Last.fm is hiring. Spanish speakers, for example, but they must reside in London. I like this one: It is a plus for PHP developers to know “Javascript, and when not to use it.” There must be something going on since they are trying to fill a number of positions. And they must have dealt with their share of candidates, since they are closing the job offers with the following disclaimer:

We reserve the right to be unimpressed if you can’t follow these simple instructions.

Says Judge Lee R. West:

…copyright law ultimately serves the purpose of enriching the general public through access to creative works, it is peculiarly important that the boundaries of copyright law be demarcated as clearly as possible.

What an unusual thought! In Capitol v. Foster, Judge Lee R. West has reaffirmed his decision that Ms. Foster is entitled to be reimbursed by the RIAA plaintiffs for her attorneys fees, rejecting the RIAA’s Motion for “Reconsideration.” Some quotes here.

I feel quite strongly about the recording industry throwing their weight around in this way, and I think that if I had to do it over again, I would go into intellecutal property law today.

On a different note (but not entirely different), the Copyright Royalty Board has increased Internet radio’s royalty burden between 300 and 1200 percent. Unlike commercial radio stations, Internet radio is a primary outlet for independent labels and artists. These new rates will go into effect May 15 (retroactive to January 1, 2006) and will cause, most likely, the demise of many Internet radio operations. If you like Internet radio, hurry and send a message to your representative. You can do it from here.

Helvetica, “the official typeface of the twentieth century,” is 50 years old. Celebrations include an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as well as its own documentary. Happy birthday, Helvetica!

After my first exhausting battles with the English language I had come to a point where I felt pretty confident conversationally (out of ignorance, I would say in hindsight). I therefore decided to tackle reading a real book. Why I thought The Sirens of Titan would be good introductory material, I do not remember. I discovered that reading literature in a foreign language was a skill quite different from being able to chat; and I discovered Kurt Vonnegut.

Here again a link to Kurt Vonnegut’s talk with Jon Stewart (around September 2005) about the 51st American state: the state of denial.

I am reviewing a large-ish translation and it is a minefield. There is hardly a paragraph where one does not step on at least one “Modus.” Here is the source of a typical “mode” sentence:

If your camera has a close-up focusing mode, use it and get as close as the camera manual suggests.

I will refrain from commenting on what is not my native language. So let’s look at the translation:

Wenn Ihre Kamera einen Fokussierungsmodus für Nahaufnahmen bietet, gehen Sie so nahe wie möglich an das Motiv heran.

Here are some other pairs:

Set the camera to the close-up mode.

Stellen Sie die Kamera auf Nahaufnahmemodus ein.

Special exposure modes, such as portrait, landscape, and close-up, that improve your pictures in the situation they’re named for.

Spezielle Belichtungsmodi, beispielsweise Portrait, Landschaft und Nahaufnahme, verbessern Bilder in den jeweils zugehörigen Kategorien.

Again, I can’t say much about the source (although I doubt that there is a real need there for “mode”). As far as German is concerned, “Modus,” or even more so, “Modi” will get high marks for awkwardness and is totally unnecessary. Leave it out (“Stellen Sie die Kamera auf Nahaufnahme”); use “Betrieb” or “Methode” (“Spezielle Belichtungsmethoden wie für Portrait-, Landschafts- und Nahaufnahmen…”) – which is, after all, what “mode” is supposed to convey; or find some other way to bring across the meaning (“Wenn Ihre Kamera eine Fokussiereinstellung für Nahaufnahme besitzt…”).

It is of course faster and easier to mimic the source, and the standard segmentation of CAT-tools makes looking beyond the end of a sentence less intuitive. But whatever happened to the ambition to produce well-translated text in native quality?