richardmdavis

Fascinating discussion today on Radio 4′s In Our Time about the translation movement in medieval Baghdad. Between the 9th and 11th centuries, a wealth of Greek philosophy, medicine, engineering and maths was translated into Arabic. In many cases, our present-day knowledge of these Classical writers is entirely due to the Arabic versions. One interesting fact [...]

Our friend Vov went to Edinburgh, and gave a thumbs-up to the Edinburgh Castle audio guide in Russian. Great to have such positive feedback on my recent translation.

Just came across a very fine example of amateur podcasting, A Spoonful of Russian by Natalie Worthington of New Orleans. Not much in it for me, language wise, as I continue to plough that rut between knowing the basics and being able to say anything very sophisticated or useful (or grammatically correct). But a really [...]

It was nice to read some positive feedback in this week’s London Info (weekly Russian language newspaper) for the Russian audio guide for The Beatles Story exhibition in Liverpool. Finished that in early 2006, so it’s great to think it’s already getting used. As usual there were many cultural terms that needed careful researching – [...]

Enjoyed today Andrew Hurley’s online story, The Zahir and I, a parody of the labyrinthine erudition of Borges’ ficciones. Reality and fantasy mingle seamlessly, confusingly, in this tale of a translator driven mad by such problems as finding “a suitable English word for the Spanish adjective atroz” and “languages that consist of nothing but verbs [...]