Paul Hunter (“I will introduce myself as Mr. Paul Hunter…”), or whatever his name is, wants me to hold briefly 15 million dollars for him in my account. The usual, except that the request is in almost perfect English, the money is said to come from an alleged victim of last year’s London bombings, and Mr. Hunter shows unexpected sensitivities. The first sentences of his message reads:

Please accept my sincere apologizes if my email does not meet your business or personal ethics.

Oh my!

Logical or inevitable? Let the people do the profiling. “Everyone agreed the men looked dodgy.” The Daily Mail reports.

This one’s coming out of Britain. Not only do I have to take off my shoes, leave behind my bottled water and chapstick, now they want to know my religious affiliation as well? The Times wrote on August 15:

The passenger-profiling technique involves selecting people who are behaving suspiciously, have an unusual travel pattern or, most controversially, have a certain ethnic or religious background.

Seriously, this must be the wet dream of every upright security screener: sorting the herd by ethnicity and religion, not just this dull random nonsense. Why not throw in the credit score as well, to make it more interesting?

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Ha!

Somebody at ASET International had read the book and sent the “new supplier package” last Friday at 5:32 pm Central time – the time suggested to give your employees bad news or to fire them. The “package” was, in the words of one of the targeted suppliers, “over 6,000 words of dense legalese, much of it ranging from the ridiculous through the incomprehensible to the deeply objectionable.” I have to admit that for over a decade, ASET has been one of my favorite translation agencies and I felt a deep sense of disappointment. To quote Gaius Julius Caesar, Kevin: Καὶ σὺ τέκνον?

more…

It’s fun from time to time to look at the search keywords that bring visitors to this URL. There are the obvious. “Translate this” ranks very high, although I wonder what exactly those visitors hope to have translated. “Ennio Morricone” has taken up a top stop in recent months. Perhaps there were some events in the real world that have prompted this spike of interest. But then there are the others. “Show me Missouri nude” is just pathetic. Come on, Missouri nude? And what on earth was this visitor from Moldova after searching for “parsing genitalia”? The mind boggles.