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Bali is possibly most widely-known outside of Indonesia for being an idyllic tropical getaway and a digital nomad hotspot, but today’s article by the BBC describes a different side to the island. Just two hours’ drive from the popular tourist town of Ubud, the village of Bengkala has the distinction of having one of the world’s highest ratios of deaf people to hearing people, reportedly due to a recessive gene that causes approximately two percent of the population to be deaf since birth. Members of this community face considerable challenges, such as barriers to employment that often consign them to marginalised professions such as digging graves. At the same time, the relative prevalence of deafness within the community means that even hearing people have come to embrace Kata Kolok, as the local sign language is named, with more than half being able to communicate by sign with their neighbours. This helps to overcome some of the social challenges faced by deaf people, such as the loneliness of only being able to sign with a small number of people. The article presents some of the ways in which deaf people in Bengkala have sought to overcome challenges and use their own particular insights to contribute to their community. It will no doubt also be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about how sign languages work. https://lnkd.in/e7XqrCqb 

Have you ever wondered which languages the people of your city are studying? Research originally published on the Word Tips blog and discussed in today’s article by Mental Floss throws up some interesting findings. In response to the question of which language each city wants to learn the most, the answers are English, Spanish and French in that order. But the study also reveals some interesting generational differences between users, with Japanese and Korean being more popular among a younger audience. In fact, an amazing one in ten Australian schoolchildren is apparently learning Japanese now. Over and above this, the article has an interesting breakdown of language-learning habits among English-speaking US adults in particular, which ranks the uptake of different languages between Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Gen Z. While Spanish is a clear winner across all four of those age brackets, there’s a few other findings that you might not expect. Take a look at the article and the map to learn more about which languages each capital city is learning. Which language comes out top in your country’s capital? https://lnkd.in/gmvkGrkW 

Have you ever wondered how different countries get their names? According to this article published by Quartz, the logic is far more consistent than you might expect. Of the 195 countries that are recognised by the United Nations today, almost every single one of these is named after a “directional description of the country”, a topographical feature, the name of a tribe, or a famous person. Countries that are obviously named after tribes include France and Switzerland (home to the “Franks” and “Schwyz”), while in other cases the reference is to a quality of the population itself, with the beautifully-titled Burkina Faso being translatable as “land of incorruptible people”. Countries named after people include many of the Caribbean islands, several of which were named after saints by Columbus, while St Lucia is a relative outlier in being perhaps the only country named after a woman. Montenegro means “Black Mountain”, including in its endonym, or locally-used place name, of “Crna Gora”, while the frozen origins of “Iceland” are easy to imagine, if apparently not always entirely accurate. Directional place names include the “Middle Kingdom” of China, and many other countries which have a compass point in their title, such as North Korea and South Africa, while the Southeast Asian nation of “Timor Leste” has the distinction of meaning “east” in two different languages. The article will make you think more about place names that you might have taken for granted, while also making some worthwhile points about who has historically been able to choose names for places, and why. https://lnkd.in/dBHifZME

In our translation industry updates for July we'll be talking about why it can be useful for translators to develop an area of specialisation, and sharing some ideas on how to accomplish this.

In our latest mindfulness and wellbeing updates, we'll be talking about how to come up with fresh ideas when hitting a creative wall. Do you have any tips on inspiring your inner muse? Don't hesitate to leave your thoughts in the comments - and happy creating!

If you’re a fan of the iconic Victorian detective, you might be interested to learn that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle considered the Sherlock Holmes novels to be the least interesting part of his literary output, and frequently regretted the fact that they distracted people from reading the more lofty historical novels he wished to be remembered for. That’s just one example of an author coming to resent the novels or characters that he or she created, and this article by Buzzfeed lists twenty-two more. In some cases authors seek to distance themselves from their work for relatively banal reasons, such as a feeling that a certain piece was overly commercial or unbecoming of the author’s usual level of quality. Other cases speak to a desire to be taken more seriously in a field other than the one that made the author famous, or a resentment at the way their writing has been received by publishers and fans. Yet more of the cases are troubling or even profoundly sad, examples of books taking on a life of their own after publication and being used to promote moral messages other than the ones that the author intended. For example, the ‘Jaws’ author Peter Benchley always regretted the fact that his writing instilled a widespread public fear of sharks, rather than an appreciation of their uniqueness and vulnerability. Being a writer means leaving a legacy to the world forever, but nobody can predict how a piece of work might be interpreted after its publication. Read on to discover what happened to the other items on the list. https://lnkd.in/dSVt8nVV 

