Doing Everything In A Few Other Languages
This wonderfully helpful dictionary taught me almost all I know!
Some dictionaries are downright unhelpful and never ever give you what you are looking for: this one was just brilliant!
This is more up-to-date than my old "Aurélio" (written by the renowned Brazilian lexicographer, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira)!
Whilst this is very obviously a UK-based business and website (as indicated by the ".co.uk" at the end of the great, big, long domain name, www.assistedautobiographies.co.uk), I really would relish the opportunity of helping people to write their autobiographies in their own mother tongues, as long as they are one of the following four languages:
- French
- German
- Portuguese (ideally Brazilian Portuguese) and
- Spanish
I will always invoice in pounds sterling for any work carried out and clients must ensure that all amounts due are sent with all banking and other charges paid at the remitter's end otherwise any shortfall in the amount received by me will be re-invoiced. Any currency fluctuations will therefore be at the client's risk.
I would be happy to submit the end-product of all our work together (i.e. the book or photo-albums in terms of just the content and the layout) in an electronic format (such as a print-ready PDF), which will be ready to be handed over to a local printer and local book-binder in the client's country of residence if this would be helpful in reducing costs and administrative "headaches".
I almost fell off my chair when my Spanish Prof. suggested, in our very first Spanish Translation class, that I buy
"his" dictionary.
"Excuse me, Sir! Did you just imply that ... you wrote a dictionary?!"
"Yes! Well done, Hall! You heard me correctly: I did indeed write a dictionary and it's a jolly good one, too! I suggest
you go out this lunchtime and buy one! You won't regret it!"
I did just that and he was right: I never did regret buying it!
Some dictionaries are descriptive, describing the language as it is actually used, as his dictionary did:
other "stuffier" ones are "prescriptive" and tell you how you should be speaking and writing the language.
When I worked in Zurich, our Head Office was in Geneva so my working French improved massively - even though "La Suisse Romande" enjoys some very different counting to pukka, traditional French such as 'nonante', for 'quatre-vingt-dix', and the real 'horreur', "huitante' for 'quatre-vingt'!
The "magical" glow from behind the Gigabit Switch as data courses through the System like blood through the arteries
!
Whatever language we think, speak and write in makes little difference: human emotions still "plug into the same places".