Danish English Translation Services

Do you know who helped F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe become famous?
Max Perkins, their genius editor.

There is a difference between expressing a thought and expressing it clearly. Many times, texts contain all the necessary information, but they are too long or difficult to read. As an author of the text (may it be a letter, scientific paper or a book) it’s your primary job to “put it on paper”. It’s your editor’s job to make it smooth.

This is especially important for texts written in a second language or translated. With the exception of translations provided by us, where we have the opportunity to cooperate during translation, practically all translated texts need editing, not just proofreading. Languages are very different in their structure and a good editing job makes all the difference in how people perceive you. Editors not only fix mistakes, but make texts sound natural to a target audience.

* An editor fixes typos, grammar, word order and sentence structure, as well as the overall writing style.
* On larger or ongoing projects, editor maintains an overall style, consistent terminology and information strucuture.

Pulling Together Your Work – Editorial Treatment of Delivered Materials
We can take a pile of your notes, documents, quotes or audio materials and turn them into a logical well structured document. Whether you need an instruction manual, term paper or a book, we can help you make sense of what materials you’ve written already and suggest which pieces are missing.

• The editor will review all delivered materials and suggest an outline (sections, chapters, lists) to help you prioritize the information.
• Editor then implements delivered material into the suggested structure, edits typos, grammar, formatting and overall style of the document.

There always has been a dilemma about the difference between proofreading and editing in the world of translation. To many of us, both terms mean the same, but there is actually quite a difference. While proofreading of a given text may take only half an hour, the editing of that very same text can take up to three hours – or even more. So how do these two processes differ?

To begin with, we need to define both terms:

Proofreading

This is a process whereby the text is being scanned for grammar, syntax and spelling errors. This process typically involves much the same correction as a secondary school teacher would perform on a written test. The meaning of words and terminology is irrelevant here, as the job focuses only on the correctness of the text. Therefore, the use of a dictionary is necessary only to check spelling and conjugation, not much else. Also, this work does not involve the use of a CAT tool.

Proofing is best paid by the hour, as not all words are worked on by the proofreader. However, in the case of a very poorly written text, it may come in handy to be paid by the word, especially if more than 50% of words need to be retyped.

Proofreading is something that is used less and less, as most software nowadays automatically corrects the errors that would be picked up by the proofreader. It’s almost like having a virtual proofreader built into the software. Typically, proofreading is charged at around 25% of the price that would be charged for the translation of the same text. So, if I was to charge USD 0.12 per word for translation, I would charge USD 0.03 for the proofreading of the same text.

Editing

This process concentrates less on the form and more on the terminology. Editing involves checking to make sure that correct terminology was used. This is achieved by researching each term that raises a doubt, or even terms that are unknown to the editor, just to make sure that the right terms were used. This typically involves research – whether online or in specialized dictionaries – accompanied by recommended corrections. Usually, when working in Word, the track changes feature is used, and sometimes only comments are added through the commenting tool of Word. In either case, the editor only recommends changes and does not implement them. This is because, when there are errors, it is usually up to the original translator to correct their own mistakes (many translators have a clause in their contract for this, as well as agencies). So, the recommendations of the editor are usually sent back to the translator first so that he/she can correct his/her mistakes, and only then is the text proofread, if it needs to be at all. CAT tools are frequently used for this work, as wrong terms are often used throughout the text and they also need to be replaced. However, search & replace tools will also do in the case of shorter or less complex texts.

Editing is either paid by the hour or by the word. I have done both and both methods work fine. However, keep in mind that, when you charge by the hour, hourly rates for proofreading and editing should not be inferior to the hourly rate you would charge for translation. If you charge USD 40 for translation, charge the same for proofreading and editing also, as you really DID work that many hours. There still will be a big difference in costs for the outsourcer or agency, as the translation of the text will take much more time than its proofreading or editing. The text that will take four hours to translate will only take about one hour to be proofread, so, while the translation would cost USD 160, the proofreading would only cost USD 40, and so forth. Keep this in mind when quoting hourly rates.

