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An epidemic of prepositional anarchy?

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In his linguistically thought-provoking Guardian article under the heading “Back to prep school“, Andy Bodle reckons that Harry Blamires, the author of The Penguin Guide to Plain English, is far from alone in thinking we are in “an epidemic of prepositional anarchy”.

His bottom-line advice is to “check the dictionary”, although interestingly (and perhaps contradictorily?), he also refers to Google Ngram Viewer as a tool for trying to determine which version can be regarded as ‘more correct’, in cases where several ‘legitimate’ options exist, e.g. bored with/of, obsessed with/by, identical with/to.

Further reading: comprehensive Wikipedia page on prepositions, postpositions, circumpositions and adpositions.

CPD

Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

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CPD

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for translators is about refining and expanding one’s existing skills and subject knowledge, keeping up-to-date with commercial and linguistic developments, learning new technologies and contributing to the profession. The benefits of CPD are multiple and include:

  • enhanced understanding of one’s specialist fields
  • improved productivity, efficiency and confidence
  • learning new specialisms
  • keep up to date with one’s source language(s)
  • achieving greater job satisfaction

CPD comes in many different forms and can be formal or informal CPD. The website of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting lists examples from both categories. It goes without saying that professional translators carry out informal CPD routinely on a daily basis. Occasionally, they even find time to reflect on it. One of the trademarks of professional translators is endless intellectual curiosity in a wide range of different and often challenging subjects.