Ogilvy & Mather New York will be hosting New Language, the third in a series of art installations at its office space – The Chocolate Factory – with a show featuring the work of 14 emerging and established contemporary artists.
New Language explores the construct of language, its persistent ambiguity and the shifting character of language in the age of new media. The work featured represents a diverse range of artistic styles ranging from political textiles, photography that indexes arcane textual works, and large sculptural installations that employ portions of texts as building blocks.

In commenting on Ogilvy & Mather’s support for the arts, Tham Khai Meng, Worldwide Creative Director, said, “We are a company of artists, writers, designers, and creative people who use creativity to drive commerce. Our employees need to always be looking for inspiration and art is the ultimate medium for new forms of expression.”

More info: "New Language" Art Exhibition

The Wonderful Word "Up" (thanks to Paul Oliver)

There is a two-letter word in English that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list,
but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the
officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver,
we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and
some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble,
line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.
In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about
thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways
UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP
with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP!
When the sun comes out we say it is clearingUP
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP...

With the popularity of other, China-based search engines set to rise thanks to Google’s threat to close down their Google.cn site, in turn freeing up the market, businesses need to optimise their site to suit their search processes.
However, simple translation of websites will not suffice. Taking an example from Oban’s area of business, the phrase ‘to Twitter’ translates to ‘织围脖’’ – ‘to knit yourself a scarf’ in English.

Localised research needs to be carried out in order to ensure businesses can successfully tap into the expanding Chinese market.

Here are a few pointers on how to improve SEO in China:
• After recent changes, China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, no longer automatically ranks pages with an overly high keyword density above others. Before this the recommended amount was between 6-12%, it is now 3-4%.
• Baidu may be the major player in search in mainland China, however it is barely used in Hong Kong, so businesses should look at local search behaviours when targeting specific provinces of China.
• Unsurprisingly, Chinese search engines prefer sites hosted in China. Businesses would have more success in terms of SEO by getting hosted in China, or at least adopting a local domain i.e. com.cn.

The popularity of social networking sites in China is also a factor that needs to be addressed when it comes to marketing. One third of the 384m domestic internet users are also regular SNS users.
Again, locality is important. The top SNS sites in China are QQ and RenRen, and businesses are more likely to reach the Chinese demographic if they develop marketing strategies here than on the popular Western sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

A localised approach and a good understanding of search dynamics are essential to the success of websites in overseas markets. By adapting websites to improve SEO and SEM in China, businesses can open themselves up to the biggest online market in the world.

Source: http://econsultancy.com

Wat meer creativiteit bij het vertalen! Dat is waar Gerry Feehily naar snakt ... Met een beetje taalkundig enthousiasme zouden de vertaalde toespraken van Merkel, Sarkozy en Van Rompuy misschien al wat minder slaapverwekkend zijn?

When presseurop.eu was launched in May last year, one of its guiding mottos was Umberto Eco’s “The future of Europe is translation.” But sometimes I’m inclined to think that the future of Europe is lost in translation. I recently checked a statement by Angela Merkel concerning the CD-rom nabbed by HSBC supergrass Hervé Falciani containing data on Germans who have siphoned off their money to Switzerland in order to avoid taxes back home. This has created a hole in the German treasury of some €200million, but in order to get the data, the German government has to cough up €2.5million. While some wring their hands as to whether it’s right to chase up tax evaders by paying a thief, the French language press widely relayed Merkel’s statement on the matter as “Il faut tout entreprendre pour obtenir ces données" i.e. Everything must be done to obtain this data.

However, if you look at the original German statement, "Vom Ziel her sollten wir, wenn diese Daten relevant sind, auch in den Besitz dieser Daten kommen", you realise she didn’t quite say that. In transliterated English this goes – “An objective should be aimed at, if this data is relevant, then we should take property of the data”. Ok, German syntax is knotty, but nevertheless this is a typically Merkelian clunker, grey as dishwater, dry as dust, that plods around the subject until it sort of dies of boredom. Now contrast this with the zippy French rendering of the statement and actually it seems as if it got an edit from the hyperactive Nicolas Sarkozy, who says “must” every time he opens his mouth.

But what’s good translation? On the literary front, having recently dipped into the new Penguin version of the Arabian Nights, I’m more and more frustrated by this very contemporary quest for ultimate precision. The editors are keen to bury the definitive Burton translation, full as they say of “mistakes” and “archaisms”, but so far I’ve been less than thrilled to come across words like “managers” and “skills” and even the adolescent “kind of”. They sound much more like 21st century Angela Merkel than 12th century Bagdad. Which gets me thinking, to twist Nietzsche to some foul ends, that it might be better if accuracy perish rather than life. When Merkel is translated with a bit of fantasy, we listen up. We only need now enliven the Union entire by translating Van Rompuy, Barroso et al as if they all weren’t trying to make us fall asleep.

