Poetry Translation Quiz

ESO 2, 3 & 4 Students,

1 point up for grabs in the next test for the student to send to our e-mail the first correct answer to this quiz:

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) wrote the poem To His Coy Mistress (which you can listen here). The first two verses of its third stanza read like this:

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew...

If you had to translate these two lines into Spanish using the first two verses in a very famous sonnet by a 16th century Spanish poet and soldier... What would your translation be?

Carpe Diem!

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

ESO 2 2nd Term 2014-15 PBL Assignment

ESO 2 Students,

This is your PBL assignment for this 2014-15 second term. Your task is to download this image of a mind-map giving you some interesting advice on how to get ready for exams, and translate its texts into Spanish or Galician using the same font as in the original picture (or one as similar as possible) by means of some photo editing software (such as Paint, Gimp, Photoshop, etc.).

You must create a .jpg, .gif or .png file, identify it with your group name (for instance, BLUE_4A.jpg) and send it to our email. You must fill in the "subject" section of your mail messages with YOUR GROUP IDENTIFICATION and the word "PBL". You must also include the names of each and every group member and the percentage of work that every member has carried out (your marks will be in direct mathematical relation to that percentage). Your group identification must be as follows: GROUPCOLOUR_CLASS. Example: BLUE_4A.

Points will be deducted for every instruction you do not follow and each group will be deducted 1 point from their mark for every student who does not bring their copy (in English!!) of this document to class next Thursday 12th February.

Every group must email their answers BEFORE Sunday 1st March at precisely 23:59:59. No mails will be admitted after the deadline, so please do not wait until the very last minute and get down to work as soon as possible.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

Translators Are a Waste of Time

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

Better in Original Version

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non commercial purposes.

ESO 3 - 3rd Term PBL Task

ESO 3 Students,

This is your 3rd Term PBL task. You have to translate this inspirational comic strip by artist Gavin Aung Than into the language of your choice: Galician or Spanish.

You should translate EVERY WORD YOU SEE IN THE COMIC and create a new jpg of png file and send it to our mail. Keep the comic as it is: don't change the images. Just substitute the English words with the Spanish version. The deadline is Friday 24th May at precisely 23.59.59. No files will be admitted after the deadline ends.

The fonts you must use are Creative Block and Red State Blue State.

Your file identification must be as follows: GROUP_NUMBER_CLASS.JPG or GROUP_NUMBER_CLASS.PNG. Example: GROUP_1_3A.PNG.

You must fill in the "subject" section of your mail messages with YOUR GROUP IDENTIFICATION and the word "PBL".

And these are the groups:

The Beginning of the End?

The new Samsun Galaxy S4, which will be out by the end of this month, includes the S-Translator application, which captures words spoken in one language and reproduces them in another. It is also possible to use this app when sending an sms or an email. S-Translator works with ten languages, including French, Latin American Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and American English.

2nd Term ESO 3 PBL Task

ESO 3 Students,

This is your 2nd Term PBL task. You have to translate this comic strip by artist Gavin Aung Than into the language of your choice: Galician or Spanish.

You should translate every word you see (except, of course, the names of the newspapers depicted in the comic) and create a new jpg of png file and send it to our mail. Keep the comic as it is: don't change the images. Just substitute the English words with the Spanish version. The deadline is Friday 8th March at precisely 23.59.59. No files will be admitted after the deadline finishes.

The fonts you must use are Creative Block and Red State Blue State.

Your file identification must be as follows: GROUP_NUMBER_CLASS.JPG or GROUP_NUMBER_CLASS.PNG. Example: GROUP_1_3A.PNG.

You must fill in the "subject" section of your mail messages with YOUR GROUP IDENTIFICATION and the word "PBL".

Click here to download the comic image WITHOUT THE WORDS (blank, empty speech bubbles).

And these are the groups:

10 Ways Translation Shapes Your Life, by Nataly Kelly

(Reblogged from The Huffington Post)

Each year on Sept. 30, a holiday is observed by people all around the world that has been celebrated since 1953. It's a feast day that was originally designated for a patron saint (Saint Jerome), but it has grown to transcend all barriers of religion or geography. This year, I am personally sending out greetings to thousands of people in 70 different countries in observance of this important day -- that's far more than I send out for any other holiday.

