ProZ.com Translation Forums

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | No doubt: English

Angie Garbarino — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 12:54:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: Angie Garbarino
Post title: No doubt: English

Ever since I was five: English — rhythmic, intuitive, wonderful-sounding, musical.

P.S. I also have a pretty good idea which one I find the worst (among the ones I understand). But this is neither the time nor the place.

[Edited at 2026-09-20 13:04 GMT]

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | @Christine

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 12:46:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Post title: @Christine

You're right! I love Madeiran accent, mostly because it reminds me of my Mother. It’s quite melodic, starts on a lower pitch and rises toward the end of sentences. Over the years, mostly because of the TV influence, Madeiran accent is not so heavy as it was years ago. Yet, in some villages you need to train your ear to understand what’s being said; moreover, in Madeira they still use words that have fallen out of use in mainland Portugal.

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | Northumbrian border dialects, Geordie and West Riding Yorkshire

Christine Andersen — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 12:30:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: Christine Andersen
Post title: Northumbrian border dialects, Geordie and West Riding Yorkshire

Northumbrian border dialects, Geordie and West Riding Yorkshire
The voices of Wilfred Pickles, my family and godmother from Leeds, Vera Stanhope ...
My sister-in-law's cream-caramel accent from Paisley is quite lovely too.
They are simply music in my ears!

... In other words, the languages or dialects a given individual associates with happy periods of life or good friends.

Unfortunately I don't speak any of them - my own idiolect is quite boring.

Money matters | Lack of work... Now I want to offer Pro-Bono for my specialties... | There is no pro bono work...

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 11:54:00 +0000

Forum: Money matters
Topic: Lack of work... Now I want to offer Pro-Bono for my specialties...
Poster: Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Post title: There is no pro bono work...

I have worked pro bono occasionally during my 40 years of professional translation experience, but I must say that if paying clients are entrusting their work to AI, it is only natural that charities do the same…

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | Ancient language

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 11:15:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Post title: Ancient language

[quote]expressisverbis wrote:

[quote]Rima Khader wrote:

................

Indeed, Arabic is the mother of all spoken, written, heared languages on Earth.

[/quote]

It is certainly a fascinating and historically influential language, but not the mother of all human languages on Earth.
Arabic is a branch, not the trunk. 😄

There's a very interesting book on the subject:

Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global. By Laura Spinney. Bloomsbury; 352 pages; $29.99. William Collins; £22

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | My views

expressisverbis — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:49:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: expressisverbis
Post title: My views

[quote]Rima Khader wrote:

................

Indeed, Arabic is the mother of all spoken, written, heared languages on Earth.

[/quote]

It is certainly a fascinating and historically influential language, but not the mother of all human languages on Earth.
Arabic is a branch, not the trunk. 😄

[quote]kd42 wrote:
The pronunciation of a French phrase "J'ai perdu mon pantalon" in Russian literally sounds as "I am farting into my underwear pants", does not match with an average concept of beauty for a Russian speaker. [/quote]

That is not really an argument against the beauty of a language. 😊
Every language can produce funny or unfortunate associations when its words or names are heard through the phonetic system of another language. That is simply a matter of sound coincidence.
For example, the name of the famous Soviet/Russian ballerina Irina Kolpakova can sound rather amusing to a Portuguese speaker, something like “urina para a cova” (“urine for the grave”).
I could therefore use the same kind of argument to make Russian names sound ridiculous to Portuguese speakers, but that would obviously tell us nothing about the beauty of Russian.
The same applies to “J'ai perdu mon pantalon”. If it happens to resemble something funny in Russian, that is an amusing coincidence between two languages, not a linguistic argument against French. 😊

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | French is not entirely beautiful

kd42 — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:17:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: kd42
Post title: French is not entirely beautiful

[quote]Zea_Mays wrote:
Period.
(What an unscientific experiment - you'd only be able to _listen_ to languages, and only to those you _don't_ understand.) [/quote]
The pronunciation of a French phrase "J'ai perdu mon pantalon" in Russian literally sounds as "I am farting into my underwear pants", does not match with an average concept of beauty for a Russian speaker.

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | Yes

kd42 — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:13:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: kd42
Post title: Yes

[quote]Gregor Trebec wrote:
The most loveliest language is Slovenian. [/quote]
Because it is the Sloveniest of all languages.

Money matters | Lack of work... Now I want to offer Pro-Bono for my specialties... | Makes no sense

ibz — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 08:48:00 +0000

Forum: Money matters
Topic: Lack of work... Now I want to offer Pro-Bono for my specialties...
Poster: ibz
Post title: Makes no sense

So you're complaining about a lack of work, yet now you want to work for free? I don't understand.
Put your energy into thinking of new business opportunities, improving your skills, contacting new clients, or doing whatever helps you, but don't advertise your work for free. It doesn't make sense at all.

