Etymology of “Quarantine”
The word quarantine — used in modern English to designate a period of time when a group of people or materials is isolated from its surroundings — has several cultural and semantic stories ascribed to it. With the French quarantaine and the Italian quarantena we are plunged into nautical history. Beginning in the mid 17th-century, […]
Translation: History of a Dangerous Profession
To translate a controversial text may very well mean putting one’s life on the line. Western history offers several examples of tortured and slain translators and interpreters, and as apt as we are to think that those barbaric times are over, the late 20th century saw one of the most appalling incidents of violence against […]
Etymology of “Taboo”
In 1777, British explorer and navigator Captain James Cook brought a linguistic discovery back to England. The word taboo, Cook wrote in A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, encompassed an array of forbidden acts and behaviors in Tonga, a Polynesian archipelago. From the Proto-Polynesian word ta, meaning “mark” and bu, meaning “especially” comes the compound-word […]
Etymology of “Chocolate”
Before the word chocolate came into the English language from Spanish, Hernan Cortes learned of a potent Aztec beverage made with cacahuaquchtl powder (the origin of the word “cocoa”), chili, musk, and honey. In a 1519 expedition to the New World, Cortes received a friendly reception from the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City), who […]
Etymology of “Companion”
The history of words teaches us that food is the fuel of relationships. The word “companion”, from the Latin com “with” and panis “bread”, reminds us that food — and the brief respite allotted to people throughout history for sharing meals — feeds more than the physical body; it also nourishes generosity and friendship. To […]
Spanish in America: Beyond Words
How did Spanish become the second most-common language in the United States after English? The answer will lead us into our country’s past, examine America’s present, and speculate on what the coming years will bring. It wasn’t the English who established the first permanent colony in what we now call the United States, but the […]
Ad Translation: When Good Campaigns Go Bad
Sometimes even major corporations stumble into linguistic dilemmas with badly executed ad translations. Take, for example, the popular soda slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation.” A little miscommunication in Taiwanese resulted in the more macabre “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.” The Gerber baby food corporation had a similar snafu when […]
Russian Translation: Going Beyond Words
Every translator has to deal with the peculiarities of his native language. With every nuance, shade of meaning, and grammatical inclination, each language offers a reflection of the people who speak it. Where one language relies primarily on verbs to carry a sentence to its goal, another lets its nouns do the talking. One language […]