Sweetness and (Electrical) Power

To alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. –Homer Simpson

Having recently been sounded out about writing a biweekly column on the sugarcane processing industry in Brazil, I immediately wonder whether I can get away with a veiled reference or two to former Brooklyn College anthropologist Sidney Mintz, best known for his book Sweetness and Power:

Mintz has published several books and many articles and reviews. In 1956, his study of a sugarcane village became part of The People of Puerto Rico, edited by Julian Steward and others. In 1960, he published Worker in the Cane, the life story of a cane worker who came from that same village. And in 1985, he wrote Sweetness and Power, which is concerned with the history of sugar worldwide. He has since written papers on the anthropology of food, and initiated research on the global role of soybeans and soy foods, while continuing his Caribbean work.

No, check that. The truth is that the first thought that occurs to me is a sequence from The Simpsons that takes a piss out of the use of ethanol to fuel automobiles.

From the “Lost in Translation” File

alienation news notes:

BBC news on 31 October had a story about a bilingual road sign in Swansea, South Wales. In English it reads “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.”

Underneath, the text in Welsh is “Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i’w gyfieithu”, which may be translated as “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”

This was the text of an e-mail that came back from the translation service used by staff of Swansea council when a Welsh equivalent of the English sign was requested.

“There Are Some Real Ratfinks in the Translation Industry”

Westernwords — the Web log of an English-to-Chinese translator — makes a very good point in not so very good English. But the point gets through.

The translation industry guideline has not been imposed to be executed by all translation service body and some illegal behaviors such as deceiving and big quote difference are making wormy sores in this industry structure, which makes the industry standardization rushing. Some ratfinks assign the projects they get and have no mind to pay for their contemporarily employed translators’ work. Some translation companies quote the lowest one can’t imagine in order to grab large amount of deals.

My friend and colleague The Enigmatic Mermaid, in unguarded moments, refers to this as the “crack whoredom of the industry.”

Why The Brazilian Federal Police Could Have Used A Good Editor

From the Folha de S.Paulo‘s coverage of an enormous business and political scandal here in Brazil — too complicated to explain in 25 words or less — emerges a lesson about why spellcheck will never replace the services of a good editor.

The federal police report in the case leaked, and many critics have used the plentiful spelling, grammatical and even substantive errors in the report to denigrate the quality of the investigation itself.

At issue is a tangled Web of hearsay about alleged bribery of Brazilian senators as they prepare to vote on an amendment to a bill on port regulation.

Se passasse, a emenda de Kátia Abreu prejudicaria Dantas, cujo grupo possui a Santos Brasil, empresa que opera terminal portuário. Entre outras coisas, abriria espaço para a entrada de uma forte concorrência.

If it passed, the Abreu amendment would have harmed Dantas, whose group owns Santos Brasil, a maritime freight terminal operation. Among other things, it would have opened the way for strong competition in the market.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

The Sindicato Nacional dos Tradutores, Brazil’s national translators1 union, announces the dispatching of a petition, with a terse note of protest, to the National Publishers Syndicate (SNEL):

Carta do SINTRA ao Sindicato Nacional dos Editores e Editoras

Prezados colegas,

Dear colleagues:

O Sintra, como representante da categoria, alertado pelo abaixo assinado feito por tradutores pertencentes à lista Literatti a respeito da omissão da publicação do nome do tradutor em diversas obras traduzidas, o que constitui violação da Lei de Direitos autorais em vigor, se dirigiu ao Snel (Sindicato Nacional dos Editores) e a algumas editoras solicitando o cumprimento da mencionada Lei por meio da carta abaixo:

Sintra, as the union representing translators, wishes to inform you of the petition signed by translators from the Literatti mailing list with respect to the failure to credit translators by name in a number of translated works, which constitutes a violation of prevailing law on the rights of authors, and addressed to SNEL, the National Publishers Syndicate and certain publishers in particular, asking for them to comply with the aforementioned law. The following letter was sent:

Translation Nation

Translation Nation: The Beijing Review engages in some local boosterism for the IFT-FIT conference to be held in Shanghai in August:

China’s position as a powerhouse of the translation industry is to be cemented, as it becomes the first Asian country to host the International Federation of Translators’ (FIT) international meeting.

FIT’s XVIII World Congress, to be held in Shanghai from August 2 to 7, is also historic for several other reasons. The half-century old event comes in a year that the UN has proclaimed the International Year of Languages, based on a pursuit of multilingualism as a means of promoting, protecting and preserving the diversity of languages and cultures globally. That idea is reflected in the theme of this year’s FIT World Congress, “Translation and Cultural Diversity.”

The Corporate Actions Newswire as Translation Corpus

EDGAR (after Allen Poe, weirdly)

Am I crazy, or does the U.S. SEC’s EDGAR Full Text Search not make a very useful terminology corpus for business and financial translators, despite its shortcomings?

Among those shortcomings is the lack of an intuitive interface for querying the database, and the fact that you have to click through about five text-heavy pages before you even arrive at that form — drag the link above to the bookmarks folder of your browser to avoid having the make the schlep every time you visit.

Still, locating and then visiting the help page and reading up on the limited set of Boolean operators available should get you started.