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | It is Arabic

Rima Khader — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 08:22:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: Rima Khader
Post title: It is Arabic

................

Indeed, Arabic is the mother of all spoken, written, heared languages on Earth.

Money matters | Lack of work, makes me cry... | Solo AI Startups in China

ATIL KAYHAN — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 07:45:00 +0000

Forum: Money matters
Topic: Lack of work, makes me cry...
Poster: ATIL KAYHAN
Post title: Solo AI Startups in China

[url removed]

[Edited at 2026-09-20 07:49 GMT]

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | Languages simply speak to us in different ways

expressisverbis — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 20:21:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: expressisverbis
Post title: Languages simply speak to us in different ways

I studied Latin and a bit of Greek, and I absolutely loved it. It is sometimes said that Latin is the maths of languages because it is so structured and logical.
On the other hand, I have always been fascinated by Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic.
That doesn’t make them “the loveliest languages”, of course. It simply means that, to my ear, they have something special.
Perhaps that is the point: we don’t necessarily have to agree on which language is the loveliest. We can simply have languages whose sounds we are drawn to for reasons that may be deeply personal.
Lastly, I also love the sound of Portuguese as spoken in African Portuguese-speaking countries. It has a rhythm and musicality that I find particularly beautiful.
Some languages simply speak to us in different ways. 🙂

Wordfast support | WFP 11 released | Reinstall Rosetta to use WFP with Golden Gate

JohnWhi — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 20:09:00 +0000

Forum: Wordfast support
Topic: WFP 11 released
Poster: JohnWhi
Post title: Reinstall Rosetta to use WFP with Golden Gate

Just an observation on macOS 27.0 Golden Gate: the update removes Rosetta and, when launching Wordfast Pro, one is given the option of reinstalling Rosetta. Apart from Wordfast, I found this useful as it also revived a printer driver that had stopped working.

Chinese | 茶馆：所有"无关紧要的"话题 | China, Australia youth rowers, dragon boat racers build friendship

ysun — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 19:23:00 +0000

Forum: Chinese
Topic: 茶馆：所有"无关紧要的"话题
Poster: ysun
Post title: China, Australia youth rowers, dragon boat racers build friendship

[b]China Daily:
China, Australia youth rowers, dragon boat racers build friendship[/b]
By Shi Ruipeng and Zou Shuo | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2026-09-17
[url removed]

Money matters | Lack of work, makes me cry... | Trump Announces an ‘AI Force’ After Industry Sounded Alarm

ATIL KAYHAN — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 18:54:00 +0000

Forum: Money matters
Topic: Lack of work, makes me cry...
Poster: ATIL KAYHAN
Post title: Trump Announces an ‘AI Force’ After Industry Sounded Alarm

US President Donald Trump launched an AI Force today, and stated that he will not stifle the growth of the AI industry.

[url removed]

Chinese | 茶馆：所有"无关紧要的"话题 | Xinhua: Ancient Chinese dragon boat racing thrives in inland Xinjiang

ysun — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 17:50:00 +0000

Forum: Chinese
Topic: 茶馆：所有"无关紧要的"话题
Poster: ysun
Post title: Xinhua: Ancient Chinese dragon boat racing thrives in inland Xinjiang

[b]Xinhua: Feature: Ancient Chinese dragon boat racing thrives in inland Xinjiang[/b]
Editor: huaxia
[b]2026-09-03[/b]
[url removed]

[b]新华社：追光丨下水、上冰、跑旱地，龙舟在新疆“卷”起来了[/b]
[b]2026-09-09[/b]
[url removed]

两岸猿声啼不住，“Dragon boat”已过万重山！

[b]Dragon Boat festival[/b]
[url removed]

[b]汉典：[/b]啼
[quote]啼
tí ㄊㄧˊ
1 哭，出声地哭。例如～哭。～泣。悲～。～笑皆非。
2 鸟兽叫。[/quote]
节哀顺变！

[img] [url removed] [/img]

[img] [url removed] [/img]

Money matters | Lack of work... Now I want to offer Pro-Bono for my specialties...

José J. Martínez — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 16:12:00 +0000

Forum: Money matters
Topic: Lack of work... Now I want to offer Pro-Bono for my specialties...
Poster: José J. Martínez

Localization | German: Use of Sie/du for localizing a learning platform | Gendern

Joakim Braun — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:29:00 +0000

Forum: Localization
Topic: German: Use of Sie/du for localizing a learning platform
Poster: Joakim Braun
Post title: Gendern

[quote]Zea_Mays wrote:

Edit: Not to mention the aspect of gender neutrality, which is often a key requirement.