I would say that editing, if charged by the word, should be charged at around half the rate for translation. So, if I was to charge USD 0.12 per word for translation, I would charge USD 0.06 per word for editing. However, keep in mind that some texts are edited SPECIFICALLY because the outsourcer is unsure whether the translator did a good job, so it can happen to you as it happened to me that the translation is of such poor quality that it actually requires more work to edit it than it would have required to translate it. In a case like this, there are two roads to walk: either you notify the outsourcer that it will cost more to edit (you see how much it is worth to you), or you tell the outsourcer that it needs to be translated again, which you are offering to do at the rate you charge for translation – or refuse to do it altogether. Of course, these details have to be sorted out BEFORE the contract is signed. It is always a good idea to evaluate the work before signing a contract. I actually take fifteen minutes and translate/proofread/edit a couple of paragraphs before signing anything, to make sure that I will not be underpaid in the end for the work carried out.

My personal technique is to use track changes, then send that document to the outsourcer, but I also save the same document with a different name, accept all changes, and send that document as well. This way, they have one document with the unimplemented changes, and one with the changes implemented, ready to go to the client.

What’s up with all that?

The reason why it is important to distinguish between these two processes is that, more often than not, outsourcers call editing proofreading and vice versa. While most of them do this only because they don’t make a difference between the two, a few of them will actually “lure” you into editing a document – at proofreading rates. To me, this comes down to being paid for only half of my work. I always tell outsourcers, when they consider giving me a job, what exactly my work will involve. If they sign the contract with my definition of the job on it, I can’t go wrong.

I strongly recommend to get paid for both of these jobs at an hourly rate, as all jobs differ in difficulty. This way, no matter how tough a job is, you will always get what your work is worth.

On a closing note, even if it’s not quite the subject, PLEASE, do sign a contract for every job you do, no matter how small. It is the only way you can get paid and the only guarantee that no more than what was agreed in the contract will be expected of you – in other words, you will not need to put in any “volunteer” work.

Cheers!

This is an actual letter sent to the then DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) Minister, The Hon Alexander Downer and the then Immigration Minister, The Hon Amanda Vanstone. The Government tried desperately to censure the author, but got nowhere because every legal person who read it nearly wet themselves laughing!

Please excuse the language contained within, but I suspect the author was somewhat upset. I’ll let you decide!

Dear Mr. Minister,

I’m in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this.

How is it that K-Mart has my address and telephone number, and knows that I bought a television set and golf clubs from them back in 1997, and yet the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date.

For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand?

My birth date you have in my Medicare information, and it is on all the income tax forms I’ve filed for the past 40 years. It is also on my driver’s licence, on the last eight passports I’ve ever had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I’ve had to fill out before being allowed off the planes over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that I’ve filled out every 5 years since 1966.

Also… would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother’s name is Audrey, my father’s name is Jack, and I’d be absolutely fucking astounded if that ever changed between now and when I drop dead!!!…

SHIT!

I apologize, Mr. Minister. But I’m really pissed off this morning. Between you and me, I’ve had enough of all this bullshit!

You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my fucking address!! What the hell is going on with your mob? Have you got a gang of mindless Neanderthal arseholes working there!

And another thing, look at my damn picture.. Do I look like Bin Laden? I can’t even grow a beard for God’s sakes. I just want to go to New Zealand and see my new granddaughter. (Yes, my son interbred with a Kiwi girl). And would someone please tell me, why would you give a shit whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days? If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a sheep or a horse, believe you me, I’d sure as hell not want to tell anyone!

Well, I have to go now, ‘cause I have to go to the other end of the city, and get another fucking copy of my birth certificate, and to part with another $80 for the privilege of accessing MY OWN INFORMATION!

Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot, to assist in the issuance of a new passport on the same day?? Nooooo.. that’d be too fucking easy and makes far too much sense. You would much prefer to have us running all over the place like chickens with our fucking heads cut off, and then having to find some high-society wanker to confirm that it’s really me in the goddamn photo! You know the photo.. the one where we’re not allowed to smile?! ….you fucking morons

Signed – An Irate Australian Citizen.

P.S. Remember what I said above about the picture, and getting someone in high-society to confirm that it’s me? Well, my family has been in this country since before 1850! In 1856, one of my forefathers took up arms with Peter Lalor. (You do remember the Eureka Stockade!!)
I have also served in both the CMF and regular Army for something over 30 years (I went to Vietnam in 1967), and still have high security clearances. I’m also a personal friend of the president of the RSL.. and Lt General Peter Cosgrove sends me a Christmas card each year.

However, your rules require that I have to get someone ‘important’ to verify who I am; You know… someone like my doctor – WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN FUCKING PAKISTAN!!!…… a country where they either assassinate or hang their ex-Prime Ministers, and are suspended from the Commonwealth for not having the ‘right sort of government’.

You are all Fucking idiots!

