Βαλεντίνη Καλφαδοπούλου, Τι να 'ναι η ποίηση;

Τι να 'ναι η ποίηση;

Σα μικρό παιδί που παίζει στην τραμπάλα,
είναι η ποίηση.
Σα παιδί που όταν πέφτει κλαίει, γιατί
έγδαρε το γόνατό του.
Σα μωρό που ξέρει μόνο το εγώ
Σαν ηλιαχτίδα που παίζει κρυφτό
στο μάγουλό σου.
Αυτό είναι ποίηση.

10 Νοεμβρίου 2008

Published also on Translatum - Favourite Poetry - Βαλεντίνη Καλφαδοπούλου

Βαλεντίνη Καλφαδοπούλου, Λάθη

ΛΑΘΗ

Κι αναγνωρίζω
το δικαίωμά σου στη ζωή
Κι αναγνωρίζω
το δικαίωμά σου στη ψυχή
Κι αναγνωρίζω
Το δικαίωμά σου στα λάθη σου
Κι εσύ;
Εσύ κοιτάζεις τον ουρανό
και χαμογελάς, γιατί όλα, λες,
είναι φτιαγμένα για σένα.

10 Νοεμβρίου 2008

Published also on Translatum - Favourite Poetry - Βαλεντίνη Καλφαδοπούλου

Machine Translation and International English

I woke up today with the odd feeling that something will happen to either brighten my day or completely destroy my mood. Well, both happened... I usually get notifications through Google News about translation. I read this interesting take on International English and how (in the opinion of that person) it would help minimizing (even eradicate) the need for translation. I am quoting the whole article for your reading pleasure :)

Speaking an international language
Published Date: 12 January 2009

A SHEFFIED-BASED expert on making complex documents – including software manuals – understandable by all has come up with a low cost solution for companies that are put off having an international web presence by translation costs.
Mike Unwalla, founder of TechScribe, says companies could reduce, or even eliminate, expensive human translation by using what's called "International English."

International English uses fewer words and simpler grammar than a native speaker, making it easier for foreigners with a smattering of English to understand and for computers to automatically translate.

"For business purposes, one simple word can be used as an alternative to different words that have related meanings," explains Mike Unwalla.
"For example, the word 'think' can be used as an alternative to believe, consider, deem, feel, reckon, regard, suppose, and suspect." International English goes further than that, however.

While the sentences "Set up the computer" and "Set the computer up" mean the same thing, the second would be more easily understood by a foreigner, says Mike and would be easier for a computer to translate correctly into other languages.
TechScribe has launched a new service to 'translate' websites into International English and has set up a website – International English – to show companies some of the pitfalls of using standard English and the benefits of using International English.

(Source: The Star)

My conclusion at the time was that I understand what he is trying to achieve and in some sense what he calls international English is my version of simplified English, i.e. the form that machine translation engines would "understand" and translate into a form of any foreign language that people could understand (perhaps). But then I saw a thread in Translatum (translation forum, where I hang out, about a bizarre translation on a Philips package (namely the translation of the phrase "Complete PC tune-up kit" in French as "Compléter la trousse d'air en haut de PC"). I am including here the sentence reported by Selenia; you can also visit the thread yourself by clicking here. Selenia's message is in Greek: "Από αγορά προϊόντος Philips....έχουμε ακόμη τη συσκευασία ! Ακόμα προσπαθώ να καταλάβω τη λογική του μεταφραστή ! Πρόκειται για σετ καθαρισμού, οθόνης, cd player κ.λπ" (Translation: From a Philips purchase .. we still have the packaging! I am still trying to understand the translator's logic! [The product] is a cleaning set for monitors, cd players etc).

So I thought to myself, "do you think a company like that would ever use machine translation?", and promptly proceeded to go to a machine translation engine. To my surprise, this is what Philips must have done because the sentence "Complete PC tune-up kit" is translated as "Compléter la trousse d'air en haut de PC" in the machine translation! Here is the visual:


I am still trying to understand how a big company like that would ever use machine translation but there is also the doubt on whether the agency they might have contracted did not go and use the machine translation in order not to pay the minimum fee to its translators. Would there be a way to state this sentence in "International English" so that it would give a comprehensible result from a machine translation engine? I leave the final conclusion to all of you.

Custom i-Pod for US military

While roaming the web I found this very interesting snippet with a video from the Pentagon channel. I hope we get to see the commercial side of such applications. You can click on the heading of this entry and it will lead you to the article I read originally. There you can see some of the comments also and other information with regards to gadgets, gizmos, etc.

Here is the video.

