The Language Learning Specialists
This colour hasn’t got an exact name in English but it has in Japanese – it’s called mizu which translates as water. (We’d probably bundle it under the umbrella term of light blue.) A study published in The Journal of Vision discovered that the word mizu has been adopted by Japanese speakers over the last 30 … Read more
Last week, we at uTalk were immensely proud to release our Cockney dialect app! It’s taken us years to get to this stage and we’ve already had a fantastic response. But it’s been one of the most unusual languages we’ve ever produced, and we knew you’d want to hear more… First off, what is Cockney? … Read more
You might not believe it, but I regularly arbitrate fairly ferocious arguments about cake. And it’s not because my colleagues can’t share cake (although this has been known to be a problem in the past). The reason is that this little word, which you would think would be a simple thing to translate, actually gets … Read more
The first thing you need to do before embarking on a trip to a foreign land is to start learning the language. This will not only impress the locals, but will also make your visit easier and more enjoyable. In this hectic era, however, you may be forgiven for not dedicating the time necessary for learning … Read more
“Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they’re no good.” Etgar Keret For more like this, find us on Pinterest.
Microsoft have just unveiled the latest version of their Skype Translator, which will enable us to chat with people all over the world even if we don’t speak their language. This story ran in the Daily Mail here in the UK yesterday, under the rather depressing headline, ‘Don’t bother learning a foreign language! Skype will soon … Read more
A while back, we discovered this infographic of words that don’t have a direct translation in English. We loved it so much that we decided to see if there were any more words like these and create our own. So here it is – 10 cool words that don’t exist in English. Please do share … Read more
‘How are we going to do that in 41 languages?’ This was the question that Rick Dempsey, senior vice president of Creative Disney Characters Voices International, asked himself when he first heard the ice queen’s song in the new Disney movie Frozen. Dempsey has the incredibly interesting (if you’re a language geek, like me) job … Read more
Recently, Alex wrote about the way languages borrow words from each other. She pointed out that in English, we’re always using words from other languages, sometimes without even realising it, with déjà vu, karate and Zeitgeist being just a few examples. But is this mixing of languages a good thing, or should languages remain ‘pure’? … Read more
Reading Nat’s post about all the fascinating linguistic differences and difficulties that she and her translators experienced when translating the new uTalk app, I was reminded of some of the similar issues we’ve had in localising the maths apps. What seems totally normal to a three-year-old in the UK might not be all that familiar … Read more