The Canadian Government’s
Translation Bureau recently made its French/English/Spanish technical terminology database,
Termium, free to access after over a decade as a subscription-based service. While off-the-cuff translations are often available from free services like
BabelFish, Termium focuses on technical terminology such as scientific, medical and legal terms.
[more inside]
posted by Shepherd
on Oct 22, 2009 -
35 comments
"Even though my glory years of competitive spelling are long past, some things stay with a person. As I explore, I can't help but notice signs which contain spelling errors.
I capture them for posterity with my handy digital camera and present them here for our collective education and entertainment."
Thirty-two pages of misspelled signs in the New York metropolitan area -- each one lovingly annotated.
posted by milquetoast
on Aug 11, 2009 -
50 comments
Immediately, Herson spotted an offense—a second-floor awning outside a tarot shop that advertised "Energy Stone's." They climbed the stairs to the second floor and approached a middle-age women with a quizzical expression. "We happened to notice the sign for energy stones," Deck said, "and there happens to be an extra apostrophe. 'Stone's' doesn't need the apostrophe."
"And?" she asked, her voice flat with annoyance.
"And we wanted to bring it to your attention," Deck said.
A look inside the daring lives of Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, vanguards of the
Typo Eradication Advancement League.
posted by Rhaomi
on May 21, 2008 -
84 comments
"Tired of the
LIBERAL BIAS every time you search on Google and a Wikipedia page appears?" At
Conservapedia, a "conservative encyclopedia you can trust," you can learn that "faith" is
a concept "exclusive to Christianity," and about how Wikipedia is
biased in matters such as its description of the Bell Trade Act of 1946, its gossipy treatment of the private life of NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, and its seeming acceptance of evolution. The Wikipedia bias entry also complains of a "rant" against the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a group for which Conservapedia founder (and son of conservative gadfly
Phyllis Schafly)
Andrew Schlafly has worked. Signups are
here; its take on evolution is criticized
here.
posted by ibmcginty
on Feb 23, 2007 -
153 comments
Word. Eighth-grader Katharine Close has finally won the
Scripps National Spelling Bee on her fifth attempt. She beat out
274 other competitors and won with the word
ursprache, sounding it out live on national television. If spelling out rarely used historical-linguistic jargon seems tough, try
weltschmerz on for size. That's the word runner-up Finola Mei Hwa Hackett stumbled on. While your at it, why not take a look at the
entire word list and see how many you can get, or even just recognize. Prior escapades in spelling documented
here,
here [YouTube], and if you want to head out to theaters,
here.
posted by dead_
on Jun 2, 2006 -
98 comments
Walter Miller's homepage Picked up recently via
kottke.org, this is a years-old webpage (not updated recently) detailing the miserable details of poor Walter's white trash existence. It deserves to be read by a whole new generation. The art of misspelling is taken to new heights.
posted by Holly
on Jul 30, 2005 -
11 comments
Yesterday I saw a wonderful movie -
Spellbound - a documentary about the annual
Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee - which won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at
SXSW.
It explores the dynamics surrounding kids and parents desire for success in the
competition, reconciliation with failure and differing models of education, competition and success.
When I was a kid I was on the TV show
It's Academic - along with lots of other famous faces. While you
may want to
make fun of the show - I still remember it fondly. My parents were happy to see me compete but generally
unconcerned about the outcome in any way. Now we've got
Math Olympics, the
Academic Decathlon and a host of other competitive ventures. Any other MeFites remember school days competitions and the drive to succeed?
posted by dhacker
on Oct 21, 2002 -
29 comments
Freespeling.com (with one el). Because only 17% of native English speakers can spell "height", "necessary", "accommodation", "separate", "sincerely", and "business" correctly. Good idea or bad idea?
posted by Firda
on Apr 5, 2001 -
30 comments
Spelling Bee has a sting in the tail... The highly influential
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has abandoned the much-heralded German spelling reforms, arguing that the attempt to simplify and "democratise" the language has been a costly mistake. At the same time, though, the new
Duden is accused of
including too many English words such as "downloaden, Wellness and chatten, Backstage, Smiley and Trash", allegedly indebted to "advertisers and cyber geeks".Given that MeFi readers are, generally, from the two cultures separated by a common language, it's an interesting case study of state intervention gone wrong...
posted by holgate
on Aug 2, 2000 -
4 comments
Well, I'm compleetly fed up with english speling for everything. Its so dammed inconsistant and ilogical, Ill never get the hang of it. Forchunately, now theres a way to express yourselfs using chinese-like english characters. It's called
Yingzi and now you can write english as quickly as you can write
for
Fellini or
for
Peach
posted by lagado
on Jul 23, 2000 -
13 comments
