Tuesday 14 June 2011

sources and words

Writing academic essays in English, I've sometimes found it difficult to translate technical words. I mean those words that refers to a very specific meaning but sounds like other words. I'll make an example to be sure you can understand. Last week I was wondering how to translate "sensibile" from Italian to English, but I didn't mean the adjective (sensitive), but the substantive that indicates a particular musical note that in a scale risolves to a note one semitone higher. Putting just 'sensibile' on google translate or any other online translator I could not find the word I meant.

The solution is easy, anyway. If you don't have a specialized dictionary (which is a very good way to solve the problem, but it is quite difficult to have one specific for each and every semantic field!!) you can just go on wikipedia, and search in your own language the word you are interested in. Then, you can click on the list of languages on the left and what you get is the corresponding entry in English, so your perfect translation. Moreover, the complete entry makes you certain to be perfectly right.

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