Since it is an international day in my world (International Translation Day), I would like to thank everyone who has visited my blog in the four months since I migrated to WordPress. I love looking at the map on my Stats page, if only to know just how much of our planet has Internet connectivity. I... Continue Reading →
Aha! Nataly Kelly: 10 Ways Translation Shapes Your Life
Nataly Kelly: 10 Ways Translation Shapes Your Life. So many have shared this article one way or other today. I am simply joining the crowd by reblogging this excellent article. So much of the time, translators remain invisible. We are the unnamed writers of press articles, we are the ones who fixed the clause numbering... Continue Reading →
Saint Jerome, freelance translator
This post has been written to mark International Translation Day (30 September each year), also known as Saint Jerome's Day. It is endorsed by the Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs/International Federation of Translators to which all national translator, interpreter and terminologist associations and institutions are affiliated. Fittingly, for the purposes of what follows below, this year's theme is... Continue Reading →
e-meeting
No, the title is not an attempt to graphically represent a mispronunciation of the English word "emitting". The above expression was found in the slogan of one of the companies permitted to do e-marketing at the annual, week-long virtual conference for freelance translators hosted by an organisation of which I am a subscribed member. In... Continue Reading →
Paraphernalia and pumpkin seeds
There is one thing I vowed and declared I would never intentionally do: say something vacuous to a child. This is made easier by the fact that I never had any children of my own. My vow kicked into full gear when my sister produced the first of three - need I say it, wonderful -... Continue Reading →
Thanks, Oprah!
She's still looking good, folks! Yes, I am talking about Oprah Winfrey and her gratitude journal. Are you wondering what sudden rush of blood to the head brought this on? I can see at least one of my favourite cousins making a face already. Well , back in the day when media was not quite so... Continue Reading →
Equations of Everyday Life #2: Inane Celebrity Memes
Incredibly clever, and very funny I thought. You probably will too!
“You’re not famous until my mother has heard of you”–Jay Leno
(Jay Leno graduated from Emerson College the same year I did. Aren’t you unimpressed?)
Lindsay Lohan…Paris Hilton…Charlie Sheen…you just gotta follow these people to be “with it” in this day and age. What I can’t figure out is exactly what “it” is. The nonsense involving these silly (do I dare say ridiculous?) excuses for humanity, and the speed with which their inane meme virality propagates throughout the internet and general mediasphere is stultifying.
How do we quantify this vacuous tripe? Quite obviously with:
The Index of Inane Celebrity Meme Virality
Get out your calculators folks, though the math on this one may require something more like a Cray supercomputer. This process requires not one step, but three.
- Rate the inanity
- Compute the Virality Index
- Classify the virality using the Virality Classification Scale
Rating Inanity
This part is…
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Imagine that you’re monolingual
My dislike of making phone calls collided with the necessity of phoning customer support to reconfigure my modem after our recent bout of liquid sun. Viewed objectively, I could help myself in two ways: I could order a new landline instrument so that I do not have to use my cheap cellphone on which I... Continue Reading →
The sunny Algarve
For the purposes of promoting tourism, we who live here always refer to this region as "the sunny Algarve". Here is a picture taken mid-morning today: As alluded to by the caption, we always have sun in the Algarve – every day of the year. It is just that some days, it is the "liquid"... Continue Reading →
The girl out of Africa
Forget the convent; the real saying is You can take the girl out of Africa, but you cannot take Africa out of the girl. Another quotation which only half-sprung to mind and strangely attributed in my internal workings to Heinrich Böll, but which it seems really belongs to Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian and philosopher (1813-1855),... Continue Reading →
That elusive pair of jeans 