Marian Dougan
mariandougan.bsky.social
Marian Dougan
@mariandougan.bsky.social
Italian to English translator (finance & corporate, legal, foreign affairs), ITI Board member. Scottish, British and – always – European. Very proud mother!
Reposted by Marian Dougan
Rudolph gets all the love, so let’s talk about the names of Santa’s other reindeer.

dasher | noun | one that dashes
dancer | noun | one that dances
prancer | noun | one that walks or moves in a spirited manner

Ok, those three are easy to understand.

🧵⬇️
December 5, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Reposted by Marian Dougan
This is why we need to cap political donations - do sign the petition!

you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/ta...
December 5, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Greatly enjoyed today's @itiscotnet.bsky.social AGM and Christmas lunch. I love our get-togethers, if that's the right word for an AGM. Such lovely people!
December 6, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Yuletide mystery No. 2: I don't quite get the appeal of panettone after Christmas dinner either, even after 24 years living in Italy. It's certainly lighter than Christmas pudding, though. I prefer panettone warmed through in the oven, for breakfast.
December 14, 2024 at 1:02 PM
Yuletide mystery: how do people manage to eat Christmas pudding – especially with custard/brandy butter/cream – after a full turkey lunch/dinner? How do they find the room? Answers on a Christmas card, please.
December 14, 2024 at 12:17 PM
Reposted by Marian Dougan
The EU is recruiting permanent staff translators into English and 7 other languages. 2 EU source langs & EU citizenship required. Apply here by 14 Jan 2025: eu-careers.europa.eu/en/translato.... The EU Commission's Dublin office is holding an open online info session on Tue 17 Dec: europa.eu/!9nGFdG
Competition to recruit English translators in the EU institutions – information session
Join us online on Tuesday 17 December at 6:15pm Irish time (7:15pm CET) for an information session about a competition to recruit English language translators to work in the EU institutions. Translato...
europa.eu
December 11, 2024 at 4:47 PM
I do love @merriam-webster.com They so clearly enjoy language.
December 14, 2024 at 12:03 PM
So true. And these overviews are SO annoying!!!
It cannot be said enough that you shouldn't trust AI-generated search results.

AI Overviews on Google are particularly egregious because they're at the very top of the results and presented to everyone by default — people who didn't ask for them and likely don't understand the problems.
I asked Google “what is the opening line of Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon?” I know it roughly but I wanted the exact wording.

Google now inflicts AI responses on all searches. I was startled by just how incorrect the AI response was. Like, my god. Is this what people are using????
December 14, 2024 at 12:00 PM
I've become a bit obsessed about wombats. Here are 10 interesting wombat facts (well, I find them interesting anyway). A group of them is called "a wisdom of wombats". Isn't that great? www.environment.sa.gov.au/goodliving/p...
10 things you might not know about wombats
Get to know South Australia’s most commonly-sighted wombat species – which can run almost as fast as Usain Bolt.
www.environment.sa.gov.au
December 13, 2024 at 3:23 PM
One thing I like about translating is that you're constantly learning new things. Well today my learning came from wine-drinking. Little Giant wine, to be precise. All you ever wanted to know about wombats ("vombati" in Italian) but were afraid to ask www.fourthwavewine.com.au/pslink.cfm?r...
Welcome to Little Giant
It might be a little wine, but it’s got giant flavour. Charge your wine glass in support of the wombat today!
www.fourthwavewine.com.au
December 13, 2024 at 12:39 AM
So I've finally got round to creating a BlueSky account. The next step is to transfer my Twitter/X contacts, which is likely to take some time as I need to edit the list as I go. And the to-do list gets even longer…
December 13, 2024 at 12:23 AM