Nowadays, everyone has an account, or at least knows what Twitter is all about. This microblogging site was created and launched in 2006, and has slowly been gaining popularity, today reaching more than a hundred million users worldwide. How can you reach this huge audience? With specialist business translation services.

Recently, the company announced an expansion of the list of languages ​​available to ‘tweet’ in. Specifically, the additional languages ​​are: Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Hindi, Malay and Tagalog. Therefore, using specialist business translation services can significantly increase your online readership.

Malay is spoken mainly in Southeast Asia, being the official language of Malaysia, Brunei and one of the four official languages ​​of Singapore. Tagalog is spoken in various regions of Asia like the Philippines, in Oceania (New Zealand and Australia), and some regions of Canada and the United States. The Indian community can also ‘tweet’ in Hindi, one of the two official languages ​​of India, along with English. With these new additions, Twitter will be available in 17 languages, and, as announced by the company, it will soon support another six new languages: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Polish and Hungarian. This ever increasing pool of languages represents a huge online community, which you can tap into by using specialist business translation services.

Like many other online services, Twitter is supported by a team of around 290,000 ...

Discovered by one of Napoleon’s soldiers in 1799, the Rosetta Stone is a great example of early translation and proved the key to our modern understanding of hieroglyphics.

The ancient Egyptian stele (stone slab) is uneven in shape, but stands at 3’ 9” at its tallest point, is 11” thick and weighs approximately 120 stone!

The stone bears the inscription of a decree issued on behalf of King Ptolemy V in 196 BC, and is so important to linguists because it is written in two languages and three alphabets: hieroglyphics; demotic and Greek. This gave scholars the opportunity to use the Greek translation to try and decipher the ancient Egyptian script.

Expanding on the work done by English polymath Thomas Young, French scholar Jean-François Champollion published the first translation of the hieroglyphics shown on the Rosetta Stone in 1822, determining that the ancient Egyptian writing system incorporated both phonetic and ideographic units.

This was the first time that hieroglyphics had been successfully interpreted and it allowed the translation of many other records from ancient Egyptian civilization.

While the original importance of this great discovery must be recognised, I was very interested to learn that the term “Rosetta Stone” has become a phenomenon in itself.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase has entered language usage as an idiomatic way to express “a key to some previously undecipherable mystery or unattainable knowledge”.

Indeed, the discovery last year of fossilized skeletons of the possible ancestor of humans in South Africa was described as “the Rosetta Stone of humanity”.

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Here are some French tongue-twisters to get your langue around! Bonne Chance! I have also included English translations so you can see what you’re trying to say.

Pauvre petit pécheur, prends patience pour pouvoir prendre plusieurs petits poissons

(The poor little fisherman has patience to be able to catch lots of little fish)

J’ai vu six sots suçant six cent six saucisses, six en sauce et six cents sans sauce

(I saw six fools sucking six hundred and six sausages, six in sauce and six hundred without sauce – That’s difficult even in English!)

Le chasseur, sachant chasser sans son chien, chassera seul

(The hunter knows that hunting without his dog, he will be hunting alone)

Même maman m’a mis ma main dans mon manchon

(Even my mother placed my hand in my sleeve)

Trois tortues trottaient sur un trottoir très étroit

(Three turtles trotted on the really narrow pavement/sidewalk)

Being a first language Welsh speaker and having studied European languages in school and University, I was totally unaware that my Welsh language knowledge provided me with an unknowing improved ability to learn foreign languages, perfect pronunciation as well as recalling vocabulary easier!

Whilst sat in my French classroom one day, I was staring out of the window (Still paying attention of course!), when the colored flash-cards that were stuck to the window caught my eye, which read ‘ffenest‘ , which was no surprise to me, however the words that followed completely shocked me (I was 12!) – ‘fenetre’ (Fr), ‘ ventana’ (Sp) and ‘Finestra’ (It). How odd, I thought, that none of them showed any resemblance to the English and how similar they were to the Welsh! The revelation continued when I searched the classroom covered in flash-cards to be shocked when my eyes fell upon the wall’s flash-cards! Admittedly, I have never used the word mur for wall (Being from South Wales, we usually say wâl!) - however it’s similarity to other European languages is shocking; mur (Fr) and muro (Sp and It)!

Considering that Welsh and its Romance neighbours did indeed originate from the same original language, they can now be considered to be on opposite ends of the linguistic spectrum that the Proto-Indo European (PIE) has now transformed into. Indeed, English words are present in a number of languages (and vice versa), simply because of its growing use, however the vocabulary of Welsh and some European languages have ...

Despite not having an ‘official’ translation of the word, I have decided to call them Troellau Tafod, so here goes, pob-lwc!

Oer yw eira ar Eryri

(The snow is cold on Eryri)

Mae Llewelyn y llyfrgellydd o Llanelli wedi llyfu llawer o llyfaint

(Llewelyn the librarian from Llanelli licked a lot of frogs)

Gwelais Gwilym gyda gafr gwyrdd yn gerdded i Gaerdydd

(I saw Gwilym walking to Cardiff with a green goat)

Rhoddodd Rhian rhywfaint o rhâff i rhywun reit rownd y gornel

(Rhian gave some rope to someone around the corner)

Eisteddodd Eiry yn eu ystafell oer ar ôl yfed ormod o win

(Eiry sat in her cold room, after drinking too much wine)