Books and reference material
This is a selection of books and web sites that we’ve found helpful, informative and/or inspirational.
Writing
The Elements of Style, Pearson Press, by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White (also available in Italian as Elementi di stile nella scrittura, published by Dino Audino), is an opinionated writing guide. Originally written in 1918, it’s short and enjoyable to read – whether or not you agree with everything it says. Based on American rather than British English. Oh well, nobody’s perfect…
Plain English Handbook: How to create clear SEC disclosure documents (pdf, 640 KB). “This Securities and Exchange Commission handbook shows how you can use well-established techniques for writing in plain English to create clearer and more informative disclosure documents”. But it’s useful for business-writing in general.
Luisa Carrada’s website, Il mestiere di scrivere, is a rich Italian-language resource. It includes a helpful glossary and links to sites in English, French, Spanish… Luisa’s blog provides a wealth of insights and commentary on business writing, web-writing, art, social media and more. A fantastic resource.
Il plain language: quando le istituzioni si fanno capire (pdf, 250 KB) is an Italian plain language guide written by Daniele Fortis. One of the useful quaderni available on Luisa Carrada’s site, it’s designed to help Italian public sector organisations communicate more clearly with citizens, in simpler and plainer Italian.
Translating
Thinking Italian Translation, published by Routledge, is a university course book that illustrates the many linguistic problems translators have to solve. It shows how the English translation can vary markedly from the Italian original yet retain the same meaning. I taught this course at Glasgow University and didn’t like the book’s layout (“wall-of-words” and poor usability). But it’s a useful insight to the translation process.
Chris Durban, a leading French-to-English translator, has co-written the following pamphlets, which contain useful tips for translation purchasers and providers:
- Translation: getting it right. A guide to buying translations (pdf, 172 KB), by Chris Durban and Antonio Aparicio
- Translation: buying a non-commodity. How translation standards can help buyers & sellers (pdf, 604 KB), by Durban and Melby.
Websites and usability
Jakob Nielson is a website design and usability expert. His site, useit.com, is plain but packed with useful information. Jakob is a member of the Nielsen Norman Group: “user experience pioneers...they advocated user-centred design and usability before it became popular to do so”. We’ve attended their Usability Weeks, which are enjoyable, interesting, and – most important – immensely useful for anyone writing or translating web content.
Don’t Make Me Think is an accessible and enjoyable book by usability expert Steve Krug. Essentially, if your web site is well-designed, visitors will be able to think about your product or services, and the message you want to convey to them. If it’s badly designed, they’ll think – but about the wrong things: “how do I get around this site?”, “how the hell do I get to the ‘buy now’ button?”. Which do you prefer?
Gerry McGovern’s email newsletter, New Thinking contains helpful tips and articles on web content management, information architecture and writing for the web.
Inspiration: Macs, typography, Shakespeare and more
Robin Williams, designer, teacher and author, is a DNA Language heroine. Her books helped us appreciate Macs to the full and opened our eyes to the wonderful world of typography. Robin writes marvellous books on design and writing, typography, Macs and Shakespeare. She is funny, wise and an inspiration. Her books, available from Peachpit Press, look beautiful too. If you like Shakespeare, check out (and why not subscribe to?) The Shakespeare Papers. Robin’s insights and beautifully designed booklets add a whole new layer of enjoyment to his works.
Reference and Style Guides
The BBC News Style Guide (pdf, 276 KB) “This is not a ‘do and don’t’ list but a guide that invites you to explore some of the complexities of modern English usage and to make your own decisions about what does and does not work. It should improve your scripts and general writing, not to mention making you feel better informed, challenged and amused”.
The Chicago Manual of Style (subscription based)
Comunicare con chiarezza, a project by Matteo Vitale. Matteo’s Anthology is an excellent resource for clear and concise writing, intended mainly for library staff but useful for all writers and readers of Italian.
European Union
How to write clearly is a guide for people who write, commission or translate official documents. But it’s useful for all writers. Downloadable pdf file (292 KB) produced by the EU Commission's translation directorate and available in all 23 official languages of the European Union.
The wonderful BBC provides an EU glossary to “untangle the jargon that sometimes makes the European Union hard to understand”.
For more detailed (much more detailed!) EU style guides see:
- Interinstitutional Style Guide
- Language and documentary material in English, and especially
- The English Style Guide: A handbook for authors and translators in the European Commission. Downloadable pdf file (472 KB)
- Language and documentary material in Italian
For EU languages other than Italian and English, see Translation and drafting aids in the European Union languages and InterActive Terminology for Europe
World, and international law
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Geographical Names and Information lists the FCO’s approved British English-language names and descriptive terms for countries and territories of the world and their citizens. (Downloadable pdf, 432 KB).
For the US (OK, CIA) slant on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 (at July 2011) world entities, see the World Factbook. Which also provides maps of the major world regions, Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map.
UN Treaty Reference Guide and Glossary
