31.08.18 Kenya is one of the countries that belong to sugar daddy cultures:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/sex_and_the_sugar_daddy

sugar daddy ['ʃugəˌdædɪ] - богатый покровитель (содержащий любовницу, обычно намного моложе себя)

sugar daddy - informal a rich older man who lavishes gifts on a young woman in return for her company or sexual favors

The English metaphor “sugar daddy” implies negative evaluative connotations and has a dynamic equivalent in Russian “папик».

27.08.18 Latin can hardly be called a "dead language" because even today it finds its way into many spheres and registers of the most powerful vehicular language - English. The motto of the US Navy Academy that John McCain graduated many years ago is : «non sibi, sed patriae» («Не для себя, а для страны»). One may like or hate the uncompromising stance of McCain towards Russia, but one can't help admiring courage and dignity of the Senator from Arisona who loved his country so passionately and faced death so stoically. John McCain died on the 25th of August. His life is said to be a brilliant implementation of the motto of his alma mater.

23.08.18 The strange keepers of the Czech languaage and dignity with whichge...

When the Protestant court left Prague in the early 1600s, the city fell into decline for almost two centuries. The new ruler, Ferdinand II, did not tolerate non-Catholics, viewing Protestants as a threat to his faith. Czech locals, mostly peasants and working class people, were forced to speak the German language of their invaders. Soon after, intellectuals, who had initially resisted the German language, followed suit. Even Czech actors began to perform in German as an official mandate. Czech became a mere dialect, and would have slipped into oblivion had it not been for some unassuming pieces of wood. Puppets were the only remaining entities that had the right to speak Czech in public places. While the rest of the country and its people adhered to the newly imposed German language, wandering actors and puppet-masters spoke through the puppets in their native Slavic tongue.

It might seem unlikely that a few hundred puppets and puppet-masters could safeguard a language, especially through a loophole, but the people’s last remaining legacy to their past was tied to the puppet’s strings.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180820-why-czechs-dont-speak-german

21.08.18 Behemoth, bully, loudmouth, thief: English is everywhere, and everywhere, English dominates. From inauspicious beginnings on the edge of a minor European archipelago, it has grown to vast size and astonishing influence. Almost 400m people speak it as their first language; a billion more know it as a secondary tongue. It is an official language in at least 59 countries, the unofficial lingua franca of dozens more. No language in history has been used by so many people or spanned a greater portion of the globe. It is aspirational: the golden ticket to the worlds of education and international commerce, a parent’s dream and a student’s misery, winnower of the haves from the have-nots. It is inescapable: the language of global business, the internet, science, diplomacy, stellar navigation, avian pathology. And everywhere it goes, it leaves behind a trail of dead: dialects crushed, languages forgotten, literatures mangled.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/27/english-language-global-dominance

17.08.18 Very often a translator is confronted with ambivalence triggered off by the lack of clarifying argument. Apparently, in the example below the author takes it for granted that the reader must understand how Roosevelt had things almost perfectly backwards.

It’s a strain of linguistic exclusionism heard in Theodore Roosevelt’s 1919 address to the American Defense Society, in which he proclaimed that “we have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boardinghouse”.

As it turned out, Roosevelt had things almost perfectly backwards.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/27/english-language-global-dominance

Признаки лингвистической исключительности можно было заметить в 1919 году в выступлении Теодора Рузвельта перед членами Американского оборонного общества (American Defense Society), в котором он заявил, что «у нас здесь места хватит только для одного языка, этот язык — английский, и мы намерены увидеть, как плавильный котел превращает наших людей в американцев, в представителей американской национальности, а не в жителей пансиона для полиглотов».

Как оказалось, Рузвельт, на самом деле, делал все наоборот.

https://inosmi.ru/longread/20180813/242966512.html

13.08.18 ‘Complex underwater battlespace’ is an understatement. In his VOA interview, Richardson noted that Americans sailors are increasingly dealing with advanced jamming equipment. “This is an emerging part of our business now,” he said. “Those disruptive technologies…are really going to be decisive in the future fight, and we’ve got to make sure that we’re investing in those as well.”

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/navy-gearing-fight-russia-north-atlantic-28442

‘Understatement’ is terminologically misleading: ‘Complex underwater battlespace’ in its semantic relationship to ‘electronic warefare’ must be treated as a  superordinate (a general word) to a hyponym (a specific word). Look up “In Other Words” by Mona Baker.

11.08.18 Sometimes very funny words make it to the mass media. Lulz is one of them:

lulz - the distortion of LOL (laugh out loud)

It's what you do things for.

Why post a giant image of 50 Hitlers?
I did it for the lulz

Seagal has held Russian citizenship since 2016, but is now elevated to a formal role by President Lulz.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2018/aug/09/steven-seagal-russia-us-ties-diplomatic-skills-putin

С 2016 года Сигал имеет российское гражданство, а теперь «Президент-приколист» повысил его и назначил на официальную должность.

https://inosmi.ru/social/20180810/242962101.html

7.08.18 “Synergy” is one of the terms used, or rather abused, for the purpose of setting up the framework for the academic discourse. In fact, it does the opposite: it kills it. An example of the innocent use of ‘synergy’ where the word is just a convenient metaphor:

To illuminate the potential of the synergy of operational combat and deception, one must outline how the operational level is of warfare different from the tactical and strategic levels. All three levels can be discussed based on the following constitutive “principles;” a) the contingent anticipation (i.e., what kind of activity is expected to occur); b) the plan of action and its goals; c) the allocation of resources; d) the orchestration of assets, and, ultimately; e) the social objective. Here, the meaning of social objective refers to the specific desired outcome of a project which requires the synergy among various social agents, and which underlines the complex nature of war.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-russias-world-war-ii-military-strategy-deception-alive-and-well-today-27662

3.08.18 Out of three evaluative epithets two ease the translator into the target language by their common roots with the English counterparts (the class of words routinely defined in linguistics as internationalisms):

the US president consorts with autocratic foreign leaders who exploit his narcissism and shallowness

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/01/emmanuel-macron-vladimir-putin-syria

американский президент общается с иностранными автократическими лидерами, которые пользуются его нарциссизмом и невежеством

Equivalence between shallowness and невежество seems to be less apparent.

1.08.18  US sides with Russia in WTO national security case against Ukraine

Both countries argue the WTO has no right to weigh in on the case Ukraine brought against the transit restrictions.

By DOUG PALMER 7/30/18, 11:59 AM CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/us-sides-with-russia-in-wto-national-security-case-against-ukraine/

ВТО не имеет права голоса в иске Украины против ограничений на транзит.

https://inosmi.ru/politic/20180731/242871969.html

The context leaves no doubt about the meaning of ‘weigh in’, but still the vast resources of possible synonyms will make the translator think twice about the final choice: ‘права голоса’.