Mentioning the dearth of translators in Nunavut on December 18, I was not prepared for just how many people e-mailed and asked where Nunavut was. That the interpreter program at the Arctic College in Iqaluit needed strengthening should have given it away: Nunavut is way north. I found this map on their government website and it gives you a good idea about the location and expanse of Nunavut.

Another interesting fact: Inuktitut, one of the languages spoken in Nunavut, is written in a syllabic alphabet of about 60 characters. The website of the Office of the Language Commissioner of Nunavut has links for downloading Inuktitut syllabic fonts.

I wouldn’t know what to do without a rice cooker. For almost 14 years I had been using a Sanyo model which, at its time, was one of the most advanced electronic kitchen gadgets. But seals began to break, hinges started to wear, and the quality of the cooked rice began to suffer noticeably.

Once upon a time, rice was rice for me. I bought it in a box or in a plastic bag, covered it with water in a pot and let it cook until no liquid was left. But that was before Japan. One of the things I learned living in Nippon was to distinguish rice from rice, to be able to tell if it was cooked with too much water or with not enough.

Would I be able to replace my old Sanyo rice cooker? The models I had seen in stores where pitifully inadequate, and I was all prepared to import one from Japan even though the difference in voltage would make it difficult to use the timer.

Then I found Pleasant Hill Grain in Aurora, Nebraska. They were selling Zōjirushi (象印) rice cookers on the Internet for what I thought quite reasonable prices. The folks at Pleasant Hill Grain were very helpful, even returned calls on a Sunday, and as a result I am now cooking my rice in a brand new rice cooker with fuzzy logic – “Neuro Fuzzy,” in best Japanese.

The menu has, if anything, too many options, the timer works perfectly, the rice comes out slightly sticky and just great.

Nunavut’s language commissioner, Eva Aariak, is urging the government to hire more translators. The government of Nunavut has just four Inuktitut translators, three to translate documents into Inuinnaqtun and one French translator.

“The demand is so high, that they’re really overworked,” Aariak says. “And sometimes because of that, the quality of the work, the quality of the translations are not quite up to par because they’re just so overwhelmed and they have to produce so much in a short time.”

To help develop a stronger translator workforce in Nunavut, Aariak believes the Government of Nunavut should make a stronger commitment to interpreter programs at the Arctic College in Iqaluit.

Chris Douglas, director of official languages with the department of Culture, Language Elders and Youth, the department responsible for translating all government documents, says the number of translators the department needs also depends on potential changes to Nunavut’s Official Languages Act.

A special committee has recommended the act be changed to make Inuktitut a more prominent part of government business.

Among the winners of the 2003 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, sponsored by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, was The Interpreter: A Novel, by Suki Kim (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 2003). This captivating and unsettling novel centers on a young Korean American interpreter for the New York City municipal court system. Readers learn much about the immigrant experience, and the role that the Immigration and Naturalization Service plays. Kim’s first novel provides mystery, intrigue, self-deprecating drama, dysfunctional family dynamics, cross-racial relations and more in her exploration of the intricacies of cultural and linguistic translation. As one reviewer noted, “Suki Kim fractures the image of the happy Asian immigrant and reassembles it shard by compelling shard.”

Interestingly, there are two other novels with the same title. One by Suzanne Glass, whose hero is a simultaneous interpreter (although, despite the book’s title, the reviews at amazon.com stubbornly refer to it as “translator,” at one time even as “simultaneous translator”). The other by William S. Hodges, and I have not been able to get my hands on it to find out what it is about.

The Japanese news agency Kyodo has finally answered the question where rich people are the most laid-back – and it isn’t Japan.

In fact, rich people in Japan are among the most stressed out in the world along with their counterparts in the United States and Australia, results of a survey showed Tuesday.

Wealthy Japanese polled by American Express and research firm RoperASW indicated they regularly feel more stress than their counterparts in Hong Kong and Brazil, which is home to the most laid-back well-heeled.