Yet, if you're like the majority of people, you've probably never heard of this cause for global celebration until now. It's International Translation Day. You might not think about how translation affects your everyday life, but in reality, there is hardly anything in your life that isn't touched in some way by translation. As I explain in my new book, Found in Translation (co-authored with Jost Zetzsche), here are 10 reasons why translation is so significant:

Lost in Translation

Unfortunately, many people still think that a translator’s job is only a matter of having a dictionary and some resources such as the internet or translation manuals. Translation involves much more than linguistic knowledge: it also involves  cultural knowledge. Moreover, as translation is a process of creation, it involves creativity...

Do you think you would be able to translate the following images with only a dictionary?  The image is vital, as the translated text should fit in the same place of the image as the original one does...

In this image we have a bear. The word “bearly” does not exist but it was made up as a derivation from the word “bear”. “Bearly” would sound exactly the same as “barely”, which does exist and means “apenas / más o menos”.

  “A nice” is pronounced the same way as “an ice”

Piercing=a piece of jewellery attached to pierced flesh

To be pierced= to have a piercing done

Screw=tornillo

To be screwed= estar “atornillado” / ser estafado

To keep someone in stitches=To make someone laugh a lot
Stitch=puntada, punto.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only

Duolingo

Duolingo is a web-based application that teaches people languages by getting them to translate web pages: Users are able to learn languages for free, with no advertisements, while simultaneously translating the Web.

ESO 4 - 2nd Term PBL Marks

ESO 4 Students,

These are your marks for your 2nd term PBL assignments:

ESO 4 - 2nd Term PBL Task 2011-2012

ESO 4 Students,

Your grandfather has just been given a fantastic alarm clock for Christmas, but the instructions booklet is in English and he can't understand it. He has asked you for help because you have been studying English since you were 6 years old (at least!) He trusts you and your skills in English!

Your task is to translate the booklet into Spanish during the lessons on Monday 30th Jan, Tuesday 31st Jan, Friday 3rd Feb and Monday 6th Feb. Once your translation is finished you must forward it to our mail in PDF FORMAT. The file identification must be as follows:

GROUP_X.PDF (X = your group number)

The deadline is FRIDAY 10TH FEBRUARY at precisely 23.59.59.

And these are the groups:

ESO 2 1st Term PBL - Stop Bullying!

ESO 2 Students,

This is your 1st term PBL assignment. You have to translate this mind map into Spanish: 

(From www.michellenhenry.com)

ESO 3 & ESO 4 1st Term PBL 2011-12

ESO 3 & ESO 4 Students,

This is your PBL assignment for the 1st term:

Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary Online

ESO Students,

We would like to recommend a very useful resource, the online visual dictionary by Merriam Webster. It is structured in 15 major themes to access over 6,000 images. In our opinion it is one of the few linguistic online tools which rivals Google Images.

The Visual Dictionary is designed to help you find the right word at a glance. Filled with stunning illustrations labelled with accurate terminology in up to six languages, it is the ideal language-learning and vocabulary dictionary for use at school, at home or at work.

Detail

When you know what something looks like but not what it’s called, or when you know the word but can’t picture the object, The Visual Dictionary has the answer. In a quick look, you can match the word to the image.

The Visual Dictionary is more than a reliable resource of meticulously labelled images—it innovates by combining dictionary-scale definitions with exceptional illustrations, making it the most complete dictionary.

 
Detail

The Visual Dictionary is an indispensable visual reference that goes beyond object identification to answer questions about function, significance and purpose. Ideal for teachers, parents, writers, translators and students of all skill levels, it helps the user understand a phenomenon and quickly grasp the meaning of a term, the characteristics of an object or simply learn something new.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only

Blind ten-year-old becomes European Parliament's youngest interpreter

We reproduce now the article by Aidan Radnedge published on Metro yesterday, Thursday 14th April:

A blind girl who is fluent in four languages has become the youngest interpreter to work at the European Parliament – at the age of ten.

Alexia Sloane lost her sight when she was two following a brain tumour. But she has excelled at languages and is already fluent in English, French, Spanish and Mandarin – and is learning German.

Now she has experienced her dream job of working as an interpreter after East of England MEP Robert Sturdy invited her to the parliament building in Brussels.

‘She was given a dispensation to get into the building, where there is usually a minimum age requirement of 14, and sat in a booth listening and interpreting,’ said her mother, Isabelle.

‘The other interpreters were amazed at how well she did as the debate was quite complicated and many of the words were rather technical.’

Alexia has been tri-lingual since birth as her mother, a teacher, is half French and half Spanish, while her father, Richard, is English.

She started talking and communicating in all three languages before she lost her sight but adapted quickly to her blindness. By the age of four, she was reading and writing in Braille.

