I had an overnight stay in St. Louis last week and found on the corner of 11th and Lucas a restaurant called Mosaic. The food is excellent and served tapas style – lots of great taste and texture without filling up too much. The chef and owner Claus Schmitz sat down on our table for a glass of wine and a chat. He’s German with a long working history in Australia. Worth a visit.

Notes on the translation process and on technology, tools, reference materials and publications from Riccardo Schiaffino’s Foundations of Translation course at the University College of the University of Denver.

On October 5, M. had her interview with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for her naturalization. Part of the interview was to answer all questions she had filled out on the lengthy application form one more time, under oath, in front of an immigration officer. The Kansas City immigration office is one that has separate dates for the interview and the oath ceremony. We now received the notification that the oath ceremony will take place on November 17. On the back of the notification, a number of questions, already answered in the original application, are repeated, just in case the applicant has decided to join the Communist Party in the meantime. These questions need to be answered in writing and signed. The one that I found most interesting:

Have you practiced polygamy, received income from illegal gambling, been a prostitute, procured anyone for prostitution or been involved in any other unlawful commercialized vice, encouraged or helped any alien to enter the United States illegally, illicitly trafficked in drugs or marijuana, given any false testimony to obtain immigration benefits, or been a habitual drunkard?

How long does it take to become a habitual drunkard, I wonder? More or less than 6 weeks and 1 day? Better not sign that paper now, because who knows what can happen between today and November 17. Perhaps there will be a chance for polygamy.

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The Florida Times-Union has an article today on the lack of standards for court interpreters with the headline “Ordering in a restaurant doesn’t make you a translator.” While some states have certification procedures, others don’t. Texas, for example, has started a formalized interpreter program in 2001, but allows interpreters to be grandfathered into the program, without taking any formalized oral or written tests, on the strength of written references from court officials only. Among other problems, some privately hired interpreters give legal advice when they should not.

Heard on NPR this morning on my way to a 6:30 meeting: In the New Jersey congressional race, incumbent Republican Jim Saxton is challenged by Democrat Rich Sexton. The two candidates are exactly one vowel apart. Slogan: “Saxton gets an A.”

It has been a while now, but way back I had such a crush on Françoise Hardy. There probably was not an issue of Salut les copains that did not have pictures of her, beautifully photographed by Jean-Marie Périer (his photos so much represent the sixties, museums should exhibit his work). In those years, I had an after-school (and sometimes instead-of-school) job in the TV studios of Telefilm Saar pulling heavy cables out of the way of huge TV cameras so that they could be moved about freely. One of the shows produced there was “Portrait in Musik” with director Truck Branss (“Truck” was “Kurt” spelled backwards and a “c” thrown in for good measure). Sometime around 1965 or so I was told that the star of the next show would be Françoise Hardy. The prospect of working with her in the same studio made me drool!

Today, I wish the show were available on DVD. It would most likely look a bit dated, but back then it was the height of visual avant-garde (the same way Pong was the height of video game sophistication at one time). Dramatic black-and-white contrasts, all sorts of green-screen tricks, abstract and swirling backgrounds. A number of the songs were done in German which did not help either, but I am sure that nostalgia would gloss over that.

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Here is an interesting quote I found in Bloomberg.com:

The Army next month will award $5.52 billion in translation contracts worldwide, mostly in Iraq, up from $10 million in the last bidding in 1999.

So if you are a translator with the right language combinations, ready to travel and to play with the big boys, read this article. It will give you some leads.

With October comes the annual Testicle Festival to our neck of the woods. This festival has a smorgasbord of tasty testicles, including turkey, beef and hog. Not to worry, they also have fried chicken for the less adventuresome. It took place yesterday, and for $6 you got all the testicles you could eat, including blackberry cobbler, potato salad and much more. Last year (pictures here), festivalgoers also provided raccoon meat and roasted possum.

The venue was Main Street down at McBaine near the river. Bluegrass music, a cash bar and “a place to sleep it off” were provided.

For those preparing for their citizenship test, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have Civics Flash Cards on their website. Among the questions you’d suspect to be there (“How many stars has the flag?”), question #75 (or rather its answer) struck a cord: “Whose rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?” The answer is: “All people living the United States.” Are you listening senators Alexander through Warner? As Garrison Keillor put it:

The U.S. Senate … has decided an “enemy combatant” is any non-citizen who the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au-pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter.

See: A bill to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes.