Full name: Federal Republic of Germany. The full name is no longer obligatory in all contexts, as was the case before unification. Official language: German. Geography Cities Use the forms Cologne, Munich and Nuremberg. Otherwise, retain the original spelling, including … Read More
General. In deciding whether to write numbers in words or figures, the first consideration should be consistency within a passage. As a general rule write low numbers (up to nine inclusive) in words and larger numbers (10 and above) in … Read More
European Master’s in Translation (EMT) is a partnership between the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) of the European Commission and the higher education institutions offering translation courses. This partnership takes the form of the EMT label award to satisfactory training complying … Read More
Full name: French Republic. The départements d’outre-mer (DOM) are the (French) overseas departments in English. Do not abbreviate. The pays et térritoires d’outre-mer (PTOM) are the overseas countries and territories (OCTs in English). Official language: French. Geography Cities Write Lyon, … Read More
Possessive of nouns. The possessive form of nouns is marked by an apostrophe followed by an -s. After the plural ending ‘s’, however, the possessive -s is omitted: the owner’s car women’s rights footballers’ earnings one month’s / four months’ … Read More
Beautiful infidels are “translations that, to please and conform to the taste and decorum of the time, are versions ‘revised and corrected’ by conscious translators (too, no doubt) of their language and their judgment superiority “. (Paul Horguelin) In the … Read More
Full name: Republic of Finland. Call the country’s main administrative/regional units (lääni) ‘provinces’ in English. Official languages: Finnish and Swedish. Geography Cities Finland is a bilingual country, and many cities and localities have official names in both Finnish and Swedish. … Read More
DASHES Dashes vs hyphens. Most users of word processors do not distinguish between dashes and hyphens, using hyphens to represent both short dashes (‘en’ dashes = –) and long dashes (‘em’ dashes = —) commonly used in typeset documents. However, … Read More
False friends are words from two different languages that have a great similarity in shape but whose meanings are different. When they have some common meanings, they are “partial false friends“. For example, in Italian, ricetta means “recipe (for kitchen)” … Read More
Full name: Republic of Estonia. Official language: Estonian. Geography Cities Leave the names of urban centres, irrespective of size, in their original Estonian form, including diacritics (e.g. Pärnu, Kohtla-Järve, Võru, Põlva, etc.). Be aware that historical names exist for some … Read More
Items in a series Here, the comma may be considered to stand for a missing ‘and’ or ‘or’. John mowed the lawn, Mary did the cooking and Frank lazed around. He came, saw and conquered. The committee considered sugar, beef … Read More
Full name: Kingdom of Denmark. Neither Greenland (adj. Greenland) nor the Faeroes (NB not Faeroe Islands, adj. Faeroese) are part of the European Union. Official language: Danish. Geography Cities Note the names Copenhagen, Aarhus, Aalborg. Bodies of water Write Wattenmeer. … Read More