When she was six, Alexia added Mandarin to her portfolio. She will soon be sitting a GCSE in the language having achieved an A* in French and Spanish last year. The girl is now learning German at school in Cambridge.

Alexia has wanted to be an interpreter since she was six and chose to go to the European Parliament as her prize when she won a young achiever of the year award.

She asked if she could shadow interpreters and Mr Sturdy agreed to take her along as his guest.

Alexia worked with the head of interpreting and had a real taste of life in parliament.

‘It was fantastic and I’m absolutely determined now to become an interpreter,’ she said.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

Memidex: Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and More

As of today, among the online dictionaries Labor English Zone offers you will find Memidex, one of the quickest and easiest ways to get and compare online definitions, synonyms, etymology, and audio pronunciation.

Memidex is a free online dictionary and thesaurus with a simple interface, complete inflections, auto-suggest, adult-filtering, frequent updates, a browsable index, support for mobile devices, and millions of external reference links for definitions, audio, and etymology. It's fast too. Use the Find box for exact matching or browse using the complete index.

The Memidex online dictionary and thesaurus has been redesigned to better support web browsers on handheld and mobile devices while being just as usable (or more) as with regular desktop browsers.

Memidex external references currently include over 5.4 million definition references, 5.3 million audio references, and 1.8 million etymology references. Each reference has a title, a list of any other associated terms, an excerpt or description of the resource, a link to the actual web page, and a link to cite that specific resource in various established bibliographic styles. The references are from over a dozen leading online reference sources.

Each audio reference has a button to play the audio directly from the Memidex web page. You have unlimited playback for audio from open-license sources such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary, and one playback per session for copyright-protected sources. Most of the audio is for pronunciation while other audio demonstrates or describes the associated term. 

We hope you will find it as useful as we do.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

Top 10 Rare & Amusing Insults

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has published their Top 10 List of Rare and Amusing Insults in English. Here they are:

1. Cockalorum: a boastful and self-important person; a strutting little fellow (If cockalorum suggests a crowing cock, that's because cockalorum probably comes from kockeloeren – an obsolete Dutch dialect verb meaning "to crow.")

2. Lickspittle: a fawning subordinate; a suck-up (Lick plus spittle says it all: someone who licks another person's spit is pretty low indeed. Incidentally, lickspittle keeps company with bootlicker ("someone who acts obsequiously").)

3. Smellfungus: an excessively faultfinding person (The original Smelfungus was a character in an 18th century novel. Smelfungus, a traveler, satirized the author of Travels through France and Italy, a hypercritical guidebook of that time.)

4. Snollygoster: an unprincipled but shrewd person (The story of its origin remains unknown, but snollygoster was first used in the nasty politics of 19th century America. One definition of the word dates to 1895, when a newspaper editor explained "a snollygoster is a fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles....")

5. Ninnyhammer: ninny; simpleton, fool (The word ninny is probably a shortening and alteration of "an innocent" (with the "n" from "an" getting transferred to the noun) and "hammer" adds punch. Writers who have used the word include J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings trilogy: "You're nowt but a ninnyhammer, Sam Gamgee.")

6. Mumpsimus: a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong (Supposedly, this insult originated with an illiterate priest who said mumpsimus rather than sumpsimus ("we have taken" in Latin) during mass. When he was corrected, the priest replied that he would not change his old mumpsimus for his critic's new sumpsimus.)

7. Milksop: an unmanly man; a mollycoddle (a pampered or effeminate boy or man) (Milksop literally means "bread soaked in milk." Chaucer was among the earliest to use milksop to describe an unmanly man (presumably one whose fiber had softened). By the way, the modern cousin of milksop, milquetoast, comes from Caspar Milquetoast, a timid cartoon character from the 1920s.)

8. Hobbledehoy: an awkward, gawky young man (Hobbledehoy rhymes with boy: that's an easy way to remember whom this 16th century term insults. Its origin is unknown, although theories about its ancestry include hobble and hob (a term for "a clownish lout").)

9. Pettifogger: shyster; a lawyer whose methods are underhanded or disreputable (The petti part of this word comes from petty, meaning "insignificant" (from the French petit, "small"). As for fogger, it once meant "lawyer" in English. According to one theory, it may come from "Fugger," the name of a successful family of 15th and 16th century German merchants and financiers. Germanic variations of "fugger" were used for the wealthy and avaricious, as well as for hucksters.)

