MaineToday.com writes about broadband Internet connections:

bq. With it, a translator who lives in the Berkshires can do real-time translation for distant clients. A Maine candle maker can market across the world. Or an enterprise like Al’s Snowmobile, begun in a barn and now expanded to 30 workers in a new building in Derby Line, Vt., can sell snowmobile parts to customers thousands of miles distant.

I suppose they mean interpreting (simultaneous?), but I like the idea of real time translation. I think that’s what a lot of my clients want.

Oh dear.

bq. COUNSEL: Mr. Smith, where were you born?
WITNESS: Sweden. I was born there, but I moved from there when I was. . .
COUNSEL: LIVING IN FINLAND?
OPPOSING COUNSEL: Objection! Witness isn’t Finnish.
THE COURT: Overruled.

Phil’s Guide to the Courtroom

Crooked Timber links to this cartoon.

Why are these people wearing red and yellow sweaters?

(Via Serendipity)

The Nuremberg Toy Fair has begun. I noticed it was approaching when I came back to Germany on a plane full of sales staff last Monday. Now the Sonntagsblitz has a photo of a toy popemobile. The photo is by Daut and unfortunately I can’t trace it online. It may be a one-off production.

All I found online was an account of a race on a Carrera racetrack between a toy popemobile and a Wartburg (geddit – Luther!).

Along the same lines, here’s how to convert your Smart.

From The Times, January 27 2006:

bq. FORTHCOMING MARRIAGES
…
CIVIL PARTNERSHIPS
MR R.P.ADDISON
AND MR S.F.SMITH
A Civil Partnership took place on January 26, at Sutton Registry Office, between Raymond Addison and Stephen Smith, of Carshalton Beeches, Surrey.

Just a note on terminology.

American Express apparently sent a credit card application form to Stephan Lochner care of Cologne Cathedral, 555 years after the artist’s death. The dean/provost managed to wheedle a donation out of them.

bq. Köln – Auch wenn der Brief gute 555 Jahre zu spät kam – Norbert Feldhoff freute sich trotzdem. Der Probst des Kölner Doms musste der Kreditkartenfirma American Express allerdings bedauernd mitteilen, dass sie sich die Werbung für einen gewissen „Stephan Lochner” hätten sparen können.
Der mittelalterliche Maler war bereits im Jahre 1451 verstorben. Er hatte unter anderem den berühmten Altar der Kölner Stadtpatrone im Dom geschaffen.

Lochner’s St. Jerome with credit card – the translator in the modern age (main picture from Wikimedia Commons).