Category: Uncategorized

In addition to translating certified documents, art essays, and ad copy, I’ve been rehearsing and performing in a local production of The Music Man. Pick a little, talk a little, cheep cheep cheep!

Happy 223rd birthday to Franz Schubert!

We should all kick off the new decade by taking this oath provided by Intellectual Explorers. Here I go: I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I will be truthful in content creation. I will not willingly distort or misrepresent reality. I will create content and engage others… Continue reading Hippocratic Oath for the Culture War

Did you know the Internet was not actually created in order to drive people insane and make them hate each other? It’s true. Back in the nineties, most of us thought of the Internet as a bigger, better version of your local library. It was a research tool with the additional perk of email. Plus… Continue reading What the Internet is for

She’s not here anymore. I wrote a post on her a couple years ago after reading a dissertation about her translations of Thomas Mann. Even though it was basically just a hastily jotted note, it climbed nearly to the top of the Google results (second only to Wikipedia) and I decided it didn’t belong there… Continue reading Looking for Helen Lowe-Porter?

I was pleased to see that my local pharmacy offers interpreting services not only to speakers of run-of-the-mill Deutsch but also to speakers of “Deitsch,” i.e. Pennsylvania Dutch:

What does German sound like to your average speaker of English? Not great, apparently. In Don DeLillo’s 1984 novel White Noise, which I’m currently reading on the recommendation of a friend, the main character attends a German lesson and behold: “When [the teacher] switched from English to German, it was as through a cord had… Continue reading The sound of German

An excellent article by Miranda France: Here’s a translator’s tale: it’s early morning and I’m working on a scene from an Argentinian thriller. A woman has discovered her husband’s infidelity and leaves him a chilling message on the mirror written in rouge. In rouge. That doesn’t sound right. Although I’ve never tried it, I think… Continue reading The twists and turns of literary translation

Here’s a nice example of a common sentence structure in written German: Obwohl er eine andere Vorlage geplant hatte, erschien ihm die in ihrer Verdoppelung die Bildfläche vertikal teilende geometrische Form interessant genug, um sie weiterzuverfolgen. Literally: Although he an other template planned had, seemed to him the in its doubling the picture surface vertically… Continue reading Fun with syntax

Since writing my post on whether the venerable but awkward term “swath/swathe” is being replaced by “swatch,” I’ve been keeping an eye out for all these words. So far, I can report 6 sightings of “swath” in articles and blog comment sections and 1 sighting of “swathe” (in this rather amusing account of a non-incident… Continue reading Swatch watch