You might already be familiar with the expression ‘Wherefore art thou Romeo?’, but did you know that ‘wherefore’ doesn’t actually mean ‘where’? Instead, as today’s article by Mental Floss tells us, the meaning of the expression is actually ‘why’, which changes the entire meaning of the sentence and is intended as an allusion to the long-running family conflict that kept Romeo and Juliet apart – with tragic consequences. But it’s not just tales of star-crossed lovers that are misinterpreted. Many of the world’s most famous phrases were originally intended to have different meanings which have been lost in the passage of time or through successive miscommunication. The famous line ‘Houston, we have a problem’ is actually a distortion of the less catchy-sounding ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem’, which are the words that were actually spoken on Apollo 13. Meanwhile, Sartre apparently didn’t literally mean that ‘hell is other people’, while the saying ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’ is actually intended to be a bad thing rather than a good thing. History is rife with misinterpreted expressions, which is why the selection featured in this article is probably only the tip of the iceberg of all of the world’s misquotations. Do you know another historical expression that’s taken on another meaning through time? Let us know in the comments! https://lnkd.in/es-Big4R 

A while ago, we featured a whole article about the difficulties that people might experience when trying to communicate confidently in their non-native language. Today’s article by The Guardian traces journalist Ying Reinhardt’s journey towards self-acceptance in German, having learned the language as an adult after relocating to the country with her German husband. Self-describing as Malaysian Chinese and originally from Kuala Lumpur, Ying was already fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay and English, and later acquired French and Italian through work and travels. But even after reaching C1 level in the language, confidence in German always eluded her, until she came to the conclusion that her own doubts were the main thing deterring her – and vowed to stop being her own harshest critic. Ying’s story is reflective of many of us who have lived in another country for long stretches of time and even had some of our most formative life experiences there, yet have rightly or wrongly felt out of our depth in a linguistic sense. It’s also likely to resonate with anyone who’s felt judged for having a non-native command of a local language even when they speak several other languages fluently. Over and above that, it’s a perfect example of triumphing against adversity, which is always nice to read about on a Monday. Have you ever apologised for your skills in another language? https://lnkd.in/d4f2DPvB

If you’ve ever turned to machine translation to help make sense of a menu in a foreign country, or to automatically translate a website that’s not in your language, you’re probably aware of the trade-off that can sometimes occur between convenience and quality. This article by Slate describes the darker side of over-reliance on technology, and describes four different cases where mistranslation had far-reaching and sometimes fatal human consequences. As the article itself argues, machine-translating song lyrics is unlikely to create lasting real-world harm, but the outcome is likely to be far more serious in scenarios such as the mishandling of a police investigation or becoming involved in a deadly brawl - both of which figure in the article’s list of examples. There’s no doubt that instant translation can sometimes make all of our lives easier. But in touch-and-go scenarios where effective communication is literally a life and death manner, the involvement of humans clearly continues to be critical. The article is worth reading for a sobering take on what happens when misunderstandings can literally claim lives, and it also underscores the difficulties that language barriers can create in such scenarios. Have a read, and let us know what you think in the comments. https://lnkd.in/eChmnjXD

Have you ever wondered whether there’s an opposite to ‘Schadenfreude’? If yes, then you might be interested to learn about the less widely-known German expression ‘Fremdschämen’, which describes the sensation of being so uncomfortable at another person’s embarrassment that you actually start to feel it yourself. If you’ve ever seen another person walk into something then you’ve probably had that feeling of their pain being yours. But that’s just one of a list of German expressions that capture niche-sounding yet actually very universal human concepts. Practical as always, German also has the incredible term ‘Sturmfrei’, or ‘storm free’, which refers not to turbulent weather but is rather a reference to historical times when a castle could not be invaded, or stormed. In today’s world, ‘Sturmfrei’ means having the house to yourself when the people you live with are out, and this expression is as neat and as practical as it is culturally interesting. Other more conflictive terms include ‘Zugzwang’, which refers to a situation where you’re forced to choose between a series of options that are detrimental to you, like being caught ‘between a rock and a hard place’ in English. ‘Erklärungsnot’, on the other hand means being forced to come up with an explanation in a difficult situation. More romantically, there’s the whimsical term ‘Kopfkino’, or ‘head cinema’, which refers to the way that scenes tend to play out in your mind when you’re staring into nowhere, while ‘Zeitgeist’, or ‘spirit of the time’, is widely used in English as a kind of catch-all expression for a defining cultural moment. Does your language have expressions that don’t exist in any other? Let us know in the comments! Thanks to the Duolingo blog and Merriam-Webster for helping to inspire today’s post! Sources: https://lnkd.in/dKhPfERA https://lnkd.in/dwAdiZrY