Now that I’m in lockdown due to the coronavirus and waiting for my next job to come in, I’ve had some time to make some long-planned major improvements to the Useful Links & Resources for Translators & Interpreters page. As a result, this page has now been divided into five separate sections with their own categories. These five sections are:

Section 1: General dictionaries and glossaries

Section 2: Subject-specific dictionaries and glossaries

Section 3: Writing-related resources

Section 4: Translation-related tools and links

Section 5: Other links of interest

It’s the last section that has changed the most with the addition of more categories and resources. The list starts off with the new Codes & Shortcuts category with links that I use a lot when I can’t remember how to type some characters.

The penultimate category, TV & Films, is also new. Here you’ll find some links that might help you while away some COVID-19 confinement hours. For example, the National Theatre is dropping a video of one of their productions on their YouTube channel once a week. The first offering, One Man, Two Guvnors, starring James Corden, is still available. My family and I enjoyed watching it together and it’s hilarious in places (after a bit of a slow start) and I’m sure we could all do with a good laugh right now to take our minds of the unsettling worldwide situation.

Another YouTube channel we have also watched is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Shows Must Go On! One of the composer’s productions will also be dropped once a week. First up was Any Dream Will Do with Donny Osmond, which was also amusing, and next is Jesus Christ Superstar.

Marquee TV is offering free trial membership lasting 30 days and the productions you can stream are by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Opera House, English National Ballet, contemporary dance companies, etc. There’s also MUBI in the list. It’s a film website focusing on international arthouse cinema with a free trial lasting seven days.

The News category has become News & Politics with the addition of these three sites:

1. Politwoops showing all deleted tweets from politicians.
2. TheyWorkForYou a parliamentary monitoring website. Find out how your MP is representing you.
3. WriteToThem a site giving details of how you can write to your UK local and national politicians.

In the Lifestyle category I’ve added the following three links:

1. CodeCheck app for smartphones to check food and cosmetics are free from toxins.
2. GuppyFriend a bag for your washing machine to help solve the problem of microplastic pollution.
3. Veggiebag.net by feelhome, selling reusable bags for fruit and vegetables.

If and when the world ever gets back to normal and we can travel again, there are a couple of additions to the Travelling & Holidays category: The Man in Seat Sixty-One for worldwide train travel information; and MyClimate, a non-profit climate protection organisation with footprint calculator & carbon offset suggestions for flights, driving, heating, etc. It shows the amounts in EUR, CHF, GBP and USD.

New in Section 1, with lists of general dictionaries and glossaries, is: Academia Canaria de la Lengua, which I came across during a tourism translation.

Most of the other recent additions are in Section 2, which contains the subject-specific dictionaries and glossaries.

In Health & Medical there are three:

1. Diccionario de Términos de Salud Español Inglés edited by Liliana Osorio
2. Dictionary of Health-related Terms English-Spanish edited by Liliana Osorio
3. English-Spanish Dictionary of Health Related Terms California-Mexico Health Initiative

I’ve added the Oxford Classical Dictionary in Humanities & Social Sciences (a subscription is required) and Multilingual Chemical Terminology by ECHA in Technical.

The Legal category now has a link to the World Law Dictionary. It’s currently only in English but translations into other languages will be added soon. Run by TransLegal, access costs $9 per month.

And lastly, there are a final couple of new links added to Section 3, writing-related resources. The first, Oxford Research Encyclopedias is in the Encyclopaedias category. Most of the resources on this site can only be accessed with a UK library card or a subscription. However, the encyclopaedias of Anthropology, Business and Management, Economics and Finance, Global Public Health, Planetary Science, Neuroscience and Physics are free. And the second is Juremy for EU Legal Terminology Search in the Corpora category.

I hope some of the above will be of interest to you. Meanwhile, take care and stay safe everyone!

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Explore this blog by starting with the categories page