In the physical world, there isn’t enough shelf space “to carry everything for everyone.” As a result, the industrial business era has been mostly about a small number of mass-produced-and-sold products, the “head of the long tail” (red part of the graph).

The digital era turns the tables on traditional thinking about supply and demand. We are moving into the (yellow) long tail of the curve. That is the world of infinite niches.

(From An Interview With Chris Anderson)

Back in the old days people had to hunt for books at local bookstores or order them through the internet and wait till they were delivered to their door.

But now they can:

1. Click on a search engine on their Kindle, find the book they’re looking for, buy it with one click and read it immediately on their device. Wherever they are. At home. Abroad. With no hidden connection expenses nor subscription fees.
2. Buy books in English at a fraction of the price normally levied at local european bookstores. Most Kindle books cost less than 9.95 dollars. Can you imagine that? That’s about 7 euro.
3. Travel wherever with a small 8.5 ounce device that can carry up to 3.500 books.

Please feel free to make any comments, suggestions or point to possible inaccuracies.

I cannot post them directly due to copyright issues but if you’re interested in any one of them I’ll be more than pleased to send them to you by email.

Database of articles on interpreting and translation studies

He who sees everything as nothing but the Self, and the Self in everything he sees, such a seer withdraws from nothing. (Isha Upanishad, translation by Alistair Shearer)

Beautiful women, especially in the more remote towns of central India where you can often see them carrying the most heavy loads of wood on their heads with the elegance of top models on a catwalk.

In the larger cities people dying of hunger and diseases have such wonderful eyes full of hope and dignity that make me think how small we westeners are who live in such opulence and yet are so poor in spirit.

• Compression Strategies in Simultaneous Interpreting

• In Search of Examples of Foreignisation in the Work of Lawrence Venuti. A Case Study Based on his Translation of some Poems by Antonia Pozzi
• Translation and Retrospective Analysis of a brief excerpt from Thea Welsh’s “The Story of the Year of 1912 in the Village of Elza Darzins”
• Commentary on the translation of two papers: on international humanitarian law and on the reconciliation process in Afghanistan
• Censorship in the English translations of Giambattista Basile’s fairy tale collection Lo Cunto de li Cunti, with examples from the translators’ prefaces and from the fairy tale “The old woman who was skinned”

Tailor’s edition of the Cunto de li Cunti on Google Books

Compendium of translation procedures

(edited and extended by Alessio Iacovoni, compiled by the author of the Blog Mis Trabajos de Traducción, accessed 11 February 2009)

The very smart and amusing debunker James Randy makes fun of the Academia.

1. a listening and analysis effort
2. a production effort and
3. a short-term memory effort.

Although models such as this one are very precious to describe what happens “behind the scenes” in the so-called black box (the interpreter’s mind), it is perhaps best to approach the interpreting process as though it did not involve any special effort at all.

The frame of mind required to produce a good working interpretation is such that it actually has to come by as a simple and spontaneous event. In the end simultaneous interpreting is only as hard as one makes it. L1 and L2 should not be viewed as ferocious opponents, but as precious allies that peacefully and placidly work together.

P.S. A word of advice to those interpreters who are moving their first steps in this very competitive business: be wary of those seemingly “nice” new colleagues who offer to share their 20-page glossary of abstruse lingo just a few minutes into the start of the conference.

Note down only those few words that are truly essential, relax, allow your mind to be as blank as possible, focus only on the message and on the speaker…. and “voila’” the magic is done.

Il carissmo Paolo Noseda traduce Annie Lennox da ‘Che Tempo che Fa’. Come al solito piu’ che perfetto, mai noioso e sempre ‘a cavallo’ della persone che traduce. Ma senza pedanteria e sopratutto senza finzione.