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Top Five Hardest Languages To Learn – And How You Can Easily Master Them
Apr 23rd
Learning a language is never an easy task. Those languages that are closest in similarity to English take an average of 23 to 34 weeks or between 575 and 600 hours in a classroom to achieve proficiency, but some languages are even more difficult to master. A few can take over a year – or 2,200 class hours – to learn! But with the right attitude and strategy, it is possible to master even the hardest languages in less than that time.
So, which languages are the hardest for native English speakers, and why those particular languages?
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Jumping Into The World Of Translation…Easier Than Ever?
Mar 19th
This is a guest post by Samir Benjelloun.
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How would you react if ”procurement specialist in China sourcing” is translated into ”spécialiste des achats sourcing Chine” or “spécialiste de l’approvisionnement en Chine de sourcing”?
Would that risk affect your decision to place your cost-saving order on risky non-professional translators?
As a non-professional translator with a few experiences in the translation field, the answers to these questions could depend on many factors.
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South of the Border
Mar 13th
This is a guest post by Ryan.
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Last summer my family and I went on a cruise with multiple stops in big Mexico cities.
On our last stop in Mazatlan, my father was craving a churro (the long breaded sugary snack you see at the state fair). Because my father is that typical oblivious American that doesn’t realize that just like Taco Bell, the churro was an American invention, he couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t find the treat at the other two stops we had in Mexico. So Mazatlan was the final place to have what he called “A traditional Mexican churro”.
After lying out on the beach, we looked around a town square for about thirty minutes. Our whole family got a kick out of the fact he was so determined to find this churro, that he was going up to random street vendors and people asking for a “churro” and doing a long hand motion that signaled that the thing he was speaking about was supposed to go in his mouth.
Guide to South African Slang
Mar 12th
South Africa is home to several different cultures and people including the Europeans (Dutch, English and French), the Malaysians, the Indians, as well as the local Africans. This great variety of cultures and languages has resulted in a unique slang which can only be found in South Africa.
The South African slang reflects many different linguistic traditions found in South Africa. These “Afrikanerisms” referred to as “funagalore”, which is a language used in the gold and coal mines of South Africa, was used to ensure workers from various language backgrounds could communicate.
So let’s say you’ve got everything lined up – Your flight is booked, hotels in Johannesburg registered, rental car ordered, a great restaurant list prepared, etc… But you want to fit in as best as possible. We have compiled a list below with the most common slang words used in South Africa and have subdivided these into the following categories:
- South African slang
- Special Use slang
Why Teaching English Abroad is Growing in Popularity
Mar 7th
With the UK job market looking increasingly gloomy, and student fees on the rise as of September alternative career and study choices are becoming increasingly popular. TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) courses are one of these alternative options that are growing in reputation. TEFL courses are seen as an excellent opportunity for teachers who want to further their career abroad and for candidates looking to gain real life experience to add to their CV.
St Giles International offer English and TEFL courses at their English schools worldwide and have noticed an increase in the number of students enrolling on TEFL courses since job opportunities at home have become harder to come by. This relationship could be due to the fact that job seekers are viewing TEFL courses as a way to secure work both in the UK and abroad in a sector that is always looking for fresh ideas, approaches and workers.
Short, and Maybe Not So Sweet?
Dec 12th
This is a guest post by Sonya Matsui.
Sonya Matsui is a translator, writer, and editor, and has been working as an English teacher in the Israel school system for the last sixteen years.
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The two languages, Hebrew and Arabic, are in many ways close to one another. They, of course, share Semitic roots. ”Mote” in Arabic means death. In Arabic, a suffix can be added to a word to express belonging – such words as “my”, “your”, “his” etc., can be added to a word.
A Hebrew speaker saw an Arab child, and, thinking he was very cute, turned to the mother and cooed,”Eizeh motek” – What a darling! The Arab mother heard “mote” (death) with “k” attached, which would indicate “your”. The situation took a little patching up – of course, the expression on the Hebrew speaker’s face did not match the interpretation in the Mom’s mind. Gotta be careful out there – sometimes, the most innocent comments are dropped into a mine field!
–Sonya Matsui
Beware of Literal Translations
Oct 21st
This is a guest post by Sonya Matsui.
Sonya Matsui is a translator, writer, and editor, and has been working as an English teacher in the Israel school system for the last sixteen years.
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Beware of literal translations:
A young man from Tel-Aviv went to England and found a job as a waiter. He was asked if he felt that his English was good enough to provide efficient service for the customers in an upper-class coffee shop.
“Of course,” he answered, with the greatest confidence. “I speak English really good.” He smiled to himself, as he patted a compact dictionary that fit neatly into his pocket.
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Language Lessons
Oct 4th
This is a guest post by Sonya Matsui.
Sonya Matsui is a translator, writer, and editor, and has been working as an English teacher in the Israel school system for the last sixteen years.
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As a part of the curriculum in the Israel school system, students have to prepare a project in their high school years. Much to my chagrin, the project often consists of not much more than pages taken from articles in the Internet, without a taste of personal language and expression.
Once, I received a project with enough mistakes to convince me, beyond a doubt, that the writing was entirely the effort of my student.
The young lady had chosen to write about sports, and described, in her own inimitable style, the excitement of a football match. My favorite sentence, which I cannot forget, was that “Two actors running after the ball, and one of them get a sabotage in he head.”
Where did the “actors” come from? “Player” and “actor” in English are translated by the same word in Hebrew – the girl just chose the wrong one… As for the sabotage, again, there is one word in Hebrew for both sabotage and a wound.
Translation Can Be A “Prestigeless” Business
Oct 3rd
This is a guest post by Paul Hacker.
Paul Hacker was born in New York City in 1946 and is a graduate of the City College of New York and Columbia University, from which he received a Ph.D. degree in political science in 1976. You can read more about Paul at his author’s page at Amazon.
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One interesting question in translation is how concepts get translated – rightly or wrongly –into another language.
I recently went through the agony of translating an article by two Goteborg-based researchers dealing with why emergency services here have such a hard time cooperating ran across the term “prestigelöst samarbete.” Apparently, the Swedish writers expected the term to be simply transferred as “prestigeless” in English. This is how the term is often used when Swedes, but not Brits or Americans, use it. Prestigeless is rarely used in English and connotes such ideas as “powerless and prestigeless,” meaning a group of people way down on the social totem pole. People in Sweden sending in CVs in English also point to their admirable characteristics as including “prestigelessness.”
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