The registers of a language are a fascinating thing. Even the mere fact that registers exist is fascinating. And while everyone can recognize that the kind of language that we use as human beings varies with the circumstance—people don’t use the same vocabulary and phraseology in a courtroom as in a taxi or a supermarket—for the student of a foreign language, the importance of a grasp of...
It is evident as a kind of motive intrinsic to the vast majority of media and entertainment that it believes it matters, and this entertainment continues to exist for a single correlative reason: as viewers in the audience, we believe that it matters. But neither of those assertions actually implies that it in itself matters enough to be worth watching, much less valorizing and investing the...
For the translator in the twenty-first century, one of the most fervently repeated collocations of the times has to be machine and translation, those two suggestive siblings that have gone on to establish their reputations as the acrobats in a traveling circus of technology. As members of the audience, both captivated and unsettled by the performance in the ring and the apparently high-flying...
In the world of professional translation, it goes without saying that the technological advances of the past few decades and, in particular, those of the rampant additions to the translation market such as ChatGPT and other kinds of artificial intelligence have meant the continuous upheaval of the industry. But this upheaval is nothing new—in fact, these changes should come as no surprise...
Known the world over as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages–I assume that all the diligent, methodical precision used to create these levels in the first place has to be applied to the title itself, which is very precise but a pain in the **s to remember–the CEFR is used most commonly in Europe to classify the proficiency of learners of a foreign language. Given...
En cualquier película que tenga la cantidad de energía que se derrocha a raudales en las obras del director manchego Pedro Almodóvar, que dio con Laberinto de pasiones (1982) uno de sus magníficos saltos iniciales a lo que sería una trayectoria artística más que fructífera, como mínimo cabría darse cuenta de la posibilidad de que algún que otro tabú emerja de los escombros de este frenesí...
I Recuerdo haber leído en un libro del periodista español Pedro Cuartango, un autor con su propio estilo elegante y filosófico, que la incertidumbre es una cosa que no se puede escapar y que incluso nos es necesaria para vivir. Toda la vida está llena de esa incertidumbre por la que sentimos la amenaza constante, rehuida por todos y omnipresente, de una muerte que nos llegue de forma repentina...
Un documental de 2021 que mira a España desde la perspectiva marginada de los refugiados llegados a sus fronteras —en algunos casos tras haber aguantado una travesía que ha tenido un precio mortal para sus seres queridos, familiares o amigos— Bienvenidos a España revela sobre todo algunas de las dificultades que tienen los inmigrantes para buscarse la vida nada más pisar tierra española...
It happens all too frequently that even when they’re worth the trouble—and God knows there are plenty of different kinds of trouble—too many books appear on the shelves to announce themselves with the fanfare of their packaging, a fine illustration, or the sheer volume and heft of their multitudinous pages, often with some kind of pretentious adornment like deckled edges. It wants to scream to...
In the browbeating rage and turmoil running like a poisoned artery through the body and life of Johnny, a low-class and frustrated shmuck of an intellectual from Manchester, a rapist wandering London in search of a living, breathing person on whom he can inflict his spleen and disappointment, something of the glory of Hamlet rises to the surface. It might be only an illusion, or a slow-rising...