Our General Store Has A Little Of Everything

HikerDude pointed out yesterday about how it is that translators always get the blame, even in situation such as a mixed up sign in a monolingual environment, which has absolutely, truly, wholly not one single thing to do with translation. That convenient catch phrase, "lost in translation", taints our profession with a continuous mental link with loss. This calls for a button, and some copywriting. Something like “gained in translation”, but with more spin and twist. Ideas, anyone? Mail ‘em direct or leave a comment. I’ll post a round-up once we’ve got a few.

Community interpreting with red suspenders: how come Del Rio Texas is relying on firefighters as interpreters? Are they trained for that? Do they know the rules? In a bilingual environment such as Texas, they’ve got to fund another way – or pay the penalty of unclear information.

Here’s a good one from Bangladesh, a caution to our colleagues: “Friends don’t let friends aid terrorists”, is that clear? Apparently, Shaikh Abdur Rahman didn’t have friends who knew that. After returning from travels around the Moslem world, “Rahman took up a job as a translator of Arabic travel documents for Bangladeshi workers going to the Middle East, but intelligence sources said the occupation was a cover”. But take that with a grain of salt, folks, because ANYONE who can speak the language of those other folks (whoever they may be; it used to be Germans and Japanese, but the fashion’s changed now) is a potential suspect. Even people arrested in Bangaldesh are considered innocent until proven guilty.

Moving right along, I foresee loads of work coming at us when people who built their sites with Apollo Hosting realize that automatic machine translation, without the blessing of a human who actually speaks the language, may end up with them trying to say “out of sight, out of mind” and ending up with “invisible idiot”. There’s a marketing niche there, somewhere – offering a bundled website translation to hosting companies. It’s not something I’d want to do, but hey, go for it. Just tell ‘em you heard it from Shunra.

Following up on yesterday’s healthcare message, I thought it was important to not that no, it is not surgery required because of violence I inflicted on pen-stealers. Thanks for asking and I’m glad I could make this public clarification. I caught the infamous team at it again in the evening, though. I think I’ll go down to Swain’s General Store and pick up a box or two of new ones. Wouldn’t it just be easier to write it on the shopping list, guyz?

Finally, a pet software peeve – am I the only translator who gets the violent shakes when waiting for Adobe Acrobat Reader to get all its ducks in a row and open already?

I’ll be back tomorrow with a brand new round-up and I won’t even mention politics a teeny little bit. Or at least, I’ll try. Till then!