Apparently comments from Hotmail addresses can’t be posted on my weblog. The following comment from Michael Wahlster at Translate This! was refused posting permission.

Here’s the comment, on the subject of online ads:

bq. Armin is right. Accessing the page from my US IP address serves English ads.

Here’s the reaction of my program:

bq. Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:
Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: mail.com
Please correct the error in the form below, then press Post to post your comment.

This is the first concrete example I have received. It seems the hotmail address was the problem. Does this come from Movable Type itself, or from the MT Blacklist plugin? I don’t intend to stay with MT in any case, but I haven’t found time to move. And totally invented addresses do work, although I might delete the comment if it appears pointless and I can’t tell where it comes from.

The complete Paris Review interviews with Writers at Work are going to be online, starting with the 1950s. You can read the beginning and see/download a PDF file of the rest. For some reason, they’re called ‘the DNA of literature’.

bq. Now, for the first time, you can read, search and download any or all of over three hundred in-depth interviews with poets, novelists, playwrights, essayists, critics, musicians, and more, whose work set the compass of twentieth-century writing, and continue to do so into the twenty-first century.

bq. Release dates for The DNA of Literature PDFs:
1950s: Online Now
1960s: January 10, 2005
1970s: February 14, 2005
1980s: April 4, 2005
1990s: May 16, 2005
2000s: July 1, 2005

Here’s some Thurber: Continue reading →

(From Delia Venables’ ‘New on the Internet’ page)

Droit francophone is a portal for French law. Delia Venables says it is closely connected with BAILII, AUSTLII etc. (see partner sites). It seems to have some connection to the University of Montreal and LexUM, so the term ‘francophone’ should be understood in the wide sense.

LATER NOTE: See also a weblog with a French law slant by Jean-Baptiste Soufron, whose qualifications include Japanese and who also plays rugby and chess.

I reported on this earlier, with photos. An article in today’s Guardian reports on research by Dr. Geoff Parnell that finds no trace of ravens at the Tower before the late 19th century, and also finds there were no ravens left in the Second World War, and yet the monarchy and the Tower did not come to an end.

bq. The earliest reference he found was 1895, in a piece in the RSPCA journal, The Animal World. One Edith Hawthorn referred to the tower’s pet cat being tormented by the ravens, Jenny and a nameless mate.

I can confirm that there was a cat at the Tower in June 2004, though probably not the same one.

OK, after complaining prematurely, I now have Firefox set with English as the only language. But when I read the Guardian or Observer online, I see a block of ads all in German. They look like Google ads, but it doesn’t say Google. They are headed ‘Advertiser links’, are on a small beige block of three or four. They seem to be related to the English stories on the page, but they’re German. I find this irritating – why would I read a paper in English and want to see ads in German?

Example – now (but not much longer) there is an article on inheritance tax problems, and accompanying it are German ads for easy loans.

I’m sure other readers know what is going on here and where they’re getting my location from!

Möchten Sie diktieren, statt tippen? In Windows Media Player, Flash oder Quicktime (Link klicken) demonstriert John Udell auf Englisch, wie er ein paar Sätze in Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 diktiert. Ich war schon bei der ersten Version von Dragon Dictate begeistert, als ich vor einigen Jahren einen Rechtsanwalt in London diktieren erlebte. In der Praxis ist das Programm noch etwas schneller als im Demo, wo es aus technischen Gründen verlangsamt wurde. Das Programm gibt es natürlich auch auf Deutsch.

John Udell demonstrates Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 – click on Windows Media, Flash or Quicktime to see the video (in which the program appears slightly slower than in real life).

Michael Benis reports regularly on voice recognition software in the ITI Bulletin. Here’s a past article by him at transref.org:
and here an article in Translation Journal.

(From Andrew Joscelyne at Blogos)