Finally a use for machine translations!

The site www.translationparty.com is a simple, yet oddly addictive way to kill some time. It uses Google Translator to perform an indefinite number of back translations, typically producing something nonsensical and quite different from the original phrase. It’s kind of like the Telephone game where kids tell a story person to person and then at the end everyone hears how distorted the meaning got along the way.

To play, just enter a phrase (the longer the better) in English. The machine translator will translate it into Japanese, perform a back translation into English, a back translation into Japanese, another translation into English, etc. etc. It stops once it reaches “equilibrium,” the point at which the English and Japanese translate back and forth into the same thing.

Hopefully a Translation Party in Spanish will be coming soon.

As translators, we need our memories to operate at a certain level in order to remember vocabulary, rules, collocations, maxims, exceptions to rules, etc. A few things that can help us with our memories comes from a great website known as The Brain Power Pages (where you can also find tips on taking full advantage of your brain’s capabilities, exercises, intelligence tests, riddles, puzzles and more).

Steve Gillman (creator and author of the site) has a special recipe for improving one’s memory which includes these ten tips:

1. Repeat: repeating a telephone number in your head over and over again will help you remember it. It’s even better if you “sing it” in your head. If you do this everyday, you’ll remember things long term as opposed to short term.

2. Write it down: “Let the paper remember it for you.” Besides having the info handy for later, the act of writing it down will help it “stick” in your head.

3. Clear your mind: relax and clear your mind (take three deep breaths through your nose as you relax your muscles) as often as you can, as this allows things we need to remember to “come” to us.

4. Feed your brain: we have to feed our bodies with good proteins and complex carbs to give the brain more energy and allow it to function better: granola, cereals, trail mix, fish. What’s more, being hungry can distract you and interfere with your ability to remember things.

5. Drink enough liquids: dehydration can distract us, keeps us from thinking clearly and restricts our memory. Try drinking a glass of water and see if your brain seems a little sharper.

6. Exercise: physical exercise gives the brain oxygen: it improves the brain’s functioning both immediately (after ten minutes on the treadmill, for example) and in the long term.

7. Learn Mnemonic Techniques: mental associations to remember names, numbers, lists of items, etc. are usually quite useful for making things “stick.”
8. Imagine how you will use it: if you think of how you could use the info, you have a better chance of remembering it later. For example, if you are learning an algorithm in class, imagining that you’re using it during an exam can help you remember it better. Or if you’ve just learned someone’s name you can imagine running into them again and calling them by their name.

9. Avoid toxins: smoking is the most obvious one. Although some feel that it helps them concentrate in the short term, the subsequent damage affects the brain in general, including the memory. The same goes for some medications and of course illegal drugs.

10. Reduce stress: when you’re stressed, your body releases cortisone (or hydro-cortisone), which at high levels interferes with the part of the memory that holds recent memories. Things like meditation and mind control techniques can help with this.
Will our translations be better with these tips? Will we actually remember to use them? I guess we’ll see…

Do you ever get spam that makes absolutely no sense at all? Messages that say things like “summer slim-time muscle man science pill formulations”? Odds are that the original message was written in another language and then run through an online machine translator.

Spammers worldwide have realized that they can peddle their garbage to anyone with an email account and now give it a personal touch by putting it in your language.Translated spam doesn’t attempt to sidestep any of the standard spam blockers, but relies on sheer quantity to invade your inbox.

While most free email account services provide decent spam blockers, a small percentage will inevitably get through to your main inbox. When your account is bombarded with ten times more spam, that percentage gets higher and higher.

Translations of spam also fill up your junk mail folder faster, meaning that it takes longer to sift through if you’re double-checking that nothing important got filed under Junk.

According to recent research from the University of Virginia (reported at BBC online and mentioned by Steve Gillman on The Brain Power Pages), a great deal of our mental abilities can reach their top potential by the age of 22, and begin to deteriorate at the age of 27… Bad news.

But all’s not lost. Gillman himself has provided tons of advice on maximizing mental capabilities through his website devoted to teaching people how to better use their brains, stimulate their minds as much as possible and more.