[/quote]

"Gendern" is a hugely important issue, whatever the view on this. Make sure to get the customer's instructions on it (and try to get paid by target word...)

Localization | German: Use of Sie/du for localizing a learning platform | Du

Joakim Braun — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:27:00 +0000

Forum: Localization
Topic: German: Use of Sie/du for localizing a learning platform
Poster: Joakim Braun
Post title: Du

Given your description, I think "du" is unavoidable. I can't imagine "lots of jokes and metaphors" with "Sie".

Personally, I take offense at being "duzed" in any business context, it's jarring, intrusive and ingratiating.
Never was a thing before 2010 or so. But language evolves...

(There seems to be less "duzen" in news media over the last few years, perhaps there's hope!)

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | Inflection rules

Joakim Braun — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:18:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: Joakim Braun
Post title: Inflection rules

Among languages I know something about, the flexibility of Russian and Latin is wonderful to someone stuck with a non-inflected native language.

Translator resources | CRM for freelance translators | Thanks for your feedback

Eduardo Furrazola Valladares — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 14:48:00 +0000

Forum: Translator resources
Topic: CRM for freelance translators
Poster: Eduardo Furrazola Valladares
Post title: Thanks for your feedback

[quote]Samuel Murray wrote:

Nice, thanks. Odd place to have the bug report email address: at the bottom of the user's profile. [/quote]

Hey! Thanks for your feedback, you can also contact support for bugs within the Help button menu.

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | Freeench!

Zea_Mays — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 12:17:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: Zea_Mays
Post title: Freeench!

Period.
(What an unscientific experiment - you'd only be able to _listen_ to languages, and only to those you _don't_ understand.)

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language? | Well..

Gregor Trebec — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 12:15:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: Gregor Trebec
Post title: Well..

The most loveliest language is Slovenian.

Linguistics | What is the world’s loveliest language?

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 11:06:00 +0000

Forum: Linguistics
Topic: What is the world’s loveliest language?
Poster: Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida

A very interesting article published in this week's 'The Economist'

What is the world’s loveliest language?

LINGUISTS TEND to say that all languages are valuable, expressive and complex. They usually attribute negative attitudes to prejudice and politics. That is probably why no one has carefully studied the touchy question of which ones are seen as beautiful or ugly.

That is until three scholars—Andrey Anikin, Nikolay Aseyev and Niklas Erben Johansson—published their study of 228 languages last year*. They hit upon the idea of using an online film about the life of Jesus, which its promoters have recorded in hundreds of languages. Crucially, most recordings had at least five different speakers, as the film has both exposition and dialogue. The team recruited 820 people from three different language groups—Chinese, English and Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew and Maltese speakers) — to listen to clips and rate the languages’ attractiveness.

What they found was that nearly all the 228 languages were rated strikingly similarly—when certain factors were controlled for (of which more below). On a scale of 1 to 100, all fell between 37 and 43, and most in a bulge between 39 and 42. The highest-rated? Despite the supposed allure (at least among Anglophones) of French and Italian, it was Tok Pisin, an English creole spoken in Papua New Guinea. The lowest? Chechen. The three language groups broadly coincided in their preferences. But the differences between the best and worst-rated languages were so slight—and the variation among individual raters so great — that no one should be tempted to crown Tok Pisin the world’s prettiest language with any authority.

A few factors did make the raters say they quite liked the languages they heard. But those seem unrelated to intrinsic qualities. First, being familiar with a language—or even thinking they were familiar with it—made raters give a language a 12% prettiness boost on average. And there seemed to be some regional prejudices. If a rater said that a language was familiar, he or she was asked to say what region it came from. Chinese raters, for example, clearly preferred languages they thought to be from the Americas or Europe, and rated those they thought from sub-Saharan Africa lower. (When raters said they were unfamiliar with the languages, such preferences disappeared.)

The other extrinsic factors that influenced ratings were a strong preference for female voices and a weaker preference for deeper and breathier ones. But try as they might, the investigators could not find an inherent phonetic feature—such as the presence of nasal vowels (as in French bon vin blanc) or fricative consonants (like the sh and zh sounds common in Polish) — that was consistently rated as beautiful. Only a slight dislike for tonal languages was statistically significant. Tonal languages are those that use pitch to distinguish otherwise homophonous words. Even Chinese subjects slightly disliked such languages, though Chinese itself is tonal.