Indledning

CV’et – et vigtigt element i jobsøgningen

Alle der søger et nyt job eller beskæftiger sig med at rådgive i jobsøgningsprocessen
ved, at et af de meget væsentlige elementer i en jobsøgningsproces er kandidatens CV. Formålet med et CV er som bekendt at give en overskuelig og relativ kort beskrivelse af personens personlige såvel som erhvervs- og uddannelsesmæssige baggrund – og gerne på en så indbydende måde, at modtageren får lyst til at møde personen. Et godt CV kan således være med til ”at lukke døre op” og i sidste ende at være medvirkende til, at man får det ønskede jobinterview.

Mange har en mening om, hvordan et CV skal se ud

Det ville derfor være ønskeligt, om man kunne opstille klare regler for, hvordan Det Perfekte CV burde se ud og hvad det burde indeholde af informationer. Alle, der selv har været i en jobsøgningsproces, kan sikkert nikke genkendende til, at venner og bekendte gerne vil komme med gode råd – enten baseret på deres egne erfaringer
eller baseret på hvad de har hørt fra andre.

Nu er der ingen grund til at opfinde den dybe tallerken endnu en gang. De fleste professionelle rådgivere kan som regel da også komme med nogle såkaldte"tommelfingreregler" for, hvordan CV’et skal udarbejdes samt hvad det skal indeholde.

CV’et skal tilpasses de nye organisationsformer

MEN som bekendt lever vi en tid, hvor tingene ændrer sig hurtigere end ellers, og det
er derfor kun naturligt, at der også på dette område er sket en udvikling. Også virksomhedernes organisationsformer har ændret sig. Antallet af flexjob samt antallet
af ”hjemmearbejdspladser” og andre former for ”fjernarbejdspladser er steget
voldsomt. Flere og flere job klassificeres som ”projektjob”.

Internationaliseringen har gjort sin indflydelse på danske CV’er

Vi må også erkende at internationaliseringen har gjort sit indtog – ikke mindst indflydelsen fra de anglo saksiske lande som England og USA. Her har man i flere år anvendt en langt mere ”sælgende” måde at søge job på. Derfor ser et amerikansk CV væsentligt anderledes ud end det ”traditionelle” danske CV.

Hvordan skal Det Perfekte CV se ud i dag?

Som en af Danmarks mest erfarne HR rådgivningsfirmaer har DEOS sat sig for at
undersøge, om det er muligt at opstille klare regler for, hvordan Det perfekte CV skal
se ud – både hvad angår udformning, indhold, opstilling og antal sider.

Og hvem ville være mere naturlig at spørge end de mange HR ansvarlige i dansk erhvervsliv. I perioden 1. – 15. maj udsendte vi et spørgeskema til ca. 300 HR ansvarlige og i alt 127 besvarede og returnerede spørgeskemaet – i alt ca. 42%.

Resultatet af DEOS’s undersøgelse

Beskrivelsen af de enkelte job i karrieren

Da undersøgelsen først og fremmest havde til formål at få belyst, om den rådgivning
vi hos DEOS giver i dag, er på linie med det, man forventer sig hos modtagerne af
CV’er, så havde vi formuleret spørgeskemaets sidste spørgsmål således:

Hos DEOS er vi tilhænger af, at beskrivelsen af de enkelte job opstilles på en struktureret og konsistens måde, som flg.:

Linie 1 – Tidsperioden – titel – firmanavn (fremhævet skrift).
Område 1 – Kort beskrivelse af firmaet (2 – 3 linier).
Område 2 – Kort beskrivelse af ansvarsområdet. Område 3 – Kort beskrivelse af opgaverne.
Område 4 – Kort beskrivelse af opnåede resultater.

77% mener, at denne opstilling og struktur er fin, og 23% siger, den er OK.

Det er selvfølgelig altid dejligt at blive bekræftet i, at det man rådgiver om også er det som modtagerne af et CV ønsker.

Men karriereforløbet er jo kun en del af CV’et, og derfor ville vi gerne vide lidt mere om, hvor det skal placeres i CV’et.

Hvor mange sider må et CV indeholde?

Begrundelsen for dette spørgsmål er den, at mange ”ikke HR personer” har nogle
forholdsvis faste holdninger til, at et CV KUN må være på én side. For at få et mere professionelt og nuanceret billede af denne problemstilling gav vi mulighed for at
give varierende svar i relation til 3 forskellige jobniveauer, nemlig funktionærer, ledere og direktører.
Svarene fordelte sig som følgende:

Svarene for henholdsvis funktionærer og ledere lå meget tæt på det endelige
gennemsnit. Derimod var der langt større spredning blandt svarene i relation til direktører. F.eks. mener ikke mindre end 27%, at et direktør CV gerne må fylde 4 – 5 sider.

