itself not only acoustically but also visually. In one of our recent voice
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It is commonly known that different cultures perceive and treat animals in entirely different ways: whereas dogs are seen as food in some parts of China, they are the most beloved pets in Western Europe. Cows are considered holy in India, but are the core ingredient of almost every hamburger in Great Britain. But apart
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As translators, we like to keep up to date with new developments around all things language. After all, we have a responsibility to know the tools of our trade. It’s no surprise then that here at AJT, we were excited to hear that the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung (Council for German Orthography) recently published a
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Although I am a native Dutch speaker and have lived in the UK for many years, I still have the occasional embarrassing steenkolenengels (literally coal English) moment. Also called Dunglish: the popular term to describe the mistakes made by some native Dutch speakers when speaking English. The Dutch term steenkolenengels goes back to the early
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Here at AJT, we live and translate by the sea. Every day we’re inspired by our relationship with the ocean, so we thought it might be fun to have a look at where some of the nautical terms found in our daily vocabulary originated. Some expressions have quite an obvious nautical connection: to know the ropes
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I am an Upper Sixth Form student studying French, German and Italian. I love learning foreign languages and hope to pursue this passion at university. Not only are modern language skills highly desirable in the eyes of employers, but they also enable you to gain a better understanding of the world in general, through learning
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