​The Oxford comma has again reared ‘its ugly head’ or rather failed to do so, this time in connection with the imminent and much trumpeted departure of the UK from the European Union.
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To mark this auspicious event,  three million coins bearing the slogan ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations’ are due to enter circulation from 31 January, (after the first batch of 1 million coins had to be melted down by the Royal Mint because they featured the original departure date of 31 October).

 Laughter is a universal language, but rendering the emotion into text varies from country to country.
In our current golden age of smartphones and social media, most of us are familiar with emoticons (:-D), acronyms (LOL!) and other forms of internet-speak. Although this is a language we have yet to translate here at Allegro, some people actually believe emoji are the closest we have come to a universal lingua franca.

– Hei, Nicola! Jeg hører du nylig fikk en god nyhet i innboksen?
– Det stemmer! En veldig god nyhet som jeg har ventet i spenning på i flere uker (for ikke å si måneder).
– Hva kan det være for noe spennende?
– Autorisasjonsprøven! Jeg er nå statsautorisert translatør fra norsk til engelsk.

I høst dro Allegro-gjengen på landet og til Haaheim Gaard for å nyte god mat i landlige omgivelser, bli bedre kjent og bygge bånd som arbeidskolleger. Eller for å si det på godt norsk: vi var på et «teambuilding- og kick-off-arrangement med workshop».

We translators at Allegro Språktjenester have compiled a list of the words we often struggle to translate into English. This list includes many rather intangible words like ‘faglig’, ‘forankring’, ‘aktør’ and ‘helhetlig’. Tourism texts, though generally more concrete, present their own challenges, and none more so than the lovely light, soft word ‘svaberg’.