Opbygningen af CV’et

80% mener, at man starter med de personlige data – 20% foretrækker, at de personlige data er bagerst.

Resume – eller ikke

Dette relative nye fænomen, som stammer fra USA, synes på vej ind – dog er der forskelle i de forskellige modtagergruppers holdninger.

53% ser gerne et resume og 47% foretrækker et CV uden. Der er en tendens til, at jo flere CV’er man modtager, desto mere foretrækker man et CV uden resume. Til
denne kategori hører f.eks. rekrutteringsfirmaerne.

Af de 53% der gerne ser et resume, foretrækker de 72%, at resumet placeres bagerst
i CV’et – og 28% det modsatte.

Kompetenceprofil – eller ikke

Også dette er et relativt nyt element i danske CV’er.

Ikke mindre end 73% giver udtryk for, at de gerne ser en kompetenceprofil i CV’et –
27% det modsatte.

Af de 73% der gerne ser en kompetenceprofil i CV’et, foretrækker de 63%, at det placeres forrest og 37% bagerst.

Karriereforløbet – kronologisk eller omvendt?

Et CV indeholder som bekendt et tidsmæssigt forløb af karrieren, idet man
organiserer de enkelte job i en logisk tidsmæssig rækkefølge. Her ville vi gerne vide, om man ønsker forløbet opstillet i en kronologisk rækkefølge – eller i omvendt kronologisk. orden.

Her var der ikke megen tvivl, idet 89% ønsker at forløbet opstilles i omvendt kronologisk orden.

Konklusion

Det overordnede resultat må siges at være meget klart, idet konklusionen af DEOS’s undersøgelse er den, at der stadigvæk ikke findes et såkaldt ”Perfekt CV”.
Meningerne var mange – MEN – undersøgelsen viser trods alt, at DER ER EN KLAR TENDENS til, hvad man forventer af et CV, samt hvordan man kunne ønske sig det bliver udformet, og hvad det bør indeholde.

Judge Goldstone has been suckered into letting war criminals use his name to pillory Israel

Harold Evans
The Guardian, Tuesday 20 October 2009

Aren’t the British sickened by the moral confusions of their government? First, we have the weasel words to justify the unjustifiable release of the Lockerbie bomber. Now we have the sickening spectacle of Britain failing to stand by Israel, the only democracy with an independent judiciary in the entire region.

It was to be expected that the usual suspects of the risible UN human rights council would be eager to condemn Israel for war crimes in defending itself against Hamas. If you treat people as the Chinese do the Tibetans or Uighurs (“Off with their heads!”); or as the Russians eliminate Chechen dissidents; or as the Nigerians tolerate extrajudicial killings, the evictions of 800,000, rape and cruel treatment of prisoners; or as the Egyptians get prisoners to talk (torture) and the Saudis suppress half their population … well, go through the practices of all 25 states voting to refer Israel to the security council for the Gaza war, and you have to acknowledge they know a lot about the abuse of humans. Anything to divert attention from their own atrocities.

Only six refused to join the farce – Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, Ukraine and the US. Britain didn’t just abstain. It shirked voting at all (along with those beacons of civilisation Angola, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, and surprisingly, France).

Of course, here the fig leaf for being scared of dictators, especially oil-rich abusers, is the report by the South African judge Richard Goldstone. Poor Judge Goldstone now regrets how his good name has been used to single out Israel. The Swiss paper Le Temps reports him complaining that “This draft [UN human rights council] resolution saddens me … there is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report. I hope the council can modify the text.” Fat hope.

The truth is he was suckered into lending his good name to a half-baked report – read its 575 pages and see. He said that, as a Jew himself, he was surprised to be invited. He shouldn’t have been, and should never have accepted leadership of a commission whose terms of reference were designed to excuse the aggressor, Hamas, and punish the defender, Israel. The council’s decision was to “dispatch an urgent, independent, international fact-finding mission … to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and [it] calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully co-operate with the mission”.

Israel is not an “occupying power” in Gaza in either fact or international law. Four years ago it voluntarily pulled out all its soldiers and uprooted all its settlers. Here was a wonderful chance for Gaza to be the building block of a Palestinian state, and for Hamas to do what the Israelis did – take a piece of land and build a model state. They didn’t. Instead of helping the desperate Palestinians, they conducted a religious war.