We’ve talked before about how learning another languages helps us keep our neurons in good shape. Yes! We’re already on the right track!)
The expert’s “tip of the month” is useful for a lot of people, including translators who frequently spend eight, ten, twelve hours seated in front of the computer… and it never hurts to sharpen our mental abilities.

Sit up Straight!
Posture affects the thought process. You can check this yourself next time right from your chair. Try and perform some math problems in your head while slouched in your chair, head drooped and mouth hanging open. Now, do some mental math while sitting up straight, with your mouth closed and your eyes pointed straight ahead or slightly above your plane of vision. Gillman is a firm believer that it’s much easier the second way and says that if you need to concentrate, you should  “close your mouth and sit up straight!”
In my next couple of blogs I’m going to pass along some of Gillman’s tips on improving your memory (if I remember to do so…)

Radio shock-jock and English Only supporter Michael Savage was one of sixteen people to be barred from entering the United Kingdom.

Also included on this list issued by the UK Home Office were convicted skinhead murderers,a former Klu Klux Klan Grand Wizard and several members of Hamas.

What does it take to get on this shortlist of the UK’s “Least Wanted?” Making statements like,

“I would also make the construction of mosques illegal in America and the speaking of English only in the streets of the United States the law.”

So in a case of poetic justice at its finest, English Only Advocate Michael Savage has been publicly humiliated and banned from entering the birthplace of the language he loves so much.

English is invading Spanish! This is of course something of a two-way street, but it is hard to find a Spanish-speaking country whose dialect is not now infused with Anglicisms, loan words and outright bastardizations.

This happens with all languages, but the number of English words sprinkled into daily Spanish can truly be astounding when one listens for it.  This varies from country to country, between educational levels, income brackets, etc., but the intrusion can be witnessed almost everywhere.

Restaurants in Spanish-speaking countries, whether catering to foreign customers, trying to show some kind of foreign flair or just following what’s now commonplace, will advertise their bar, sandwiches, cheese cake and happy hours, despite the fact that all of these have their RAE certified Spanish equivalents. Hotels will also let you know check-in and check-out times, where the gym & spa are in the fitness center and how to connect to their wi-fi.
It’s not uncommon to hear “te mandé un mail: tuve que ir al cyber, porque mi pc no funciona” or “please, ¿me das un clip?”

An onomatopoeia (according to Webster’s definition) is “the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it.” These are used linguistically to describe sounds (boom, bang, click) and can even serve to express a thing or idea visually instead of aurally, like “zig-zag” or a “tick.”

Onomatopoeias are often used to describe the sounds animals make. And every language has its own way to express these sounds. Some are very similar in English and Spanish, like the sound a duck makes: “cuac” (Spanish) and “quack” (English), and the sound a cat makes: “miau” (Spanish), “meow” (English). Others however, are quite different. Spanish-speaking dogs say “guau,” while English-speaking canines say “woof.” A rooster in Ecuador crows “kikiriki” and birds sing “pi-pi” or “pío-pío,” but an Australian rooster says “cock-a-doodle-doo” and birds say “tweet.”

Other sounds expressed through an onomatopoeia also vary, such as the “beep” or “pip” of an answering machine and the “toc-toc” or “knock-knock” at the door. An interesting aspect of this (and something quite complicated when translating from English into Spanish) is that a lot of onomatopoeic words in English are used not just to represent a sound, but are verbs express the production of that sound and/or noun. In Spanish for example, one would say “cerró la puerta de un portazo/ dio un portazo,” but it’s English translation is simply “slam the door (shut),”using “slam,” an onomatopoeia for “portazo” as a verb. Another example can be seen when someone is at the door. English uses the verb “knock,” while a verb form of “toc toc” doesn’t exist in Spanish. In English, a clock “ticks,” while in Spanish one would say that the clock “hace tic tac o marca el paso del tiempo). Some examples of these onomatopoeia verbs are: “clink,” “swish,” “swoosh,” “splash,” “pop,” “honk,” “roar,” “yawn,” etc.

This Wikipedia page has a list of useful onomatopoeic sounds for animals, along with the Spanish verb to describe them (a sheep “bala,” coyotes “aúllan,” etc.

Onomatopoeias are also often seen in comic books, especially these verb forms, splashed across the screen in the famous fight screens of the sixties.