Musings of the Mad Wordsmith (and other things)

George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, which won sev...

OK, I don't like Ratzinger . We have family reasons dating from early 1940s not to. So when an article about Catholic-Jewish reconciliat...

Coleman Barks, Rumi's most popular "translator" in the USA, can neither read nor speak Farsi. Being a poet himself, Barks “re-...

According to reports, an aggrieved Indian has filed a petition in a court against the producers of the film, Slumdog Millionaire Niranjan D...

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sholom Aleichem. The Ann Arbor-based translator and author Aliza Shevrin, who has also...

Comment: Why do I have a sinking feeling that the worse the recession becomes, the more I am going to see of such cases? Hungry students, ag...

Having coffee with Denys Johnson-Davies does not seem all that remarkable – until you remember that this silver-haired Englishman shared a t...

Some decades back, in the magic country of India, a print advertisement for a two-in-one battery was designed. The copy simply said: “ Revol...

" One who wishes to translate from one language to another by rendering each word literally and adhering to the original order of words...

I get this queestion every time we talk Translation Memories, so here are a few links to good reading materials for translators: http://www....

Daniel James, born Ismail Mohammed Beigi Gamasai, 44, is a corporal in the British Army who has been charged withallegedly passing informati...

Thanks to John Rawlins of http://johnrawlins.typepad.com/ Supposedly Madame de Gaulle, the wife of the former French president, was asked at...

This is better than the Welsh sign board: The incident occurred in November last year, when a standard request for advance questions from th...

From the BBC When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed. Unfortunately, the ...

As a new leaf is starting for AUSIT , and we move our National Administration to PAMS , it is time to pay tribute to the person who had, for...

We had a big drama yesterday. Dan came back home earlier than usual from work, and that is one big blessing in this whole story. About 10 mi...

Not me :-) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7554892.stm presents a young Egyptian female writer, Ghada Abdelaal whose blog turned int...

It is difficult to say what the influence of Sami Khashaba was on me, but he definitely made me aware very early in my life what a great t...

I came back from Melbourne yesterday more a zombie than a human, but my inert mental state did not stop me from savouring the after-taste of...

Only on Sky Sport ( http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12325_3680560,00.html ) can you see such lack of tact towards other "English...