In signing on for the UN mission – with others who had already condemned Israel – it seems to have escaped the judge that Hamas is committed not just to fight Israeli soldiers; it is a terrorist organisation hellbent on the destruction of the state of Israel. The terms of reference he accepted validate the torment of Israeli civilians. Hamas launched 7,000 rockets – every one intended to kill as many people as possible – then contemptuously dismissed repeated warnings from Israel to stop or face the consequences.

The rockets were war crimes and ought to have been universally condemned as such. While new rockets hit Israel over many months there was no rush by the world’s moralisers – including Britain – to censure Hamas, no urgency as there was in “world opinion” when Israel finally responded. Then Israel was immediately accused of a “disproportionate” response without anyone thinking: “What is a ‘proportionate’ attack against an enemy dedicated to exterminating your people?” A dedication to exterminating all of his?

Israel risked its own forces by imposing unprecedented restraint. In testimony volunteered to the human rights council (and ignored), Colonel Richard Kemp, a British commander in Bosnia and Afghanistan, stated: “The Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.” The “collateral damage” was less than the Nato allies inflicted on the Bosnians in the conflict with Yugoslavia.

No doubt there were blunders. A defensive war is still a war with all its suffering and destruction. But Hamas compounded its original war crime with another. It held its own people hostage. It used them as human shields. It regarded every (accidental) death as another bullet in the propaganda war. The Goldstone report won the gold standard of moral equivalence between the killer and the victim. Now Britain wins the silver. Who’s cheering?

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes, but the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.

One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice, yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men, then shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet, and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those, yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren, but though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, but imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England ..

We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop?

I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT IF PEOPLE FROM POLAND ARE CALLED POLES THEN PEOPLE FROM HOLLAND SHOULD BE HOLES AND THE GERMANS BE GERMS.

19 February 2009, 22:04 CET, EUbusiness Ltd.

(BRUSSELS) – The 27-nation European Union, with its 23 official languages, is facing an imminent shortage of interpreters, with English-language linguists at a premium, officials warned Thursday.

While there is a need to find interpreters and translators from the newer EU nations of eastern Europe, it is the English ‘lingua franca’ which is causing the biggest headache to the European Union’s executive.

“The European Commission faces a shortage of translators for a number of language combinations,” the commission said in a statement.

“The situation is particularly worrying in the English language department because many officials who joined the commission in the seventies following the accession of the United Kingdom and Ireland are now approaching retirement age.”

Brian Fox, director of the EU’s interpreting department summed up the shortage, with interpreters present, to reporters in Brussels.

“Everybody says English is everywhere but we are having real problems finding English language professionals” to interpret during official speeches and to translate written items, he said.

“Everyone speaks English and the corollary is that the English don’t feel the need to speak anything else,” he complained.

EU Institutions will lose at least a third of their English language interpreters by 2015 due to retirement and about half in the next ten years.

The need for interpreters in the European Union is underlined by the figures.

Last year the service worked around 152,000 interpreter days — “that’s about 750 man years,” said Cox — with an average of 750-800 interpreters, some from a freelance roster, employed each day.

In order to tackle the problem, the European Commission’s directorate-general for translation announced the launch of a campaign to attract qualified professionals to its translation operation.

“With this in mind, the English language department has already established contact with a number of educational institutions, government departments and language organisations such as the National Centre for Languages (CILT),” the commission said in a statement.

The commission will also boost its presence at careers events and job fairs, in particular across Britain and Ireland.

June 9, 2009 — Updated 0008 GMT (0808 HKT)

(CNN) — English contains more words than any other language on the planet and will add its millionth word early Wednesday, according to the Global Language Monitor, a Web site that uses a math formula to estimate how often words are created.

The Global Language Monitor says the millionth word will be added to English on Wednesday.

The Global Language Monitor says the millionth word will be added to English on Wednesday.

The site estimates the millionth word will be added Wednesday at 5:22 a.m. Its live ticker counted 999,985 English words as of early Tuesday evening.

The “Million Word March,” however, has made the man who runs this word-counting project somewhat of a pariah in the linguistic community. Some linguists say it’s impossible to count the number of words in a language because languages are always changing, and because defining what counts as a word is a fruitless endeavor.

Paul J.J. Payack, president and chief word analyst for the Global Language Monitor, says, however, that the million-word estimation isn’t as important as the idea behind his project, which is to show that English has become a complex, global language.

