Lisez et decrivez
Feb. 17th, 2008 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonneI ran into some of y'all at the Hot Foods Party last night. This was good.
I don't think my body is getting enough useful rest. I sleep as much as I can but it isn't consecutive. I notice this because I'm not as resilient to external stimuli as I would normally be. The noise of conversations was almost unbearable at the party. I had to put in ear plugs and even that left it louder than the server room where I wound up a few hours later. I left the party around 9 because I just couldn't tune out the waves of aural energy anymore.
My focus has been on the French language for the last few days. I used to choose to read the French version of a bilingual web site for mere practice. Now I'm realizing that I get pissed at the English version of a web site from a francophone country: the English is almost Babelfish bad. I can see entire sections that aren't translated.
The most common symptom of badly translated web pages are idioms that don't make sense in the target language or are so clumsy that you waste time chewing on them. Some offenders have specific goals for their English readers which don't exist for the French readers: Paris's transit company has a variety of weekly and monthly passes on the French side but only one expensive pass on the English side.
It reminds me of the passes they tried to push in Sydney where they cost a king's ransom and are meant to get you on the sightseeing bus instead of real public transport. If I wanted to take an open-air double decker bus for a narrated ride through a city's Tourist District (and I haven't so far in life because I can read and recall what I read), I'd pay once for the pleasure and be done with it. Sightseeing bus loops that let tourists get on and off over and over make financial sense but they also discourage real exploration and lead the tourists to think various places are farther away than they actually are.
You might ask: gee bro, why do you study up on all of this minutiae for a trip you're uncertain when you'll be able to take? It helps me to sort my head.
-now I gotta go to work, Dante
I don't think my body is getting enough useful rest. I sleep as much as I can but it isn't consecutive. I notice this because I'm not as resilient to external stimuli as I would normally be. The noise of conversations was almost unbearable at the party. I had to put in ear plugs and even that left it louder than the server room where I wound up a few hours later. I left the party around 9 because I just couldn't tune out the waves of aural energy anymore.
My focus has been on the French language for the last few days. I used to choose to read the French version of a bilingual web site for mere practice. Now I'm realizing that I get pissed at the English version of a web site from a francophone country: the English is almost Babelfish bad. I can see entire sections that aren't translated.
The most common symptom of badly translated web pages are idioms that don't make sense in the target language or are so clumsy that you waste time chewing on them. Some offenders have specific goals for their English readers which don't exist for the French readers: Paris's transit company has a variety of weekly and monthly passes on the French side but only one expensive pass on the English side.
It reminds me of the passes they tried to push in Sydney where they cost a king's ransom and are meant to get you on the sightseeing bus instead of real public transport. If I wanted to take an open-air double decker bus for a narrated ride through a city's Tourist District (and I haven't so far in life because I can read and recall what I read), I'd pay once for the pleasure and be done with it. Sightseeing bus loops that let tourists get on and off over and over make financial sense but they also discourage real exploration and lead the tourists to think various places are farther away than they actually are.
You might ask: gee bro, why do you study up on all of this minutiae for a trip you're uncertain when you'll be able to take? It helps me to sort my head.
-now I gotta go to work, Dante
