Posts Tagged ‘language’

Arrrrrgh… it’s one of those phrases that really winds us up when we hear it, yet ocassionally (and embarassingly) we sometimes find ourselves uttering the very same words… “At the end of the day”. And yes, we’ve also been known to utter that classic “it isn’t rocket science“.

Well, we’re ging to try our very best to stop using these expressions… as a recent poll by Oxford University has highlighted them as some of the most annoying out there.

And if a point were to be proven about how annoying and overused “At the end of the day” can be, then you need look no further than this compliation video!

Can’t see the video? Click here to view it on YouTube.

So, in the future, you might want to be careful about the language you use in your marketing materials.
Avoiding these cliches isn’t rocket science you know! (damn… we just did it again!).

Via Lifehacker and The Telegraph

Whether it be conducting research, planning trips abroad, or simply looking to purchase items from eBay… we occasionally find ourselves visiting international websites. Sadly, our grasp of foreign languages is pretty limited…so we tend to use an ‘on-line’ translator instead.

We’ve tried a few different options (including the facility built in to Google) but the site we keep going back to is ‘Babel Fish’. Results are not always 100% accurate, but they are usually good enough to get a good overview of what is being said.

Babel Fish

So whether you need to translate a few words or an entire webpage, you might want to bookmark the site, or save it to your ‘favorites’ folder.

Meanwhile, if you’re reading this during your lunch break, and have a few minutes to spare, here’s a classic comedy clip from Eddie Izzard, called ‘learning French’ (NB. contains strong language).