“It’s a people’s language,” he said.

Other languages, like French, Payack said, put big walls around their vocabularies. English brings others in.

“English has the tradition of swallowing new words whole,” he said. “Other languages translate.”
Don’t Miss

* The Global Language Monitor

The Internet, global commerce and global travel have accelerated the trend by putting English in contact with many other linguistic groups. This has made English more rich and more complex — hence all of the new terms, he said.

Still, Payack says he doesn’t include all new words in his count. Words must make sense in at least 60 percent of the world to be official, he said. And they must make sense to different communities of people. A new technology term that’s only understood in Silicon Valley wouldn’t count as a mainstream word, he said.

His computer models check a total of 5,000 Web sites, dictionaries, scholarly publications and news articles to see how frequently words are used, he said. A word must make 25,000 appearances to be deemed legitimate. Learn about how other languages stack up »

Payack said news events have also fueled the rapid expansion of English, which he said has more words than any other language. Mandarin Chinese comes in second with about 450,000 words, he said.

English terms like “Obamamania,” “defriend,” “wardrobe malfunction,” “zombie banks,” “shovel ready” and “recessionista” all have grown out of recent news cycles about the presidential election, economic crash, online networking or a sports event, he said. Other languages might not have developed new terms to deal with such phenomena, he said.

Language experts who spoke with CNN said they disapprove of Payack’s count, but they agree that English generally has more words than most, if not all, languages.

“This is stuff that you just can’t count,” said Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. “No one can count it, and to pretend that you can is totally disingenuous. It simply can’t be done.”

The Oxford English Dictionary has about 600,000 entries, Sheidlower said. But that by no means includes all words, he said.

For example, Sheidlower said “great-great-great-great-great grandfather” could be considered a word, but wouldn’t be in the dictionary. There’s a similar problem with numbers, which may be counted up by their pieces — “twenty” and “three” — but not always as a group, as in “two-hundred twenty-three.”

Part of what makes determining the number of words in a language so difficult is that there are so many root words and their variants, said Sarah Thomason, president of the Linguistic Society of America and a linguistics professor at the University of Michigan.

In the language of people who are native to Alaska, she said, there are dozens of words for snow, but many of them are linked together and wouldn’t be counted individually. Does that mean, she asked, that “slush,” “powder” and other snow words in English should be counted as one entry?

Thomason called the million-word count a “sexy idea” that is “all hype and no substance.”

Linguists and lexicographers run into further complications when trying to count words that are spelled one way but can have several meanings, said Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Illinois, and an officer at the American Dialect Society.

“The word bear, b-e-a-r — is that two words or one, for example? You have a noun that’s a wild creature and then you have b-e-a-r, [which means] to bear left or to bear right, and there’s many other things,” he said. “So you really can’t be exact about a millionth word.”

Payack said he doesn’t consider his to be the definitive count, just an interesting estimation based on set criteria he has helped develop.
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“It’s always an estimation,” he said. “It’s like the height of Mount Everest is an estimation. The height of Mount Everest has changed five times in my lifetime because as we get better tools, the estimates get better.”

He said the count is meant to be a celebration of English as a global language. And, while he says other languages are being stamped out by English’s expansion, it’s a powerful thing that so many people today are able to communicate with such a vast list of words.

A Guide to Transitional Words and Expressions

When writing a paragraph or essay, just as proper grammar and spelling are important, paragraph transitions are also important.

Transitional words and phrases connect sentences and paragraphs to each other. Paragraph transitions suggest a particular relationship between one idea and the next. Within a paragraph, transitions provide coherence: a sense that the paragraph contains one main argument or idea. Between paragraphs, paragraph transitions help with the flow of writing from beginning to end, as well as the sense of the coherence of the whole essay. Transitional words and phrases often occur at the beginning of a sentence and, for more formal writing, transitional expressions are set off with a comma. Some transition words (for example, “too” or “as well”) more often occur at the end or even in the middle of a sentence, however.

To help you practice transitional words, here is a transition word list that shows the relationship the transitional words or phrases indicate. As a transition word exercise, revise a paragraph adding the appropriate transition word or phrase.

In summary, use a variety of good transition words within your paragraphs to create coherent paragraphs. Use good paragraph transition words in essays to help your ideas flow throughout the essay, as well. In these ways, transition words serve as a sort of writing glue. Yet, don’t use the same transition repeatedly, unless you are doing so for a specific effect.