Newsletter

The Importance of Emptiness. Book translations and Bloopers

When companies design brochures or forms for translation, they often forget a critical element: white space. It’s very important to keep empty space on your original pages. That’s because most common languages require far more words than English to express the same concepts.In general, 20% more space is needed for translations into French, Italian, Spanish,… Continue reading

New Year’s Gift: Wonderful signs and bloopers to brighten your day

I have always been amazed that foreigners can learn English so well. Ours is a crazy language where compound words make no sense and where opposites are true. For example: An eggplant contains no egg and a hamburger contains no ham. Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square, and guinea pigs do not come from… Continue reading

Untranslatable words and Humorous signs: A Thanksgiving gift

Our newsletter last month illustrated how simple words such as “reuse” or “recycle” cannot be translated directly in some languages because translations depend on how the words are used in context. This month we wanted to illustrate words in other languages that simply have no direct translations in English, regardless of context. If you try AI or… Continue reading