By Daniel Miller, LATimes Trekkies looking to translate the famous Klingon battle cry Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam! — or any other phrase from the fictional alien race’s language — will soon have a new tool at their disposal. Starting on Tuesday, Bing, Microsoft Corp.’s Internet search engine, will include Klingon in its web-based translation service. The move is…

When Lexicographers study the origin of words, they look for the earliest recorded usage, which tends to fall to literature.  Therefore, it is no great surprise that one of America’s greatest modern authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald could have been responsible for inventing one or two words that are still used today. But he didn’t invent…

“Ye old mother, hand I this black worm”. It’s a sentence that might startle your work colleagues, but if someone from 15,000 years ago was around the chances are they would understand you. The sentence is made from some of the 23 words researchers believe have remained unchanged through the millennia and are part of…

The Navajo Nation Museum and Lucasfilm are working together to dub Star Wars: A New Hope into the Navajo native language of Diné bizaad, a language spoken by around 210,000 people. Manuelito Wheeler, the director of the Navajo Nation Museum who approached Lucasfilm with the idea, sees the project as an entertaining and educational way…

by Nir Hasson, Haaretz Hebrew Academy creates a new host of native versions of foreign words after getting feedback from language aficionados on Facebook. Throw the confetti and hold your kitbag question: The Hebrew Language Academy approved several new Hebrew words at its 330th meeting last week. The academy found Hebrew equivalents for several words,…

YOLO! For those living in a bubble the past few months, this phrase stands for ‘You Only Live Once’, and has become a popular slogan amongst teenagers in America (of course now that it’s popular it will be slowly dying out soon).  So I’m making the most of it by writing a blog post about…

by Martha Mendoza AP ou might use Google Translate to read a hard-to-find manga or to decipher an obscure recipe for authentic Polish blintzes. Or, like Phillip and Niki Smith in rural Mississippi, you could use it to rescue a Chinese orphan and fall in love at the same time. Google is now doing a…

As I’ve previously posted on how bad translations can have an affect on misunderstandings on the global scale, it would appear that once again mistranslation could be responsible for heightening the tensions with North Korea. RIA Novosti reports: North Korea has declared that it is entering a “state of war” with South Korea, saying that…

The Spanish clothing brand “Mango” has apologised on its French web site for selling jewelry advertised as “slave style” due to a translation error. French anti-racism associations are not amused. After Adidas scrapped new ‘shackle’ sneakers accused of evoking images of slavery over the summer, Spanish clothing brand Mango is now under fire for selling…

We all know that Valentine’s Day means buying chocolates, flowers, valentine’s cards, etc. for our special ‘someones’.   Depending on who that special ‘someone’ is, this day can leave some filled with anxiety, joy, regret, happiness, loneliness, debt…I don’t think there’s a more stressful holiday out there. Whether you have someone or not, this day will…