AI summaries – succinct but misleading?
A recent BBC News article highlighted a shift in how information is discovered online. Instead of lists of links, users are increasingly presented with AI-generated answers—summaries that extract and synthesise content from multiple sources. For researchers and academic institutions, this raises an important question: What happens when your work is no longer read in full—but […]
Fluent ≠ Precise: The Hidden Risk in Academic Writing
In academic writing, fluency is often taken as a sign of quality but….
When “Clear Enough” Isn’t Clear at All
In academic writing, clarity is often assumed rather than tested.
Lost in Translation: The Curious Language of Easter
Easter is not just a cultural and seasonal marker—it’s also a surprisingly rich linguistic landscape. Take the names of the days themselves. Good Friday is perhaps the most puzzling. Why “good” for such a solemn occasion? The term is thought to derive from an older meaning of good as “holy” or “pious”—a reminder that words […]
From Translation to Transcreation: How Our Role Has Evolved in the Age of AI
Not long ago, translation was a straightforward craft: taking words from one language and conveying their meaning in another, as faithfully as possible. Today, that landscape has changed beyond recognition. With machine translation (MT) systems and generative AI tools now capable of producing text in seconds, the human linguist’s role is no longer simply to […]
From Porridge to Panicky Horses
This blog looks at Slovak expressions and the importance of their human transcreation into the English equivalents.
AI-poetry: more human than human?
AI Poetry: Revolutionizing Perceptions of Creativity A groundbreaking study has revealed that AI-generated poetry is rated more favorably than classic works by human poets like Shakespeare or Dickinson. Non-expert readers were largely unable to distinguish AI poems from human-authored ones, with many perceiving AI creations as “more human than human.” The study found that AI […]
10 Tips for Stylish Writing to Attract Readers
Attracting a reader to your content is the first step. But how to keep them reading when they are on your webpage, blog, or reading your article or book? There are certain principles that I follow – which I developed when working on Google blogs for the US and UK market – that can give […]
AI vs. Translators: The Human Touch in a Machine-Led World
Machine translation, like pointing your phone at a foreign menu, has rapidly improved, yet its role in literary translation sparks debate. Dutch publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning’s plan to use AI for commercial fiction faced backlash from authors and translators, highlighting the nuanced craft of translation: cultural adaptation, wordplay, and precise terminology. Translators argue AI’s […]
Ernest vs. William – a clash of styles
The American literary giants Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner had a famously terse relationship, with the former extremely unlikely to invite the latter on an extended fishing trip for silvery merlin off the coast of Cuba (it is unclear whether the two actually ever met at all).