“Loanwords, idioms, false friends and other curiosities in a translator’s life”

Acting as mediators between different languages and being usually polyglots, translators and interpreters are perhaps among those who have the most acute perception of the phenomenon of linguistic borrowing. Nikos Sarantakos, a published author and a seasoned translator for the European Parliament will explore the realm of borrowing and loanwords, including reborrowings or Ruckwanderers, those quaint cases of mutual reborrowing of the same vocable by two languages in different moments. Special emphasis will be given to one of the biggest foes of translators, the false friends or faux amis, who are responsible for innumerable translator gaffes (examples of which will be given) and also to the translatability of idioms and proverbs.

Nikos Sarantakos was born in 1959 in Athens. He studied Chemical Engineering and English Literature. Since 1983 he has been working as a translator, initially as a freelance doing mainly literary translations. From 1988 he has been working for the EU institutions in Luxembourg, first at the European Commission and from 1990 at the European Parliament, where he is also responsible for the Greek terminology coordination with the other EU institutions. His working languages are Greek, French, English, and German.

An authority on Greek language and translation, Nikos is interested in phraseology, terminology, etymology, linguistic borrowing and reborrowing, lexicography, as well as in the history of the Greek literature. He has published two short stories collections and six books about language, including a dictionary of Greek idiomatic expressions. He has edited five books of well-known Greek authors. He is a regular contributor in the Greek daily Avghi and in various periodicals. He publishes his work in his blog sarantakos.wordpress.com, one of the most popular blogs on the Greek language, followed by numerous translators and linguists.