Bron: Presseurop

Mel Gibson wants you to hear real Viking language.

"I want a Viking to scare you. I don't want a Viking to say, "I'm going to die with a sword in my hand."
I don't want to hear that. It pulls the rug out from under you. I want to see somebody who I have never
seen before speaking low guttural German who scares the living sh*t out of me coming up to my house.
What is that like? What would that have been like?" Gibson is unsure whether it'll be in Old Norse or Old
English. "Whatever the 9th century had to offer. I'm going to give you real." Leonardo DiCaprio is going
to have his work cut out for him. But hey, English majors survive this every year, and they pay for the
privilege of pronouncing it.

If the movie is really dealing with the 9th century Viking raids, then the Vikings will speak Old Norse.
If the film decides to deal with them raiding and pillaging England or Ireland, then all their victims can
speak Old English (which was awfully similar even before the Norse lent them all the case endings) and
Gaelic just to make things extra interesting.

Source: Cinematical.com

Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.

A backward poet writes inverse.

A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.

Practice safe eating - always use condiments.

Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.

A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.

Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.

When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.

A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.

What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway.)

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.

She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.

He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.

Every calendar's days are numbered.

A lot of money is tainted - It taint yours and it taint mine.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

A plateau is a high form of flattery.

A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

Acupuncture is a jab well done.

An anagram is a word or phrase made by transposing or rearranging the letters of another word or phrase.Enjoy the following examples.

Amazing sentences:

To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

The anagram:

In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind - Neil Armstrong

The anagram:

A thin man ran, making a large stride, left planet, pins flag on moon. On to Mars!

The Translator tells the remarkable story of a man who came face-to-face with genocide– time and again risking his own life to fight injustice and save his people. 

“I am the translator who has taken journalists into dangerous Darfur. It is my intention now to take you there in this book, if you have the courage to come with me.” Daoud Hari, a Zaghawa tribesmen from Darfur, had recently returned to his village after living abroad when his village was attacked by the Janjaweed. He lost his beloved brother, Ahmed, in the attack, but helped his family and many of his relatives and fellow villager cross the desert to reach the relative safety of a border refugee camp.

Daoud Hari is not a person to stand around and do nothing. Despite the danger, he felt compelled to put his English skills to use as a translator for genocide investigators and reporters, in an attempt to get the word out about the genocide, to bring the ethnic cleansing of his people into your living room, so their voices could be heard. His memoir largely follows his work from 2003 until 2006, when he received protection as a refugee in the United States. It is a remarkable story of one man's determination to help his people, risking his life over and over again to fight the injustice that he has witnessed.

"In his moving memoir, The Translator, Daoud Hari illuminates the complexities of the conflict [in Darfur]..., but his book's modest scope is perhaps its greatest strength. In its intimacy, quiet humor and compassion, The Translator is more like a conversation with a friend than a call to action. The plight of someone close to you can pierce you, and Hari keeps his readers close.” Los Angeles Times

“The Translator, by Daoud Hari, a native Darfurian, may be the biggest small book of this year, or any year. In roughly 200 pages of simple, lucid prose, it lays open the Darfur genocide more intimately and powerfully than do a dozen books by journalists or academic experts. Hari and his co-writers achieve this in a voice that is restrained, generous, gentle and—astonishingly—humorous.” Washington Post Book World

The publicity campaign for the online operator Mobile Vikings uses the word
for Flemish people, ‘les Flamands’ alongside adjectives such as ‘cretin’, ‘pig’
and ‘bimbo’ and ‘moron’.

The jury for ethical advertising has called for the company to withdraw its
ten advertisements.

On Mobile Vikings posters and beer mats, slogans such as “Free, its for the
morons” or “Free, its for the Flemish” can be found. In the north of the country,
the word ‘Flamands’ is replaced by ‘Hollandais’.

“The advert is controversial, but Mobile Vikings is unlike other mobile operators”,
explained Koen Delvaux, head of the company. “Our image is a little bit more
daring and our adverts reflect this.”

The company have since agreed to remove the more offensive slogans.
“We respect the decision of the jury, but it is a shame that a single complaint
has the power to block a whole advertising campaign such as ours. We have
only received one complaint from a person in the Wallon region who felt
discriminated against”, Delvaux added.

Le Soir/Expatica