Tessera
Folgen

Patrick, traversed by lizards

@mrcormorant.bsky.social

Sailing on the Onion Sea and enjoying a game of failures. Protein or squirrels? 'I do not claim to know English. I claim to know Ruskin.' - Marcel Proust

132 Posts69 Follower194 Folgt
Patrick, traversed by lizards@mrcormorant.bsky.social · 4w ago

A machine translation triumph from Bluesky. It's not just the comical mangling of the list of birds - blue trip! forest injury! - it's also the misconstrual of the syntax: 'we had also had', 'like all happy'. It's progress, I suppose, that there are no obscenities in this one. Details in alt text.

Post by Bjergkongen using hashtag DKnatur (Danish nature). Bluesky machine translation: 'If we had looked after just a bit better on #dnatur over the past many years, we had also had far more natural enemies such as cuckoo, large flageter, musvit, blue trip, spout, forest injury and star, like all happy and like to eat #eggrocession spindle carver. But fortunately came #amandaheitmann..' Allegedly obsolescent human translation: 'If we'd taken just a bit more care of #DKnatur all these years, we'd also have had far more natural predators such as cuckoos, great spotted woodpeckers, great tits, blue tits, nuthatches, jays and starlings, all of which eat oak processionary caterpillars with great gusto. Fortunately, though, along came #amandaheitmann...'
Alex West@ajw87.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This reminded me that I wrote something about kissoori/khichuri/khichdi/khicṛī a few years ago

Afanasij Nikitin & ‘Indian Corn’

A while I ago I wrote a piece on errors of translation or interpretation brought about by Columbian exchange-related misunderstandings…

medium.com

Alom Shaha@alomshaha.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Rice and dal cooked separately is indeed comforting, but cook them together in a "kissoori" and the comfort factor is multiplied by an order of magnitude (also GREAT first solid food for babies):

Kristian Kiehling@kristiankiehling.bsky.social · 5mo ago

On the anniversary of the full-scale invasion,the Russian colonial gaze on Ukraine was again allowed to impose itself in the form of M. Gessen's opinion piece in the NYT Viktoriia Grivina wrote a much-needed response to the problematic Western practice of preferring Russian voices to Ukrainian ones👇

M Gessen and The Colonial Gaze

Last Saturday I was walking around Kharkiv with a young Ukrainian journalist, when he suddenly noted that before coming to Kharkiv he’d read a New York Times article by a Russian-American journalist M...

vika4good.substack.com

Patrick, traversed by lizards@mrcormorant.bsky.social · 6mo ago

A lot of this chimes with the account in Simon Schuster's book. NB headline is a bit overdone. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

A war foretold: how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans and why nobody believed them

Drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries, this exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans ...

theguardian.com

Patrick, traversed by lizards@mrcormorant.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Aaaargh! Hazardous, surely, to say that a man took a (meant-to-be) fatal dose of morphine if your only source is an NKVD memo noting his stated intention to do so in (at least) 3 days' time. Why is so much 'richly researched and meticulously observed'* history like this? *Says The Guardian.

Book text reading: 'Despondency often turned to suicidal thoughts. An artist known as ONOPKOV saved up half a cup of peas, a piece of ham, and enough tobacco to fill a few pipes. On 15 January 1942, he made dinner, smoked his pipe, then injected himself with morphine. "I cannot allow my wife and m other to watch as I slowly die," he wrote.' [More text follows but is not relevant to the point.] Source: Parkin, Simonn (2024): The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in a City Under Siege. London: Sceptre, page 139.Part of the endnotes from 'The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad', highlighting a note to page 139 which reads: '"as I slowly die": Artist identified only as "ONOPKOV". FSB archive. As reproduced in Nikiten, The Unyielding City. p. 15'.Screenshot of page 15 of Упрямый город: Блокада 1941-1944 / Unyielding City: Blockade 1941-1944. Skipping irrelevant parts, the text reads: The state in which the townspeople found themselves, and their moods, which for many years most people preferred not to speak of, can be felt to some extent by getting acquainted with excerpts from the below once-top secret document. Below are fragments from Special Internal Correspondence No. 10042 of the NKVD USSR Administration for the Leningrad Region and the City of Leningrad, dated January 12, 1942. [...] The artist ONOPKOV says: "...For January 15th, I have saved up half a cup of peas, a piece of ham, enough tobacco to fill a few pipes. The 15th will come, I will make dinner, smoke a few pipes and... I will inject myself with morphine. I cannot allow my wife and mother to watch as I slowly die."
Patrick, traversed by lizards@mrcormorant.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Section 2.4 of the 2018 DoT Traffic Signs Manual, ch 7 (The Design of Traffic Signs) mandates an extra 0.5 symbol width between an apostrophe and a following lower-case 'b'. Making it all the more exciting that there are signs that spell Wibsey as W'bsey.

