Musings of the Mad Wordsmith (and other things)

Borders. I love Borders. I planned to stay at the Not-so-Glorious Gloria Jeans and peck on my laptop (hoping the hotspot in the City is func...

Professor Raphael Israeli ( http://www.acpr.org.il/people/risraeli.html ) should not be permitted to write books in English. His English suc...

Why isn't this entry in the language section? Because it is going to make a few people unhappy, and unhappiness is politically almost al...

Queensland's biggest, occupying 4 exhibition halls at the prestigious Brisbane Convention Centre, and showcasing billions of books, thou...

I read it on the train, trying not to knock other commuters off their feet. I read it in the bath tub, a towel in hand, in case the book got...

In the world of translation, one thing is vital: that you are a specialist in the language you translate from and into. Otherwise, you may a...

I have just lost everything I wrote into this blog entry, and I am not happy. Writing doesn’t come easily to me these days, not with the con...

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m Last update - 00:54 11/02/2005 Trapped in a group photograph Amir believes in the distinction between private ...

This bit jumped into my eye as I was looking for news on the idiotic court case by AFP against Google. _________________________ START OF NO...

"The days of travel writing being produced by someone wearing a pith helmet and clutching a pink gin are thankfully over. The new gener...

What could be more Arab, more Middle Eastern, than arresting intellectuals at a book fair, confiscating books, and interrogating people abou...

I am in the middle of an oldish, but still fascinating book, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" ...

I am just about to finish Ziauddin Sardar's wonderful book "Desperately Seeking Paradise". It speaks to me more than it would ...

Have we heard of everything yet? I mean, reading what this guy Fogg has to say about computers as persuasive technology, it seems pure commo...

When they first took over from the world, rendering the IT sector in Australia, US and Canada jobless, they would post such idiotic emails o...

Just before you read the stuff below, I have to explain the Hassaniya bit. They are a nomadic tribe in north-western Sudan, generally known ...

Friends at the legal service asked me to find them a Dari translator for a 40-page pamphlet explaining Australian family law to the newly ar...

On my last trip to the Queensland countryside, I ended in Rockhampton, also variously known as The Hell and Beef Capital of Somewhere :-) We...

Something interesting is happening with this translation experiment. Over the past three years – ever since I went back to translating full ...

This time in Egypt. The dorks send ME, their competition, the advertisment by email. I am changing their identity out of sheer pity. I also ...