One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.Thus spake Voltaire.One great use of quotations in translation is to hide the original. That is what I say. My web search skills must still be in need of improvement. I have not found the original French yet. Any light anyone can shed on the matter... Continue Reading →
Books, Art, Cakes and Kindles
I am a book-lover. What other reason would there be for ogling the Kindle advertisement?As a child I used to spend a good part of my Saturday mornings browsing in the second-hand book exchange above the butchery my mother visited every week. It was, I believe, run by a woman by the name of Marion Arnold,... Continue Reading →
Hypertext me, why don’t you?
This was not my idea. I stumbled upon something someone else found and posted in my favourite translators' forum that got me going.Today marks 20 years of the official launch into the public domain of the World Wide Web. We have the Englishman Tim Berners-Lee, primarily to thank for this. He was the one who wrote... Continue Reading →
Click
The click I am referring to is not the sound this rather poor attempt English makes at onomatopoeia. It is the sound made when the isiXhosa word qongqothwane is correctly pronounced. Listen carefully as to how that oh-so-grand lady Miriam Makeba does it in a number made famous as The Click Song.It is also the sound... Continue Reading →
That elusive pair of jeans 