Dr Johansson highlights some unanswered questions. His team had no information about which sounds tend to appear together (English strings along consonants — as in “strings” — in a way that many other languages do not.) Such a feature was beyond their ability to measure. So was prosody — roughly, the rhythm of a language. And with just five speakers per language, the presence of a couple of attractive or unattractive individual speakers could easily move a language’s rating this way or that.

Finally, the audio materials were scripted. This was a good thing in one way, because the raters heard the same part of the film (with the same meanings) in each language. But spontaneous, natural speech could make quite a different impression. Perhaps people like and dislike not the sound inventory of a language, but the way its speakers tend to speak it. If that is so, the attractiveness of a language might be better attributed to its speakers’ culture — not to the language itself.

Negative results in experiments usually do not make waves, but this one is both interesting — since it goes so strongly against people’s instincts—and cheering. The world is divided enough. As the researchers conclude, “We have emphasised the fundamental phonetic and aesthetic unity of world languages.

*“Do some languages sound more beautiful than others?” Andrey Anikin, Nikolay Aseyev, Niklas Erben Johansson, PNAS, [url removed] ”

Personally, I find my own language, Italian and French beautiful, as well as Khoisan languages for their uniqueness (click consonants). What about you?

Translator resources | CRM for freelance translators | Bug

Samuel Murray — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 09:08:00 +0000

Forum: Translator resources
Topic: CRM for freelance translators
Poster: Samuel Murray
Post title: Bug

Nice, thanks. Odd place to have the bug report email address: at the bottom of the user's profile.

Business issues | Something is rotten... | .

Yasutomo Kanazawa — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 07:53:00 +0000

Forum: Business issues
Topic: Something is rotten...
Poster: Yasutomo Kanazawa
Post title: .

Everybody is so desperate these days...

AI for translators and interpreters | Data fear and IP leakage doubt with frontier AI labs | AI pollutes itself?

Li-Hsiang Hsu — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 03:36:00 +0000

Forum: AI for translators and interpreters
Topic: Data fear and IP leakage doubt with frontier AI labs
Poster: Li-Hsiang Hsu
Post title: AI pollutes itself?

To render AI unusable, it is possible to flood the internet with AI hallucinations and "slop" in order to pollute the AI training data. This will either make internet data unusable or increase the data cleaning and data processing costs for training AI.

This is already happening with more than half of internet activities being conducted by AI agents.

AI for translators and interpreters | Data fear and IP leakage doubt with frontier AI labs | An AI hallucination almost triggered a war

Li-Hsiang Hsu — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 03:24:00 +0000

Forum: AI for translators and interpreters
Topic: Data fear and IP leakage doubt with frontier AI labs
Poster: Li-Hsiang Hsu
Post title: An AI hallucination almost triggered a war

An AI-assisted intel report sent the military scrambling to intercept a Chinese ship in the Middle East it believed was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.

It turned out to be a hallucination. And it "almost started a war."

[quote] CNN:

But the episode with the Chinese ship underscores a different, and more immediate risk: human beings making disastrous decisions based on inaccurate or misleading information generated by AI or other automated systems. Sources said that the military is rapidly turning to AI to help with targeting, an area which holds the obvious risk of fatal mistakes.

“AI in targeting is definitely something that is ramping up and there is no real guidance for how having a human in the loop will prevent civilian casualties or fratricide,” another source familiar with the military’s current policies said.

The kind of “hallucination” that the tool used by the analyst in this case conjured has not been an isolated incident across the intelligence community since these tools began proliferating across government, according to one of the sources.

For some older intelligence officials — even those who broadly support the use of AI inside the military — AI has put pressure on analysts to produce and disseminate intelligence faster, opening the door for mistakes. Young analysts in particular, several sources said, are natives on these tools and more likely to trust them uncritically.

“AI allows you to get to a bad idea faster,” one of the sources said. [/quote]

Source: CNN
[url removed]

AI for translators and interpreters | Data fear and IP leakage doubt with frontier AI labs | True

Li-Hsiang Hsu — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 02:59:00 +0000

Forum: AI for translators and interpreters
Topic: Data fear and IP leakage doubt with frontier AI labs
Poster: Li-Hsiang Hsu
Post title: True

[quote]kd42 wrote:

[quote]Li-Hsiang Hsu wrote:
Sam, Dario, Emmanuel Macron, Trump, USVL. Almost all of the world's most influential people are on X. Follow X if you don't want to miss out the most important global trends, especially in AI. [/quote]
Dear Li-Hsiang Hsu, even billions of flies may err. [/quote]
A lot of AI slop on X.