A street sign with Wibsey written as W'bsey.
Patrick, traversed by lizards@mrcormorant.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Proofreaders! Maybe check at least the first footnote? The name supposedly used 'since 1992' is just the 1930 name (All-Union Institute) but in Russian, and there hasn’t been an ‘All-Union’ anything since, I dunno, 1991? Should say All-RUSSIAN Institute ofc. And the name changed *again* in 2014.

Book footnote: Originally known as the 'Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops' then from 1930 as the 'All Union Institute of Plant Breeding', and since 1992 as the /Vsesoyuzny Institut Rastenievodstva/ (VIR). For ease and elegance throughout this book the VIR is referred to simply as the Plant Institute. Facts: The name claimed here to have been used ‘since 1992’ is just the 1930 name (All-Union Institute of Plant Breeding) but in Russian, and I think it’s safe to say there hasn’t been an ‘all-union’ anything since, I dunno, 1991? In 1992 the Institute actually became the N. I. Vavilov All-RUSSIAN Scientific Research Institute of Plant Breeding. It was renamed again in 2014 to, in the official English version, the Federal Research Center N. I. Vavilov All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR). Before 1930 it was the Applied Botany Bureau (1894), the Applied Botany and Selection Department (1917) and the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Cultures [or 'crops'] (1924). All this is published on the VIR’s own website. Call me pedantic, but I think the proofreading or copy-editing of a book should extend to its second page and its first footnote.
Gili Bar-Hillel@gilibug.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I can give countless examples of failure points of machine translation. If I give real examples that I’ve encountered I’m told they are “anecdotal”. If I discuss principles that will consistently fail, I’m told that it’s “just a matter of time” before the solutions will magically appear.

Apolline Dsc@apolline.bsky.social · 8mo ago

French publishing house Harlequin decided to use AI translation instead of human translations. All their freelance translators (some of whom had been working with Harlequin for +30y!!!) were told they would no longer receive work from Harlequin

Patrick, traversed by lizards@mrcormorant.bsky.social · 9mo ago

'All the key provisions on sovereignty...have been...removed [from the Constitution]. Even the ref to Tatarstan's non-participation in armed conflicts is gone. Still...it remains a symbol of the Tatar people's striving for state sovereignty' -Constitution Day msg by deputy PM in exile Marat Akhmerov

Patrick, traversed by lizards@mrcormorant.bsky.social · 10mo ago

That Sky interview with Khodorkovsky isn't going to dispel the accusation that the Russian opposition wants to reform the empire, not to dismantle it. news.sky.com/story/putin-...

Exiled Russian oligarch: Putin has sent signal to Trump that he's ready for Ukraine deal

Mikhail Khodorkovsky thinks a deal could be struck between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump over Ukraine, but it might involve ceding the Donbas region to Russia.

news.sky.com

Patrick, traversed by lizards@mrcormorant.bsky.social · last yr.

In March, D. Medvedev said 'Russomania (Russophobia)' could be treated with 'nuclear neuroleptics such as [Russian missles] Yars and Sarmat'. In June, he was unrepentant about 'whipping up nuclear hysteria'. Nobody cared. I wonder why Trump is getting het up about the alcoholic Underground Man now?