On disability

October 31, 2006

It’s gotta really suck to be deaf, and not just for the obvious reasons I won’t bother going into. Imagine you’re deaf and you attend a seminar or a lecture or something, and they know to expect the presence of a deaf person. There’ll be a sign-language interpreter there, specifically for your sake, listening to what the speaker is saying and relaying it to you in an intelligible manner. No matter how boring the lecture is, you have to keep paying attention to the interpreter, because he’ll know as soon as you zone out. You don’t have the privilege of drawing pictures of racecars while pretending to listen intently, the way the hearing people can.

A stupid question

October 27, 2006

Would it be worth it to take two two-hour-long train rides tomorrow night so I can pay a $20 cover for a party I’ll only be able to stay at for an hour, when I know for a fact in advance I’ll desperately need to sleep tomorrow night?

…

And why am I even considering doing so?

On translation

October 19, 2006

A document I’m dealing with right now includes references to a German document—which I’ve asked for a translation of, as it appears particularly relevant—as well as a French one. Just for the hell of it I started perusing the French one, and to my delight I found that I could actually follow it, more or less. I’m not versed with the more (or even the less) technical terms, but putting context clues together with the provided figures gave me a pretty good understanding of what was being said. And of course, words like glissière are loaded with other clues (that’s just gotta be legit- and not false-cognate).

I checked several of the words on Babelfish, and they did mean what I thought they did (glissière apparently means “slide”, who’d have thunk?). Based on that, I decided to see how good a job Babelfish would do with a longer passage. The last time I tried that was in my 11th grade French class, which is a[n altogether uninteresting] story for a different time, but suffice it to say that Babelfish didn’t do a very good job.

But I thought that perhaps, 7 or 8 years later Babelfish might do a better job, especially because what I’m looking at is rather stilted and unnatural prose to begin with, and not what would pass for leisure reading. I was pleasantly surprised.

Here’s a few paragraphs of the original text:

Un socle 1 reposant sur le sol et pouvant avoir un profil quelconque est solidaire de deux glissières verticales 2 constituées chacune de quatre fers plats convenablement entretoisés en 3. Ces deux glissières sont, en outre, reliées l’une à l’autre, à leur partie supérieure, par une traverse entretoise fixé 4.

Dans chacune de ces glissières est prisonnier un coulisseau 5 guidé par des galets 6 et solidaire d’une barre 7 servant de support à des traverses 8 constituant le berceau sur lequel vient reposer le meuble bureau par son assise normale au lieu de reposer sur le sol.

Une barre compensatrice 9 est montée également à coulisse dans les glissières 2 mais dans des passages 10 indépendants de ceux des coulisseaux 5 de façon à pouvoir se croiser avec eux sans se gêner.

And here’s Babelfish’s rendition:

A base 1 resting on the ground and which can have an unspecified profile is interdependent of two vertical slides 2 made up each one of four flats suitably braced into 3. These two slides, moreover, are connected one to the other, with their higher part, by a cross-piece braces fixed 4.

In each one of these slides is a prisoner a slide 5 guided by rollers 6 and interdependent of a bar 7 being used as support with cross-pieces 8 component the cradle on which comes to put back the piece of furniture office by its normal base instead of resting on the ground.

A compensation bar 9 is also moved up to slide in slides 2 but in passages 10 independent of those of slides 5 in order to be able to cross with them without obstructing itself.

Really, not too shabby.

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