Just returned from a month of restaurants in the US, and that means an expansion of the waistline. I also bought 4 pairs of pants to replace my worn-out slacks for work. I was happy to hold my waist size to that of 3 years ago, but now realize that this too is a sham, perpetrated on all of us by the clothing industry. This from an Esquire article has me running to the bathroom scale (where I’ve returned to my January weight, erasing all the work of the spring).
The site over at translation party is designed to show how machine translation still has a way to go. It shows how, when you translate into from either Japanese or English into the other language, and back again, there are still differences. It continues until there are no differences, and calls that “equilibrium”. The final version it reaches is sometimes very different from the original. You could play games by trying to find sentences that are the most different, or sentences that require the most steps (translations) to reach equilibrium. A good time-waster for translators or language students.
Now THIS is school spirit. University of Kansas students working together to help other students get through tough times.
via EduDemic.
The Foreign Service institute, the school that teaches diplomats languages, has free courses available. These courses were developed with government money and are old enough (before 1989) to be in the public domain. Although dated, these courses include texts (in pdf) and tapes (in mp3), all ported to the Internet by a wonderful non-profit group. Via BoingBoing. The site was mentioned by LifeHacker and so too many people tried to download at the same time. When the servers are available again, you should check it out, or even Czeck it out. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Ken, over at What Japan Thinks, is doing a great job of deciphering polls and consumer studies in Japan. Today he looks at what people regret telling lies about. First comes Rich, then comes being able to speak English. Be careful about stretching the truth. It can get you in trouble.