And we’re back for another edition of Wacky Word Wednesday, pumping up your vocabulary with a weekly celebration of some of the wackiest and most interesting words from around the world.

Today’s wacky word is: kalopsia.

The definition from TermWiki.com:

kal·op·si·a [kal-op-see-uh] -noun a condition, state or delusion in which things appear more beautiful than they really are

As a combination of the Greek roots kallos, meaning beauty, and opsis, meaning sight (or opos, meaning eyes), in English kalopsia can also mean beautiful sight or with beautiful eyes. Although this word is indeed used in writing (references here and here), it still hasn’t been declared a Scrabble-worthy word. (But then again, the same goes for quijibo, and if Bart Simpson says it’s a word, then that’s good enough for us.)

Alas, another weekend gone to the fishes. But at least you’ve got your Monday Morning Quote, right? This week’s quote is by celebrated folklorist and novelist, Zora Neale Hurston, who is most famous for her celebrated, brilliant masterpiece of a novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it. - Zora Neale Hurston

In spite of her literary prominence during the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston died in relative obscurity, having been buried in an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida, which was later discovered by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Alice Walker. Ms. Walker’s journey to find Zora Neale Hurston’s grave is chronicled in an essay called “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” which was published by Ms. Magazine in March, 1975. A reprint of the original essay can be found in Walker’s nonfiction collection, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. You should check it out—it’s powerful stuff.

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Issue Seven of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

Click here for previous issues.

More information:

When dealing with auditors, it never hurts to be precise. For that matter, it’s best to be precise in all aspects of your business, especially if you’re working in highly regulated sectors, like pharmaceuticals, biotech, or medical devices. TermWiki, the localization industry’s first completely online, wiki-based and collaborative terminology management system, enables you to bring a new degree of precision to your product documentation by providing a one-stop platform for the collaborative terminology development, management, translation, and dissemination processes. When it comes to the Life Sciences, there’s no room for error when the international compliance of your product is on the line—just ask your auditors. Better yet, ask your friendly neighborhood LSP.

• Test drive TermWiki yourself at TermWiki.com.
• Click here to read “10 Good Reasons to Manage Your Terminology.”
• Check out more detailed information on TermWiki.

Keep up with Terminus and his multilingual shenanigans by subscribing to our RSS feed!

Guest blog entry by Tammy Werner, Director of CSOFT’s MedL10N Division

On my flight from Miami to Seattle for Localization World earlier this month, it occurred to me that commercial airlines and professional LSPs have a lot in common (except when it comes to drinks and snacks).

When we plan a vacation or business trip, we tend to think only of our final destination and cost. Depending on the distance and our comfort in driving ourselves there, we may opt to hire a professional to “do the driving” for us. Translation projects are really no different.

In preparation for my trip to Seattle, the thought of driving there did not even cross my mind. The first thing I did was go online to price the available commercial flights. Once I found the most attractive flight based on my criteria, I booked the ticket to lock in the best rate. Sure, there were cheaper flights (shhh, don’t tell my Finance Director), but I didn’t want to waste my valuable time flying from Miami to Seattle via Maine.

It’s Monday again. Time for a resounding, collective “meh”—and, of course, time for another Monday Morning Quote. This week’s quote is by the prolific French author, Alexandre Dumas, who is best known for his novels The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Seeing as it’s Monday and all, we just wanted to give you something to hope for, though the bleakness of this quote isn’t necessarily the best place to start. Enjoy!

Live then, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that, until the day God deigns to reveal the future to man, the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these words: Wait and hope. - The Count of Monte Cristo

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The week is halfway over, friends and fellow logophiles, and that means it’s time for another edition of Wacky Word Wednesday, a weekly celebration of some of the wackiest and most interesting words from around the world.

Today’s wacky word is: onychophagist.

The definition from TermWiki.com:

on·y·cho·pha·gist [on-uh-kof-uh-jist] -noun a person who habitually bites their nails

Onychophagist comes from the Greek word for claw or nail, onyx, and the neoclassical element -phagy, which refers to the action of eating the substance that precedes it. Technically speaking, an onychophagist is someone who suffers from onychophagia, which is a condition that leads people to bite their nails as a result of psychological distress. Regardless, we humbly suggest using it as an interjection to scold any nail-biters within your general vicinity, e.g., Hark, you foul onychophagist! Cease that nail-bitery, post haste!

While researching this word, we couldn’t help but think of Struwwelpeter, a 19^th-century collection of children’s stories meant to scare the crap out of German kids with bad habits, like not eating soup, not watching where you’re going, playing with matches and fidgeting at the dinner table. And then, of course, there’s the eponymous story of Shaggy Peter himself, who nobody likes on account of his lack of hygiene.

Among the stories in Struwwelpeter is that of Little Suck-a-Thumb who, incidentally, has a rather nasty habit of sucking his thumbs. While not entirely tantamount to biting your nails, thumb-sucking is at best frowned upon in most cultures, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to share the story of Little Suck-a-Thumb for the hygienic benefit of our readers and fellow onychophagists alike.

Another weekend irretrievably gone—and it’s time again for a Monday Morning Quote. This week’s quote is by well-known Russian poet, novelist, and director, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who was honored in 1993 with a Medal for the Defender of Free Russia. Before reading the quote, keep in mind that Yevtushenko has been married four times already (just sayin’).

Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful. - Yevgeny Yevtushenko Famous Russian Poet

The implicit misogyny of the quote aside, what do you think? Are “faithful” translations inherently not beautiful? What (if any) aspects of a source text should you be faithful to in order to create a beautiful translation?

Translators and linguists, we’d love to hear what you have to think.

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Issue Six of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

Click here for previous issues.

More information:

TermWiki, the localization industry’s first completely online, wiki-based and collaborative terminology management system, was developed with MediaWiki software, which, unlike the development platforms of other terminology management systems on the market, is especially open in terms of infrastructure—and thus highly customizable.

Every organization manages their terminology differently, and because of that, there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. With TermWiki, you don’t have to worry about getting “locked in” by rigid software that forces you to adapt your workflow to the limitations of the system. There are currently tens-of-thousands of extensions available for MediaWiki software, a testament to the fact that this PHP-based application can be easily tweaked and prodded to meet your individual terminology management needs—and it’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg.

Check out www.TermWiki.com for a free test drive.

Keep up with Terminus and his multilingual shenanigans by subscribing to our RSS feed!

Hey, hey! It’s time again for Wacky Word Wednesday, a weekly celebration of some of the wackiest and most interesting words from around the world.

Today’s wacky word is: fabiform.

The definition from TermWiki.com:

fa·bi·form [fay-bih-fawrm] -adjective kidney-bean shaped

Fabiform comes from a combination of faba, the Latin word for broad bean, and fōrma, the Latin word for figure, model, or mold. Used primarily in botany to describe the shape of various legumes, lichens and creepers, it’s pretty straightforward as far as etymology is concerned.

Because b’s and v’s like to play the dialectal equivalent of musical chairs between Romance languages, the Latin word faba is actually linguistic cousins with the Italian word for broad beans, fava. So the name fava beans—a finger-licking favorite snack of Hannibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs—actually means “bean beans.” Now, we’re not ones to judge the idiosyncracies (or downright redundancy) of language here, but viewed in this light, the famous line ”I ate his liver with some bean beans and a nice chianti” does lose a bit of its creepy ambiance.