22 October 2018
Category: Posts
Edgar’s team of English translators recently had the opportunity to attend LangFest 2018, a conference that celebrates languages of all kinds. The A-Team,1 as we like to call ourselves, heard a variety of lectures on topics such as linguistics, language preservation and chunking (a technique for acquiring languages). I even picked up some basic Japanese and … Read more
20 August 2018
Category: Posts
Lire l’original en français (« lisez »? nah!) Most people would think that specialized texts, like contracts and technical specifications, are where translation gets complicated. Those do require exceptional expertise, yes, but what is fascinating and mysterious about translation work is that, sometimes, the most unremarkable things can be the toughest nuts to crack. And … Read more
17 July 2018
Category: Posts
If I were to tell you that I’d given up my dream of becoming a professional dancer to become a translator, would you be surprised? Do the two fields seem like they’re worlds apart? When I completed my degree in contemporary dance, I decided that the artist’s life just wasn’t for me. I needed to … Read more
3 August 2015
Category: Posts
Marie-Eve Castonguay, a unilingual editor at Edgar, recently hit a milestone in her life. Let’s look back on that memorable day. Saturday, 7:07 a.m. The young woman wakes up. She’s excited, but confident. She has a big day ahead of her: today, she’ll need to perform various taijutsu techniques before a panel of three sensei in … Read more
11 November 2014
Category: Posts
By Scott Irving Humour me for a moment, dear reader, and try to guess what this is: No, it’s not a post-modern poetic rendering of my sex life. It’s an approximation of what a computer might spit out if you ran a musical score—in this case, Aaron Copeland’s 1920 piano piece “The Cat and the … Read more
15 October 2014
Category: Posts
Esperanto is a language created in the 1880s by L.L. Zamenhof. His aims were laudable: to foster peace and international understanding. Wouldn’t it be easier for us all to get along, the thinking went, if we all spoke the same language? (Enter gong sound.) This excellent question spawned another: Well, why don’t we try it? … Read more
3 June 2014
Category: Posts
One morning, a young medical student registered for a summer internship abroad. When asked which country would be most to her liking, she shrugged and ticked the box that said “No preference.” Result: a plane ticket to sunny Bulgaria. Intrigued, she casually invited a companion to come along. The companion, for his part, certainly had … Read more
14 February 2014
Category: Posts
“Candy doesn’t have to have a point. That’s why it’s candy.” —Charlie Bucket, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) For the last half-century, The Elements of Style has enjoyed a reputation as one of the most authoritative and respected style guides the English-speaking world has ever known. Ten million copies later, this classic isn’t going … Read more
8 January 2014
Category: Posts
If your computer usage is anything like mine, you may click [OK] up to 50 times a day, maybe even more. When you think about it, [OK] is actually quite a useful button for software programmers because it can be used to answer yes/no questions (usually posed to the user as [Cancel] / [OK]) but … Read more
11 December 2013
Category: Posts
In the past 18 months, Edgar has donated 150,000 words to Translators without Borders “Take a founder with a vision, a team of enthusiastic translators, and a website that exudes not only technical expertise but also a distinct sense of humor, and you have Edgar, a Québec-based translating firm that recently became a significant, whole … Read more