10. Mooncalf: a foolish or absentminded person (The original mooncalf was a false pregnancy, a growth in the womb supposedly influenced by a bad moon. Mooncalf then grew a sense outside the womb: simpleton. It also morphed into a literary word for a deformed monster. For instance, in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Stephano entreats Caliban, "Mooncalf, speak once in your life, if thou beest a good mooncalf.")

Now, Labor students, do you happen to know anybody who matches one (or more) of the definitions above?

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only

ESO 2, 3 & 4 - PBL 2nd Term 2010-11 - FestiLAB (Group Project)

ESO 2, ESO 3 & ESO 4 Students. Here is your PBL assignment for the 2nd Term, a group project:

You have to customize Leo's poster for the festiLAB 2011 edition and translate it into English keeping the SAME LAYOUT, SAME FONTS and FONT SIZE and SAME IMAGES (feel free to ask him what font and font size he has used or any other info you need).
You can download the poster with the highest resolution and best quality here (Leo's file is only 209 KB, so yours should not be much 'heavier'.)

No automatic translations are allowed (forget about Babel, Google or any other of those useless translation gadgets) and you bet we will easily find out if you use one: CRIME NEVER PAYS. You will have to use your talent. Make it sound natural. Of course, some research will come in handy: find other cinema or theatre posters and take a good look at them to see what you can learn.
Remember that  in our 'Online Dictionaries' section and our  'Resources' section (which you can find on the right-hand column of this blog) you will find all the tools you need to solve this PBL. We definitely recommend  Wikipedia, Wordreference, The Free Dictionary, Linguee and Questions and Answers.

Once your poster is polished and finished you will have to forward it to our mail.

IMPORTANT: Only the following formats will be allowed: JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG or PDF. Your files must be identified using ONLY the name of your group (which you will find below). For example, GROUP_2A_1.jpg or GROUP_3B_3.gif. Points will be deducted if you do not identify your files properly.

The DEADLINE is MONDAY 28th FEBRUARY at 23.59.59.

And these are the groups:

