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Have you ever felt isolated while working or studying alone, or while spending a lot of time at home for other reasons? If you’re often on your own but you’d like to feel more in contact with the world and other people then you might benefit from reading today’s article published by Knowadays which covers some top tips on how to avoid loneliness as a freelancer, and can easily be applied to a lot of other situations too. Starting with the now very of-the-moment trend of working from coffee shops, the article suggests finding ways to work alongside other people even when you’re not directly interacting with them, as well as joining online communities to share experiences with like-minded people. If like many freelancers you are a one-person band, the article also suggests making the most of social opportunities within your friendship circle and with family members in order to compensate for the potential isolation of not having direct colleagues to chat to, while setting up virtual meetings with work contacts or fellow students can help make your work or studies feel more personal as well as helping you to build your network. Everyone has their own way of working, and while some people love quiet contemplation, if you miss the company of people then you’re bound to find some of the ideas in the article useful. Have you spent long periods working or studying alone? Did you miss the company of other people, and if so, how did you compensate? https://lnkd.in/dcRvsEvr 

Lots of people seek literary solace in complicated times, and today’s article by the BBC describes how a generation of readers has used the bestselling Harry Potter series to understand and articulate their frustration with wider global events. If you came of age in the nineties or otherwise grew up with the series then you might be familiar with some of the parallels that are described in the article, which talks about how real-world social inequality, corruption and complacency all have representations in the novels. But even without having read the books it’s easy to understand how JK Rowling’s gentle moral messages can resonate with a global audience, particularly in the face of difficult events like the climate crisis. As anyone who is familiar with the novels will know, the Harry Potter series touches on some surprisingly dark topics, but does so with warmth and wisdom, which is probably one of the reasons why readers who are now in their thirties and older still seek comfort in their moral messages. Over and above this, the stories tend to emphasise that events and people are often more complex and morally ambiguous than they appear, yet it’s through friendship and working together that Harry and his friends are ultimately able to triumph in the face of adversity. And that, as the media articulates, is no doubt a timely reminder of the importance of other people in today’s more atomised, tech-focused days. Whether or not you agree with all of the points made, you’re sure to gain a whole new appreciation for just how many complex topics the novels touch upon, and yet it’s often been the case that childhood stories are the most profound of all. Which books do you turn to when times get tough? https://lnkd.in/dUDab_y4 

Spring is upon us in many parts of the world, so we're using this first day of April to share some cleaning and decluttering tips for harmonising your home environment

From improved multi-tasking abilities to the opportunity to connect with like-minded people, here are just some of the benefits that learning an additional language can bring to us

If you’re interested in photojournalism and languages spoken in the US other than English and Spanish, you’ll no doubt be intrigued by today’s article published in El País, which describes one man’s quest to document over 100 endangered languages in a beautifully-titled tome known as ’On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues’. Seeking to study how endangered languages lived and breathed, the photographer, poet, writer, and researcher B.A. Van Sise travelled the length of the US to see languages such as Tongva, Koyukon, and Cahuilla used in their natural settings, by housewives, teachers, and schoolchildren alike. Focusing on people rather than political organisations, Van Sise collaborated with over 70 communities to create portraits of 50 individuals from under-represented language groups, and in portraying them he sheds light not only on lesser-known languages but also on some of the big questions around why some languages face an uphill struggle to survive. As well as reinforcing the importance of every language’s unique contribution to how we, as a global population, can see and articulate our world, the article also describes how the unique history and topography of the United States have both helped and hindered the survival of indigenous languages, and looks at how all of this might change in the months and years to come. And on top of that there are some really beautiful photos. Take a look at the full article to learn more about Van Sise’s project. https://lnkd.in/dddBiDsb 

If you ever needed more examples of the amazing cognitive abilities of babies, today’s article by Science Alert will be sure to inspire you. Drawing on the work of Eylem Altuntas, a postdoctoral researcher in speech and language development at Western Sydney University, it provides some interesting insight into how babies learn to associate sights and sounds. It also details just how receptive they are to new information in the world around them and how they filter this to developing an understanding of the language they grow up around. At the age of six months old, babies are already able to distinguish between sounds in languages that they have never even heard, often with the ability to recognise subtle differences that adults aren’t able to. Between six and twelve months, however, they start to narrow their focus to the sounds they hear the most often, normally honing in on vowels in their native language at around six months of age and consonants at around the ten-month mark. In some ways, it’s almost like speech development in babies is not so much about learning as it is about forgetting. The article goes further to describe how babies learn how sounds are actually made, connecting sound and sight to lay the foundations for learning language and speaking, while also raising some interesting questions about how our knowledge of early-years language learning can apply to children growing up in multilingual environments, an important question in a world where more than half of the population is at least bilingual. Whether you’re interested in child development or just want to gain a whole new appreciation for the shower of new information that babies are exposed to, you’re sure to find something of interest in the article. Check it out, and let us know your thoughts in the comments. https://lnkd.in/dcqVcfri 

If you’re a fan of linguistic trivia, beautifully-coloured maps and learning about what people are reading in other countries, you’re sure to be intrigued by today’s article by The Language Nerds, which covers the most translated books in the world by continent and country. As well as finding out the most prolifically-translated author in the part of the world you come from, you can also learn more about which books capture particular national audiences, and which stories have been most inclined to resonate with people globally. Some of the titles on the most-translated list are arguably ones which many of us may be unfamiliar with, such as Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko’s ‘Testament’, now available in an impressive 150 languages, while it might come as a surprise to find that in some cases children’s stories, such as ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Pinocchio’, have garnered more translations than weightier tomes such as ‘Don Quixote’.    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s whimsical favourite ‘The Little Prince’ is not only the most translated book in Europe, but also the most translated globally, while Paulo Coelho’s smash hit ‘The Alchemist’ is the most translated in Latin America. Most though not all of the books are fictitious, but the Netherlands' ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ is an important non-fiction exception, as is Eduardo Galeano’s widely-acclaimed ‘Open Veins of Latin America’. All of the above and more can be discovered from the article, which is sure to remind you of any number of other inspiring books that you have read, or have yet to read. What’s your favourite book on the list? https://lnkd.in/dXsN_CFN 

It’s hard to believe that we’re into month three of the new year already, but for those of you still feeling nostalgic for 2024 times we have an article published by BBC which lists some of the words that best capture the essence of that year. But they’re not necessarily all words that you’d expect. While ‘word of the year’ rundowns normally cover the most widely-used terms of an epoch, this series provides a subtler nod to some of the big challenges facing the world, whether that’s in the Alpine German term ‘Ausgeapert’, which describes the gradual exposure of places previously covered by receding glaciers, or ‘kalo theke aalo’, a Bengali phrase which literally means ‘from darkness to hope’ but is conceptually used to refer to a just transition towards renewable energy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, climate change plays a big part in many of the terms described in the article, but as well as providing an insight into the cultures that created them, the article also makes the stark point that expressions coined to refer to the landscape and environment of polar areas are increasingly becoming obsolete as the climate changes, meaning that terms like the North Sami ‘ealát’, or ‘favourable conditions for reindeer to dig for lichen under the snow’, may have a limited future as the world’s temperature shifts. While not necessarily the most uplifting read, the article will tell you more about how climate influences how we speak, which is sadly more relevant now than ever. https://lnkd.in/grm8M6Rg

In our second translation industry updates article in 2025 we are talking about how the internet has changed how we communicate

As we move into the weekend we'll be thinking about how to maximise use of our digital devices while still leaving time for offline activities. Check out our article and let us know if you have any top tips for managing screen time!