The late Freddy Heineken, of Dutch beer fame, proposed splitting Europe into small countries as a political and economic solution for many ills that plague the continent. Employing two historians, he created the map to the left. It’s certainly interesting food for thought, though I don’t take it very seriously. Smaller countries and cultures,...
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Google Language Tools have been around for a long time now, along with other machine translation tools. Are they useful to the translation industry? The answer is indisputably, “Yes!”, though possibly not in the way you’d think. First of all, the tools are essentially useless for production level text. The kind of gibberish they...
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Some translated works should never, ever see the light of day. No matter who does them, they are just too awful to mention. I’m an American football fan, and my favorite player is Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts. Imagine my surprise to see him speaking Chinese in a TV commercial! Thank God, there...
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Tags: bad translators
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Yes, we will be at E3 this year. Looking forward to a return to the old show! We’ll have some work on display too – look for it here in the next couple of days.
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CityCentre Las Vegas is an impressive construction site. Taking up virtually the entire Southern Strip north of Excalibar, this collection of buildings has been described as the biggest construction project on the planet (though I think that Dubai would have some issues with that). From our visit this last week, I would tell you...
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Tags: travel, World Economy
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Easter Holiday in Las Vegas. Will monitor email for urgent or continuing projects. Big things happening in the next couple of weeks – stay tuned! Until Monday then, see you!
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Walking around the Expo floor at GDC is always interesting. What’s the hot new thing? What’s old that’s different? What are the new trends that companies are trying to push? First of all, there are too many motion capture companies. Everywhere you turned, there was a model or two dancing on the floor with...
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Tags: GDC
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At the GDC Localization Summit, there was an extended discussion about having a Localization Award. After all, we all want to have great localizations, and we need something to promote good work, yes? As discussed, the problem comes from several angles: Who is going to judge for the award? While we may have a...
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Tags: bad translators, GDC, good translators, Localization Summit, translators
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Back home in Southern California. Ahh, it feels good to be home—the right coffee mug, comfortable office, wicked-fast internet connection, hard-wired to the company server. Ahh, the good things of life! Not to mention family and friends! Today, I’m going to scribble down a few of the general overview notes on the GDC Localization...
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Tags: GDC, Localization Summit, translators, World Economy
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I’m still at GDC. Meetings, dinners, conferences, walking the expo, talking to people—life is busy! I’ll get to posting about this next week, once I have had a chance to process everything.
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