Συνεργασία ΣΑΕ με Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας

An interesting article .. too bad this kind of articles do not get wider publicity
Συνεργασία ΣΑΕ με Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας
20 Δεκεμβρίου 2008 (11:19 UTC+2)

Τρόποι συνεργασίας σε θέματα που αφορούν στη διάδοση της ελληνικής γλώσσας στο εξωτερικό αναζητούν το ΣΑΕ και το Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας (ΚΕΓ).

Η συνεργασία που δρομολογείται με το ΚΕΓ, που είναι ο επίσημος ερευνητικός φορέας του Υπουργείου Εθνικής Παιδείας και Θρησκευμάτων, με έδρα τη Θεσσαλονίκη, εστιάζεται στη συστηματική εκστρατεία ενημέρωσης των νέων ομογενών για τα ωφελήματα του Πιστοποιητικού Ελληνομάθειας που παρέχει το Κέντρο, με στόχο να διπλασιαστεί σε μια διετία ο αριθμός των προσερχομένων στις εξετάσεις αυτές.

Ένα άλλο θέμα που επίσης αφορά τη συνεργασία αυτή, εστιάζεται στο θέμα των δασκάλων της ελληνικής στο εξωτερικό που, ως γνωστόν, στερούνται επίσημου τίτλου ειδίκευσης, ώστε να διδάξουν τα ελληνικά ως ξένη γλώσσα.

Το ΚΕΓ έχει τον εξ αποστάσεως μηχανισμό να τους επιμορφώσει σταδιακά όλους, να τους παρακολουθεί και στηρίζει στη συνεχεία, επισήμανε ο κ. Καζάζης. Αυτό θα γίνει μέσω του προγράμματος «ΔΙΑΔΡΟΜΕΣ», που έχει βραβευτεί από το Συμβούλιο της Ευρώπης. Το πρόγραμμα συνδυάζεται με την «ΠΥΛΗ για την Ελληνική Γλώσσα» του ΚΕΓ, που προσφέρεται δωρεάν (www.greek-language.gr).

Τα θέματα αυτά συζητήθηκαν σε συνάντηση του Προεδρείου του ΣΑΕ με τον Αναπληρωτή Πρόεδρο του Κέντρου Ελληνικής Γλώσσας (ΚΕΓ) καθηγητή Ιωάννη Καζάζη και την αναπληρώτρια καθηγήτρια του ΑΠΘ Νιόβη Αντωνοπούλου, στο πλαίσιο της 4ης συνεδρίασης του Προεδρείου..

Κάθε πρωτοβουλία που στοχεύει στην αντιμετώπιση του γλωσσικού προβλήματος των ομογενών, ειδικότερα σε συνεργασία με εξειδικευμένους φορείς όπως το ΚΕΓ, θα έχει σύμμαχο το ΣΑΕ, τόνισαν οι εκπρόσωποι των ομογενών.

Online resources for leximaniacs

So one more time Christmas has come and gone. I find it hard to find time to keep up with blogging so I thought I would be adding here resources and widgets that you can all use in your endless trek through the land of words. Today's link comes from Ultralingua with a very nice and useful online English and French thesaurus. You can use this form to lookup directly the term/word you are looking for, or, you can go to Ultralingua directly and use their page for embedding the widget too.

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Ultralingua

Chocolate for a good buzz?!

I am slowly trying to put myself back together after a few days of "offline" living (and loving). So I will simply repost an interesting article about the use of chocolate (as a known foodie!)

Getting Drunk on Chocolate in 1100 B.C.

Ancient pottery shows traces of a chemical found in cacao.

by Clara Moskowitz

Not only were the first chocoholics tinkering with cacao around 1100 B.C.—500 years earlier than previously thought—but they might have been doing so to get a tipsy buzz. A recent chemical analysis of 3,000-year-old pottery shards in northern Honduras turned up traces of theobromine (its name means “food of the gods”), a chemical that is found in cacao. The discovery is the oldest evidence of cacao manipulation. The analyzed ves­sel had a narrow spout, and the researchers speculate that the locals were imbibing a winelike drink made by fermenting the pulp that surrounds the seeds of the cacao plant. In contrast, the nonalcoholic concoction favored by Aztecs some 2,000 years later was prepared in wide-lipped jugs, and the liquid was poured back and forth to create froth.

Beer enthusiasts can look forward to a loose re-creation of the ancient brew sometime this year. Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Delaware is producing a drink based on the original recipe, with the help of biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, who aided in the Honduran study. “We tweaked the recipe, adding hops for the modern palate,” says Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head founder and president, “but I still think of it as a liquid time capsule.”

My source is : The discover magazine