For some time I have been noticing that visitors find my weblog through curious search terms. I am not puzzled by the fact that their searches lead to Translate This! What I cannot imagine is that anyone would expect a Google or Yahoo search for “latin translation for Frankie,” “no trespassing spanish translation” or “translate sekte” actually to yield a useful result.

Every year at Thanksgiving we make the pilgrimage to Northern Virginia to spend the day with friends. Part of the ritual is a visit of one or more of the monuments and/or museums in Washington, DC.

Among the outdoor attractions, I like the U.S. National Arboretum the best – it comprises 446 acres of flowers, trees, and plants; the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum; the National Herb Garden; the National Capitol Columns, twenty-two sandstone Corinthian columns in the heart of the Arboretum; and the Asian Collection, a beautiful collection of a wide variety of plants with 9½ miles of trails that go all the way down to the Anacostia River. But the weather at the end of November is not always inviting enough for a visit there.

My favorite museum is without doubt the National Gallery of Art. This year, the Romare Bearden exhibition left me with a strong impression. His collages and projections depict rural North Carolina, northern cities and the Caribbean. Another interesting exhibition was Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier, which “brings together some 50 of the related works, revealing Picasso’s exploration of cubism and his radical reformulation of human physiognomy.”

The Arboretum and the National Gallery of Art – now that’s a way to spend my tax dollars to which I do not object at all. I only wish I could visit them more often.

Worried about getting fired for reading blogs when you really should be working? Worry no more.

Gary Turner has the solution for you: the Web Fire Escape.

Blog owners can place the Web Fire Escape button on their pages. When readers click on the escape button, they are instantly transported to an alternative work-safe website or to an authentic-looking dummy application window – an MS-Word document or fake MS-Excel spreadsheet.

Just in case I have added the Fire Escape button to my weblog.

I see far more of Kansas City International Airport (MCI) than I care to. It is 165 miles from my home, but flights are cheaper than out of St. Louis, and the terminal arrangement at MCI makes it a lot faster to go through security. Now there is a new factor in MCI’s favor: free wireless Internet access.

In Tuesday’s edition, the Columbia Daily Tribune reports that “Kansas City International Airport has joined a growing number of airports where visitors with laptop computers can surf the Internet at high speeds without being plugged in.”

“Starting today, Sprint Corp. is making the wireless access technology known as Wi-Fi available throughout the Kansas City airport. It is the first airport where Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint has deployed Wi-Fi, said Wes Dittmer, senior director of wireless LAN initiatives for the company.”

“Dittmer said that at Kansas City International Airport, where Sprint built and will manage the Wi-Fi zone, visitors with a wireless-enabled laptops can gain access to the airport Web site, www.flykci.com, for free. The Web site will have information about the airport, including details on flights.”

(Jerusalem Post Online Edition, November 27, 2003)

Living in a polyglot society is great fun for linguists, but can make life tough for translators. In this country, you just can’t fudge the translation.

When Gianfranco Fini, the Italian Deputy Prime Minister and head of the National Alliance, who once referred to Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini as a great statesman, addressed the Israel Council of Foreign Relations on Tuesday, he did it in Italian.

His words were translated into English.

There were great expectations about the speech, entitled “The European Union, the Jews and Israel.” It was expected that this would be the forum where Fini would come out with his strongest statement distancing himself from Mussolini and his own neo-Fascist past.

So when Fini, at the outset of his speech, got to what would clearly be the “good part,” all were very much tuned in.

Then the translator fumbled.

“Nazi Germany had the cooperation of some allies,” the translator quoted Fini as saying. “This is also valid regarding my own country, and I say it is particularly true if we are relating to laws introduced by the regime of my country – the racial laws – precisely in 1938.”

After the translator finished, a shout went up from a number in the crowd. “Infamous,” they cried. At first it wasn’t clear what the commotion was about. What was infamous? Was Fini’s condemnation not strong enough? Or was it something else? “Infamous,” it turned out, was the word qualifying racial laws that the translator inadvertently left out.

The translator quickly caught his balance. “Mr. Fini said that the interpreter took it for granted that racial laws are infamous,” he quipped. “Which happens to be the truth.”