Wednesday 7 July 2010

English-language style guides and European Commission translation resources

I am in the process of putting together a list of translation links and resources for our website (keep an eye out later in the summer) and have rediscovered a few bits and pieces that I thought might be of interest to our general readership as well.

First of all, style guides. I got lots of detailed questions about assignment editing over the past couple of months, and some of them might be answered by a document such as this one, the English style guide of the Directorate-General for Translation at the European Commission. Note the extreme attention to detail! If you're not a pedant, then ask yourself are you sure you are a translator? The style guide also has some good basic details about the EU for anyone boning up for this summer's competition for translators (includes a call for English native speakers!).
The compulsive cross-checkers among you could compare the DGT styleguide with more journalistic style guides such as the Economist style guide or the BBC News style guide. It can also be entertaining to look at issues which are actively policed like dead metaphors and conventions for gender-neutral and gender-inclusive language.
The DGT site also has a page of general translation resources and a useful page of language-specific resources in all the official languages.

More links and resources anon. Anyone with suggestions of sites, glossaries, term banks, encyclopaedias etc. that they have found useful is welcome to post them in the comments!

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