The scientific community thrives on communication. Preprint servers where early drafts of papers are shared, peer review in international journals, and conferences where ideas are shared on a worldwide stage are vital to increasing scientific knowledge. But it’s not enough to assume a lingua franca, or simply publish everything in English. Below we present five […]
While it is believed that there are widespread differences between Spanish, which is derived from Latin and is a Romance language, and English, which is known for its Germanic roots, the reality is not so clear cut. Indeed, English did not escape the influence of Latin, which also set the basis for French and Italian […]
The English language is peppered with a number of words of unclear origin, but which in fact belong to the lexical group known as Polari. Polari is an almost extinct form of slang, which probably developed in the circus milieu of 19th century London and was later adopted by the gay community of the English […]
As discussed in our previous article, “The First ‘Translators’ Were Interpreters,” China stood out historically because of the rise of translation/interpretation in different fields, such as philosophy, religion and science. Let us continue our journey along this timeline. One of China’s periods of grandeur began during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 BC) and lasted until the […]
An apocope of “courtly Persian,” fārsi-ye dari is, along with Pashto, one of the principal Persian languages spoken contemporarily in Afghanistan (especially in the capital and the southern and western regions). This language is also known as “Persian,” “Persawan,” or “Afghan Persian.” Over half the population are native speakers of this language, and it is […]