Sometimes it seems that I am chronicling the dismantling of all those things that make up my memories. When I first visited the United States, back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I flew on Loftleiðir, which then was wildly popular among young people and very, very cheap. I had a connecting flight in the U.S. from New York to Minneapolis on an airline with the name Northwest Orient and it sounded like poetry to me – even though I had no idea of the meaning of Orient in the airline’s name. Much later, when I lived in Tokyo, I understood. By that time, however, the airline was simply called Northwest, although the stylized taijitu in the company logo was still a reminder of the Asia connection. That disappeared sometime in the 80s, and still later the name changed to NWA.

We used Northwest and then Northwest together with KLM a lot during our years in Japan. They offered flights to pretty much everywhere, and in the early days of frequent flier programs, their WorldPerks program was right up there with the best. They covered Asia pretty well, and the one year that I had to fly frequently between Tokyo and Pullman, WA – about as far out of the way as it gets – I could easily connect in Seattle with one of their partner airlines. I have also fond memories of spending time at the pool in the Northwest apartment complex in Daikanyama. I’m sure the apartments are long gone, and I can only imagine what kind of shopping there is now.

So it was sad in a way to see the name disappear. Their website is now closed down. There may still be a few planes around that have not been painted with the Delta colors, but that’s just a matter of time. Good bye.

Just think about the problems you could have with English.

via …is a blog

One thing that really, really annoys me is when I start a DVD to watch a movie or a TV show and it is set up so that I have to endure trailers and announcements of other programs without being able to switch directly to the main menu. (I’m looking at you right now, BBC.) I haven’t spent good money to purchase DVDs of TV shows only to be held hostage and force-fed trailers and advertisements for other shows without the option of clicking away. This is an insult to paying customers! Next time, somebody show me how to use BitTorrent, please.

The gods of freelance translation are a vindictive bunch. When they catch you slacking off, it will come back to bite you. Unfortunately, my brief absence from the keyboard and from translation work at the end of the year did not go unnoticed and I had to pay for it when I came home:

• My TV didn’t work anymore. It could not detect any signal. In fact, my DVR had simply stopped recording the week before.
• The car would not start. As it turned out, during my absence the fuel pump had decided to pack it in.
• When I first started my computer, I caught a virus that McAfee totally did not notice. It screwed up my browser and my e-mail and played other nasty tricks. As could be expected, it took hours to research remedies and to fix the problem.
• The SnipURL that points to the resource page for my presentation from last October’s ATA conference had been disabled “due to spam.” So all the links I had disseminated electronically and in print did not work anymore.

Not what I expected to find upon my return.

But some of the problems could be fixed. Dish Network sent a technician within hours. He found a broken connector between dish and cable. Malwarebytes was able to identify 17 infected objects and after removal of those objects my computer is running ok again. I e-mailed the SnipURL editor asking that the link be reinstated; how could a link to a page with presentation resources be spam? It took them only two hours to fix the link. That leaves the car. I hope that it can be fixed by Monday or Tuesday.

I guess I’ll have to learn how to stay off the radar of the freelance translation gods.

It is very pleasant here in Burleigh Heads on the Queensland coast. The weather is balmy, the view of the ocean and the sandy beach spectacular. I do not even have to remind myself that this is not work – the very limited availability of WiFi access does it for me. Let me correct: There are hotspots around, not that many, but the payment schemes (typically something like $2 to $5 for 10 minutes) and caps on transmitted data make the complaints ATA members had about the $16 a day charges at the New York conference hotel pale by comparison. And while coming to Australia with U.S. dollars had me end up on the right side of the exchange rate once upon a time and I would have shrugged off such charges, this is no longer the case. So this will probably remain the only blog post from down under. Have a very happy New Year!

During our time in Japan, we went to Australia to visit relatives once a year around Christmas. Now that we live in the States, it is only about every four years that we manage to go. We usually stay in Burleigh Heads on the Queensland coast and for the past couple of times in the same apartment building. When I checked their website yesterday, I found this mind-boggling Christmas special. Time to go again, I guess.

Click to see the whole page

I just read “Myths about crowdsourced translation” by Nataly Kelly in the digital edition of MultiLingual, and I just have to respond to “Myth #1”:

Please stop spreading the untruth that post-editing machine translation is this great opportunity for translators. Those who say this have clearly no idea what translation is about. I am having a hard time editing human-translated text. Post-editing machine translation is for a translator what it is for a tennis pro having to play with a rabbit that is blindfolded and using a ping-pong paddle. Please read Peter Durfee’s blog post on this matter. He said it so much more eloquently.

Dem ehrenamtlichen Blogger fällt einfach nichts mehr ein, aber das ist ihm auch egal, weil ja eh alles egal ist. Seit es Blogs gibt, hören die meisten nach einem halben Jahr wieder auf. Irgendwann sind alle Anekdötchen verballert, alle Meinungen gemeint und alle Lieblingsbands vorgestellt worden, dann kommen die Mühen der Ebene und dann ist es plötzlich fad. Auch nichts Neues.

Aus dem Blogblick der Netzeitung.de, die zum Jahresende auf eine automatische, mitarbeiterlose Produktion (ohne Blogblick) umgestellt wird.

Another one bites the dust.

I just spent two days in Saarbrücken to celebrate my aunt’s 80th birthday. She came from Bavaria to live with us in June of 1959, shortly before our famous return “heim ins Reich.” That is why she combined her 80th birthday with a 50 years Saarland celebration. I have tried to recount some of my memories of those days in an earlier post and now found a more eloquent and very readable article in Zeit Online, which I can recommend if you are interested in the subject.

Last week Tuesday, on the evening before the ATA conference started, we all sat at the hotel bar when Robin B. showed up with this hilarious #ATA50 shirt. (Note: This is not an official ATA t-shirt.) Since I took the picture freehand with my Blackberry, it is not entirely focused, but it is still legible. Now that is certainly one way of improving translation quality.

Which reminded me that I had archived a link to ProText: “Gib mir ein T, ein E, ein X, ein T, ein T-Shirt!”

They have some funny, text-related humor on their shirts.

Prices are in Euro, unfortunately, and all of us who earn our money in U.S. dollars know what that means: We cannot afford them and have to wait for a more favorable exchange rate down the line. Or for clients in the Euro zone who pay us in their currency.