Fancy a break from the rigours of the translation industry? Take a minute to peruse Tip-Top Tales, an ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek look at the loopy land of language.

January 2010

The explosion of online communities will see a slew of slang expressions recorded in Australian dictionaries, according to news.com.au. The words - such as noob, pwnd, blag, hashtag, tweet and unfriend - have been recorded in the realms of cyberspace, constituting the written record required by the nation's top dictionary editors.

Before the era of online communities, slang words were rarely recorded in written format, creating a huge hurdle when it came to haggling for a dictionary spot.

Macquarie Dictionary editor Sue Butler said dictionaries were closer than ever before to accurately recording popular slang, thanks to the records of online forums.

"It is really only now that people are building these blogs and chatrooms to give (these words) better coverage," Ms Butler said.

Macquarie is in the process of taking votes for its word of year. The shortlist features tweet, buzzkill and y'mum- all words with a high online presence and currency.

The New Oxford American Dictionary last year named "unfriend" the word of the year, defined as a verb that means to remove someone as a friend on a social networking site such as Facebook. The New Oxford also shortlisted Twitter's "hashtag" - a sign added to a word or phrase for Twitter users to find similarly tagged Tweets. And the Webster's New World Dictionary included "overshare" last year, inspired partly by the habit of revealing too much personal information on social networking pages and blogs.

Ms Butler said she had tried to expand the scope of places she hunted for new words. "We listen to conversations, we read newspapers - we delve in to so many different mediums," she said.

For a word to make the cut, it needs to have currency, Ms Butler remarked. She noted that the appearance of certain slang terms in dictionaries was often slightly "behind the times". "But the online world is certainly starting to speed things up," she said.

Ms Butler declined to comment on rumours that a new definition  - "high-quality translation provider" - is set to be added to dictionaries' entries for the phrase "Tip-Top"...

December 2009

It may boast ground-breaking 3D effects, but English-speaking viewers of "Avatar" have been left in the dark by the film's alien dialogue after Hong Kong cinemas offered only a Chinese translation.

The computer graphics-laden production by "Titanic" director James Cameron, which follows the exploits of a paraplegic army veteran in the alien world of the Na'vis, has raked in more than 2 million US dollars in Hong Kong since its release in mid-December.

Despite its box-office success, western movie-goers have complained Na'vi dialogue is utterly impenetrable, unless they can read Chinese.

"While I thoroughly enjoyed the film, I was somewhat disturbed and frustrated that the alien Na'vi dialogue only had Chinese subtitles," cinema-goer Nic Tinworth told the Sunday Morning Post. Another complained "It would have been nice to get everything. I just assumed that everything in Hong Kong is in both English and Chinese."

The local distributor of the movie, 20th Century Fox Hong Kong, refused to explain why no English subtitles were provided in some cinemas, the Post said. The company's spokesman told the newspaper that they were "processing" the issue.

Chinese and English are the official languages of Hong Kong, a former British colony that was returned to China in 1997. The city's cinemas normally provide subtitles in both Chinese and English if a movie is produced in a third language. For translations that really work (including subtitling), take a look at Tip-Top's services page.

November 2009

In a sign of growing rapprochement with neighboring EU-member Romania, Moldova's government has changed the language signs on all of its websites from "Moldovan" (MD) to "Romanian" (RO), RFE/RL's Moldovan Service reports.

The Moldovan Constitution states that the official language of the country is "Moldovan," although most linguists say the language spoken in Moldova does not differ enough from Romanian to be considered a different language.

The new pro-Western government has said it will try to amend the constitution in the future to remove the "Moldovan language" concept. In yet another example of the sneaky blending of language and politics that has gone on throughout history, the term "Moldovan language" was coined by the Soviets after they annexed what is now Moldova from Romania at the beginning of World War II.

Romanian President Traian Basescu is on record as saying that Moldovan leaders from previous governments have requested an interpreter during official meetings with their Romanian counterparts, despite speaking essentially the same language. If Gordon Brown ever feels the need for an interpreter in dealings with his American or Australian counterparts, Tip-Top would be delighted to provide one!

October 2009

Thousands of people will be paid small sums to translate portions of Herman Melville's Moby Dick – often described as "the great American novel"  – into Emoji, the picture character language widely used in Japanese SMS messages.

While the premise of the Emoji Dick project may be a wee bit off-the wall, it highlights the innovative ways in which the labour pool of bored internet users is being tapped to complete complex tasks.

Fred Benenson, the New York-based web product manager behind the idea, has launched an online appeal to raise $3,500 to pay for the crowd-source translation.

The translators will be recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online labour exchange where firms advertise work that cannot be done by computers.

Because there is no standard English-to-Emoji dictionary, Mr Benenson plans to solicit several alternative translations from which the final version will be assembled.

"Each of Moby Dick's 6,438 sentences will be translated three times by different Amazon Mechanical Turk workers," he explained on the appeal website. "Those results will then be voted on by another set of workers, and the most popular version of each sentence will be selected for inclusion in the book."

Anyone who contributes $10 will have their name and an Emoji sentence of their choice printed at the back of the book when it is published, while a donation of $200 or more entitles the supporter to a limited edition colour hard back version.

As of early October the project was well on its way to reaching its $3,500 target. Here at Tip-Top, we can't offer Emoji, unfortunately, but we're pretty handy at providing 100 or so other languages.

September 2009

Yahoo news reports that French passengers on an Aer Lingus Dublin-Paris flight were left feeling a little nervous when air stewards chose to play the wrong translation of a standard safety announcement, which instead of informing them of turbulence, told them that the plane was about to make an emergency landing.

20 minutes after leaving Dublin, an English-language announcement asked passengers to return to their seats, but the pre-recorded French version warned them that there was much more serious trouble ahead. Francophones throughout the aircraft began to translate the message to their monolingual Irish neighbours, leading to general panic aboard.

It allegedly took the linguistically-aware (!) crew several minutes before they realised their mistake, after which they apologised for the misunderstanding over the PA system. A French version of this apology shortly afterwards explained that the plane was soon due to disappear inside the Bermuda Triangle, and that passengers should probably make appropriate arrangements quick smart. No, not really...

Anyway, if Aer Lingus had asked Tip-Top to match up the English with the correct French translations, this would never have....yeah, we know you know the drill by now.

August 2009

According to new research, having an imaginary friend as a child boosts language development and may enhance academic performance, reports the New Zealand Herald.

Otago University associate professor Elaine Reese, and former student Gabriel Trionfi, of Clark University in the United States, analysed the language skills of 48 boys and girls aged 5-12, of whom 23 had imaginary friends.

Their study found that the 13 girls and 10 boys who had engaged in play with an imaginary companion had more advanced narrative skills than children who had not.

"Because children's storytelling skills are a strong predictor of their later reading skill, these differences may even have positive spin-offs for children's academic performance," Professor Reese suggested.

The researchers assessed the children's language skills in several ways, including measuring their vocabulary and storytelling abilities.

Given the first-rate language skills on show at Tip-Top Translations every day of the week, it makes us wonder how much of their youth our colleagues spent blethering to Soren Lorenson and Mr Snuffleupagus.