In Other Words

A weekly series of interviews about how translation has changed the English speaking world. <br />Editor: <a href="http://pri.org/people/patrick-cox">Patrick Cox</a><br />Reporter/Producer: <a href="http://pri.org/people/nina-porzucki">Nina Porzucki</a>

Supported By

The National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe Sara and Evan Williams Foundation Maureen and Michael Ruettgers
subtitles
Media
Meet the folks behind the subtitles on your favorite movies and streaming TV shows
Proust
Books
Poet, translator, soldier, spy? Remembering the man who brought Proust to the English world
Translator extraordinaire Ayub Nuri on the right, along with reporter Aaron Schachter and their driver Abdulrazzaq Zanjeel at a street cafe in Baghdad in 2003.
Conflict
Fixers are a foreign reporter’s best friend — and often their lifeline
The phrase ‘Wha gwan’ (whaa gwaan) means ‘what’s going on’ in Jamaican Patois. The spelling varies but the meaning does not change.
Culture
Pidgin, patois, slang, dialect, creole — English has more forms than you might expect
Google Translate turns "quid pro quo" into "What happens in Vegas!"
Culture
It’s possible to translate the untranslatable — if you have enough time
From the October 1927 Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons. Hendrik Lorentz, Leiden University, seated between Madame Curie and Einstein, chaired the conference.
Culture
How did English become the language of science?
The interpreters' booth at the Nuremberg trials. From left to right: Capt. Macintosh, British Army, translates from French into English; Miss Margot Bortlin, translates from German into English; Lt. Ernest Peter Uiberall, Monitor.
Global Politics
How the Nuremberg Trials changed interpretation forever
Bacon sign
Food
You are what you eat — and how you translate the menu
Illustration from a 1905 edition of "Grimms' Fairy Tales. The dwarfs warn Snow White not to accept anything from strangers. (Illustration: Franz Jüttner )
Books
We love fairy tales — maybe we’d love them more if they were translated right
Culture
What do the words mutton, sheep and robot have in common? Translation!