Volcano terminology glossaries and dictionaries
For some reason there is a great deal of interest in volcanoes at the moment. Unfortunately, there are not many bilingual or multilingual glossaries available relating to this subject. However, we have managed to find a few translation glossaries on volcano terminology in English, Icelandic, Italian, German, Spanish and French. A listing of these glossaries can be found at:
What to do with an old dictionary
Instead of throwing away your old and out of date paper dictionary, why not give it a second life and use its pages as wallpaper. This excellent way of recycling old dictionaries is thoroughly explained in this online article Dictionary page walls.
A nice and quick idea for renovating your office wall!
Source: the Catalan blog Gazophilacium.
Russian cyrillic keyboard characters
Lexibar is a toolbar that gives rapid access to special characters not always available on the keyboard.
The Russian cyrillic version of this free Windows software is now available for download.
Greek keyboard characters
Lexibar is a toolbar that gives rapid access to special characters not always available on the keyboard.
The Greek version of this free Windows software is now available for download.
Interactive Online Conference on Interpreting Research
On December 2nd you will be able to attend the interactive online conference “Let the Data Talk” organised by the Interpreting Department of the University of Geneva.
The event, targeting recent graduates in interpreting, is free of charge and will take place as an online workshop featuring three round tables on three different topics: “cognitive processes in interpreting”, “collaborative learning environment in interpreting training” and “sociocultural and humanitarian issues in interpreting”.
To get to the online conference go to the Venue page and click on the conference link.
Print the same A4 document twice on one piece of A4 paper
In certain circumstances it can be useful to print a short document more than once on the same piece of paper. For example, if you are freelance or run a small business and like economising on paper then you could print your invoices half size (A5) on half an A4 sheet instead of a whole one. In general, when companies print invoices they print one copy for the client and one for themselves. Below is a simple way to print two copies of a document on one page of A4 paper using Microsoft Office.
To print two of the same document on one A4 sheet :
With the Print window open, make sure that the “Pages per sheet” setting is set to “2 pages” and that the “Page range” value is “Pages: 1,1″
Once printed, simply cut the page in half. It’s a simple as that !
An easy way to type Romanian accented characters
So, you would like to write an e-mail to a Romanian friend or family member, and you’re stuck on how to write that “a with the upside down hat” (?). You could spend a few tedious minutes or more looking for the character in the Windows character map or better, you could use the freeware Lexibar Romanian which allows you to insert Romanian accented characters into just about any Windows application in a split second.
100 free online language courses
The Online Universities’ blog has compiled a list of 100 free resources for learning a foreign language. The resources, intended for English-speaking learners, include a selection of the best courses for learning the basics of French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese or Japanese, as well as other less learned languages such as Polish, Czech or Urdu.
If you are still in doubt about learning another language the results of a study inferring that multilingualism is good for the brain entitled “Study of Contribution of Multilingualism to Creativity“, might make you change your mind.
Scientific symbols and chemical elements demystified
I am sure that you have come across strange physics or astronomy symbols, or chemical elements, and wondered what they meant? Now you will be able to find the answer more easily thanks to two fantastic new web resources.
Scientists and astronomers use many strange symbols to define various phenomena. To help demystify these symbols for ordinary folk, a team of experts at the University of Nottingham (UK) has produced an easy to understand, fun and informative collection of sixty videos, entitled “Sixty Symbols“. A further sixty videos are in preparation and will be ready in the near future.
For those needing information on a chemical element, another team at the University of Nottingham (UK) has produced an amazing set of videos illustrating the entire 118 chemical elements of The Periodic Table. Some of the videos have even been made available for foreigners, with subtitles in Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian and Italian.
These two sites are really very cool and fun! We love them!
The EU Bookshop Digital Library opens its doors!
The EU Bookshop Digital Library is now online. Users can download free of charge over 110,000 EU publications in the 23 official languages. The documents, edited on behalf of the EU institutions, agencies and other bodies, date from 1952 to the present day.
This digital library is an immense resource consisting of over 14 million pages of web-optimised PDFs. New publications will be added regularly.
To have an idea of the documents available in this new library go to the Search page then, in the “word or expression” box, type the word “glossary”, then select the option “Digital library” and… enjoy the reading!
