Just a message to any readers of this blog. Chris Poole Translation have several ex and one current staff member in Japan at the moment who we have contacted and confirmed that they and their families are OK.

We were first made aware of the earthquake reading posts n the Honyaku and Jatlist mailing lists and the contributions of everyone there, both from all over the world and from the actual region, have been very informative and supportive.

But the flow of news is dreadful and gut-wrenching. It is hard to get our heads around the scale of disruption and personal tragedy. We can only hope that everyone remains strong throughout, and that we can all support them when their strength falters. Our hearts go out to them.

Of course the information available in dictionaries has been strained through the seive of publishing economics; a business cycle much slower than words can be introduced and established within a language.

But we have nowadays an amazing tool for tracking the actual usage of words, and that tool is the internet and the various search engines we use, the foremost amongst them being Google. So in our next post we will present an analysis of current usage, carried out through Google News, so we are looking at published or reported instances of usage, by journalists – educated, professional speakers and writers:

It is common for professional translators and interpreters, to claim that “Translation means the transfer of written messages from one language to another, while interpreting refers to the transfer of spoken messages.”
Unfortunately there is very little evidence to support this claim

For example none of the following dictionaries support the definition of “interpreting” being the conversion of speech from one language to another, nor of “translation” as being the same activity applied exclusively to written language.

• The Longer Oxford English Dictionary
• Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Unabridged 1959
• The Macquarie Dictionary 1982
• A Glossary of Literary Terms ed. Abrams M. H. 1981
• Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics ed. Matthews, P. H. 1997
• Translation Terminology ed. Delisle, J., 1999
• Shuttleworth, M., Cowie, M, Dictionary of Translation Studies 1997

One would expect a professional translator to be very good at explaining and defending the words they use. In order to do this they would have to understand the meanings of those words and, for their defense to be effective, this understanding would have to be founded on some evidence.

This evidence would at least include a survey of actual usage, a function historically though not exclusively performed by the authors of dictionaries.

One would further expect that the sensitivity of the professional translator for this type of understanding would be most acute in relation to those words most closely associated with their own field of expertise and livelihood.

Further one would expect that the demand for accurate, verifiable definitions of these particular words would be highest when professional translators organise and invest in the materials and activities that would represent their profession to the wider world.

Each of these expectations waits on a lonely street corner, unmet.

There is occasionally confusion over whether we are called "translators" or "interpreters". How can this be? How could a group of people clamouring for general regard as a "profession" still not have worked out exactly what they call themselves?

I have a theory.

In fact I have the answer.

Please look forward to regular updates explaining all.

Because Ross told me to. He said people will find the website because they find stuff on the blog.

What would I write in such a forum that did anything else than generate work for me, and therefore money for wine and holidays?

I'm sure you are all big and ugly enough to defend yourselves against the obvious interest I have in selling our services.

So stand by for daily comment and critique about the vexing problems of translation and interpreting, comments and critiques that I assure you, will display all the noble attributes of objectivity, nuetrality and sober wisdom, all held out at the length of a strong man's arm.