I had a chance to see An Education tonight. I was looking forward to it since reading about the gestation of the film in Nick Hornby’s blog. His post in July of last year when he saw the almost-finished product for the first time really wet my appetite. Even though I didn’t grow up in England, a lot of the film came across as eerily familiar. The period was very well done, and it did not give in to the temptation of the many clichés that would have been possible.

Nov. 2: I just came across this article by Lynn Barber. Interesting background.

Barely unpacked from my Toyko trip, I am getting ready to travel to New York City on Monday at daybreak. The big event will be the 50th Annual Conference of the American Translators Association.

I attended my first ATA conference 1993 in Philadelphia. It was a long way to go from eastern Washington State, where I lived at that time. In those days, companies and agencies were still interviewing translators during the conference, and I made a lot of very useful contacts, some of which have lasted to this day. I was able to go to most but not all of the subsequent annual events, but was determined not to miss the big 50th in NYC.

My arrival on Monday night is a couple of days early, but I need the time to meet with friends, relatives, and customers. Another first for me this year is that I will co-present together with Eve Lindemuth Bodeux and Corinne McKay. You probably know them both from their podcast blog Speaking of Translation, and Corinne from her blog Thoughts on Translation (or from her book How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator).

The title of our presentation is the somewhat generic Web 2.0 for Translation Industry Professionals, but we are trying to cover how translators and interpreters can leverage blogging, podcasting, social networking, and other Web 2.0 media for marketing and professional development – how to use resources such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and others for marketing and promotion, virtual networking with colleagues, and sharing information. If you have time on the conference Friday from 2pm to 3:30pm, why don’t you come and listen. We hope it will be worthwhile.

The celebration took place last Sunday in Shibuya. We came by train from Meguro, and we did not meet with anyone in front of the famous dog but went straight to the restaurant that our friends had organized for the birthday party. It was a small place on the second floor of a building in a backstreet near PARCO Part 1, and we had it to ourselves for the evening.

It was a great, well-balanced evening. The food was excellent, the selection of music, photos and videos illustrating years past was thoughtful, and the gifts were unexpected and generous. The most remarkable thing, however, is to have good friends we can come back to after so many years and continue as if we had left just yesterday.

The Unicode Consortium hosted a haiku contest at the IUC33 conference. You can find the entries by I18nGuy here. My favorite one goes like this:

How much is enough?
More than one hundred thousand!
Twenty six seemed fine.
 

I am getting ready to fly to Tokyo on Tuesday. It will be a relatively short stay, but the hightlight, not doubt, is going to be my birthday celebration in this place in Shibuya. Our friends organized it (thank you all!), and I am looking forward to a great evening. If I find the time, I will report from there.

Language translation is far from being mastered by humans, computers, or any mix of the two.

Damian Joseph’s bleak summary in this article White House Challenges Translation Industry to Innovate. So we have to be resigned to the fact that no human, no machine, and no combination of the two can produce a competent translation.

Wait a minute. Does he really think that or is this sentence simply an error?