GROUP_2A_1

6. Serafín Davila Prado

2. Lara Álvarez Glez.

17. Gabriel Mtnez. García

10. Juan Domínguez-Viguera Sola

19. Rodrigo Rodríguez González

GROUP_2A_2

1. Íñigo Alcubierre Clemente

16. Pablo Martínez Álvarez

11. Samuel Fernández López

13. Rebecca Fernández Ramos

9. Zaida Domínguez Mariño

GROUP_2A_3

8. Nerea de Jesús Cruces

4. Pablo Cámara Gayoso

12. Ana Fernández Louzao

15. Sergio Martín Salvado

7. Isaac de Becerra Belerdas

GROUP_2A_4

4. Jorge Amoedo Reyero

5. Adrián Castro Rodríguez

14. Javier López Graña

18. Zulema B. Rodríguez Chávez

20. Juan M. Vieira Míguez

GROUP_2B_1

1. Adrián Alonso Núñez

16. Jessica Vilaboa Ricón

2. Alejandro Amoedo Reyero

4. Carlota Fuentes Pérez

GROUP_2B_2

15. Jesús A. Vieira Míguez

10. Edgar Pereira Veiga

11. Mª. Laura Pérez Muñoz

3. Ander Dieste Cortés

GROUP_2B_3

12. Iria Riobóo Vicente

5. Guillermo García Martínez

14. Omar Rouhou Gómez

8. Brayan Stiven Mesa Martínez

GROUP_2B_4

7. David Maceiras Masero

6. Irene Garrido Castro

13. Candela Rodríguez Bernárdez

9. Alejandro Penín Rodríguez

GROUP_3A_1

4. Pedro Bartolomé Fariña

17. Amadeo Martí Vilas

12. Sol Epstein Fernández

11. Yasmina El Hachimi

5. Adrián Blanco Vázquez

GROUP_3A_2

15. Aarón Hernández Casal

9. María Casal Puga

8. Paula Casal Lorenzo

2. José María Álvarez Montero

10. Martín Cid Gómez

GROUP_3A_3

1. Inés Álvarez Montero

14. Sarah García del Campo

6. Inés Bolaño Rodríguez

19. Evelyn Rodríguez Reyes

13. Laura Fernández Martínez

GROUP_3A_4

20. Claudia Suárez Balado

7. Iago Borrajo Rodríguez

18. Carlos Montaño González

16. Carlos Maceiras Masero

3. Tamara Bar Iglesias

GROUP_3B_1

1. Antía Bardelás Cameselle

6. Fabio Gonçalves de Oliveira, Jr.

11. Lara Paz Mella

16. Miguel Sotelo Fernández

5. Laura Fernández Míguez

GROUP_3B_2

2. Lucía Ben Pérez

7. Fernando Herrera García

12. Saray Riveiro Pereira

17. Paula Suárez Balado

10. Estela Pascual Míguez

GROUP_3B_3

3. Jessica Davila Prado

8. Mª del Carmen Oliveira Soutiño

13. Miguel Romero Zapatero

18. Antía Suárez Molares

15. Josué A. Saavedra Salas

GROUP_3B_4

4. Mª Desirée Fernández de Araújo

9. Arantxa Hierro Vergara

14. Cecilia Saa Pereira

19. Paula Varona Gómez

20. José Manuel Vázquez Roman

GROUP_4A_1

10. Marta Martínez Álvarez

5. Olga Mª. González Rodríguez

16. Paula Reguera Ayán

4. Belén González Muñoz

GROUP_4A_2

11. Joana S. Mayo Gandarío

14. Sara Pérez Abraldes

9. Ana G. Mardeni Coves

2. Christian Collazo Román

GROUP_4A_3

1. Carlos A. Cabaco Rodríguez

15. Alberto Ponce Patiño

7. Jorge Loira Parente

8. Marcos López Lamas

GROUP_4A_4

6. Arturo Juncal Costas

3. Jesús Contreras Arias

12. Lucía Oitabén Figueiras

13. Álex Otero Fernández

GROUP_4B_1

4. Laura Barros Reguera

5. Marta Barros Reguera

7. Guillermo Couso Vidal

9. Paloma Díaz Gámez

16. Mercedes Sánchez Vicente

GROUP_4B_2

13. Wenxue He

11. Angélica Freiría Rodríguez

15. Brigitte A. Montaño González

8. Sara Delgado Pérez

GROUP_4B_3

3. David Barcia Taboada

6. Esteban Bernárdez Troncoso

12. Álex Godar Calvar

14. Marcos Martínez Artime

GROUP_4B_4

17. David Sanmartín Delgado

2. Borja Areal Arias

1. Jennifer Ageitos Teira

10. Yale-Yalo Dong Liu

Good luck!

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

Linguee.com - Online Translator Showing the Context of Sentences

What is Linguee?

With Linguee, you can search many millions of bilingual texts for words and expressions. Every expression is accompanied by useful additional information and suitable example sentences.

What is the benefit?

When you translate texts to a foreign language, you usually look for common phrases rather than translations of single words. With its intelligent search and the significantly larger amount of stored text content, Linguee is the right tool for this task. You find In which context a translation is used, how frequent a particular translation is, example sentences: How other people translated an expression

By searching not only for a single word, but for a respective word in its context, you can easily find a translation that fits optimal in the respective context. With its large number of entries, Linguee often retrieves translations of rare terms that you don't find anywhere else.:

How do I use Linguee?

Linguee is used like a search engine. You search for a word or a phrase, and you find pairs of sentences that contain the word or the phrase as an exact or similar match. If the search is not successful, it usually pays off to simplify the search phrase and search again. The search result is clearly arranged in groups of expressions and ordered by frequency. By clicking on the "More examples" button you are presented with more example sentences. 

What Linguee is not

Linguee does not offer an automatic translation of arbitrary texts. Such services may help to get the gist of foreign language texts. However, they are not useful for looking up vocabulary, and you cannot rely on the quality of the generated translations, as a machine cannot understand the subtleties or contexts of language. Linguee takes a different approach: Every entry in the Linguee database has been translated by humans. Currently, there is no viable technical alternative to a human translator, and if you don't have one at hand, there is Linguee.

Where does the text content come from?

The most important source is the bilingual web. Other valuable sources include EU documents and patent specifications.

How exactly do you gather the translations?

A specialised computer program, a web crawler, automatically searches the internet for webpages which are available in multiple language versions. These pages are detected automatically, and the translated sentences and words are extracted. The texts are then evaluated by a machine-learning algorithm which filters out the high quality translations for display. This system is capable of autonomously learning new quality criteria from user feedback to tell the good translations from the bad ones. It has found out, for instance, that a page is usually machine translated if it contains the word "Wordpress" while many words are literally translated. Through this training process, our algorithm is learning to find thousands of such correlations to reliably extract the best translations autonomously. As of now, Linguee software has compared more than a trillion sentences. At the end of the day, only the top 0.01 per cent, i.e. 100 million translated sentences, are retained. Therefore, this automation is the basic reason why Linguee actually works.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.