Listen to the Chinese: branding is bollocks

This lot can’t even decide if they’re going to transliterate their trademark as Lepai or Lepy (I hope there’s somewhere where they call it Leper): But it’s a brilliant little amp, none of your Apple shite.

It’s English, but is it human?

Understanding Podemos, c/o Rikard. The old question: Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. Quick nod in the opposite direction to the human and apparently also English girlfriend of boxer Serge Ambomo: He’s speaking English a lot…

Two famous English students

IRQ posts a brilliant photo of Espe and abstentionist dog above a piece by “Hughes” which kicks off with Ana María Jiménez. The former presumably owns several palaces and speaks decent English. The latter has been living in a glorified cardboard box at Sofá de la Frontera for a couple of years to protest the…

Libertarian literary translation question

A reader writes: I have found an excellent novel in Spanish by a long-dead author who is still just in copyright. He was already forgotten when he died, and has remained so. I’d like to translate and self-publish it. How much should I offer the rights-holders?

“Heidi stole my voice!”

The recollections of Selica Torcal, 86, who 40 years ago started dubbing the protagonist of the Japanese series into Spanish. She didn’t like dubbing Japanese or Isao Takahata‘s animation style – “poorly done, with her mouth open all the time, it was extremely difficult” – and preferred being Lois Lane and Shirley Temple: The only…

Transformative translation: Schloss

We’re all fucked in the end -the reward for life is death- but meanwhile the profession would be greatly improved if rendered client-free. MM: My career as a translator of guides to buildings in Central Europe started ignominiously when I gave in to the resident of Schloß Leitheim, who insisted it was Leitheim Castle. Others…

Sandwish

“All day I’ve faced, the barren waste,without a taste of… Can you see that big green tree,Where the sandwish’s running free,And it’s waiting there for you and me?” I do Cool Water with the organ, and it’s a great favourite, but the other day I made the mistake of introducing the mirage song as a…