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How a joke can help us reveal the mystery of meaning in language

How a joke can help us reveal the mystery of meaning in language

What do you get if you cross a kangaroo with an elephant? You’ll have to wait for the punchline, but you should already have shards of meaning tumbling about your mind. Now, jokes don’t have to be all that funny, of course, but if they are to work at all then they must construct something beyond the simple words deployed.…

Will the AI jobs revolution bring about human revolt, too?

Will the AI jobs revolution bring about human revolt, too?

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to eliminate jobs once considered impossible to automate. One series of papers by Oxford researchers ranks jobs by their estimated susceptibility to automation. Among those most rated likely to vanish – because they involve work that AI can increasingly accomplish less expensively – are real estate brokers, insurance claims adjusters and sports referees.…

Why using a period in a text message could make you sound insincere or angry

Why using a period in a text message could make you sound insincere or angry

When it comes to texting, the period, full stop, point – whatever you call it – has been getting a lot of attention. People have begun noticing slight changes to the way our smallest punctuation mark is deployed, from declarations that it’s going out of style to claims that it’s becoming angry. What they’re actually noticing is written language becoming…

How social media fires people’s passions – and builds extremist divisions

How social media fires people’s passions – and builds extremist divisions

The people of the United States continue to learn how polarized and divided the nation has become. In one study released in late October by the Pew Research Center, Americans were found to have become increasingly partisan in their views. On issues as diverse as health care, immigration, race and sexuality, Americans today hold more extreme and more divergent views…

Calligraphy – the art of beautiful handwriting

Calligraphy – the art of beautiful handwriting

On 14th August is World Calligraphy Day Calligraphy is art in a written format, giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skilful manner. This ancient writing technique uses flat edged pens to create artistic lettering through thick and thin lines, depending on the direction of the stroke. Calligraphy’s vast history has impacted many cultures all over the world.…

‘F**k Vegetables’: China is set to end the spread of “Chinglish” mistranslations

‘F**k Vegetables’: China is set to end the spread of “Chinglish” mistranslations

Chinese is known as one of the most difficult languages to understand and interpret, and the struggle can clearly be seen from the many public signs with hilarious English mistranslation. However, China has finally unrolled a plan to eradicate “Chinglish” before the 2022 Winter Olympics and is working on improving the quality to standard English in 13 public areas like transportation, entertainment and medicine.

Five entertaining examples of localisation gone tragically awry

Five entertaining examples of localisation gone tragically awry

If you follow this blog, or any other blog that covers localisation and internationalisation, you probably already know that localisation is super important for expanding overseas. But that’s all just talk unless you’ve seen exactly what happens when you fail to localise successfully. It shouldn’t be difficult to see that marketing blunders can be disastrous for your brand. They can…

Artificial Intelligence can detect / create fake news

Artificial Intelligence can detect / create fake news

A visualisation of a fake vs real news distribution pattern; users who predominantly share fake news are coloured red, and users who don’t share fake news at all are coloured blue   When Mark Zuckerberg told Congress Facebook would use artificial intelligence (AI) to detect fake news posted on the social media site, he wasn’t particularly specific about what that…