Category Archives: Discourse.net

Traduction Bidon

Posted on September 26, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

I have just added a link in the right margin to the Fagan Finder translation tool which allows readers to translate the blog with two clicks. (Note: it only works if you don't block referrers.) The translation tool covers an amazing number of languages, but like the Babelfish, the translations do leave a little to be desired. Consider this translation into French of the previous item:

Argh. Blogging se développe en culture secondaire avec son propre argot. Non, non, non, qui est pas ce que je veux. Ce n'est pas lycée. Je ne ai pas besoin d'une clique pour rendre me le sentir bon. Je veux participer aux conversations pensives qui fuient dans la sphère publique.

D'autre part, Technorati.COM prétend savoir de 994.254 weblogs (qui devraient frapper million par la semaine prochaine), avec 45.043.270 liens actifs. À plus mauvais, c'est a substantiel culture secondaire.

Mais, l'amusement comme limites aiment “Bleg,” “Blogroach,” “Fisk”, “Idiotarian,” ou “Instapundit” peut être, je ne pensent pas que je vais avoir beaucoup d'utilisation pour la plupart de jargon blogging. J'espère écrire comme prose franche comme je bidon, sujet à la nécessité occasionnelle d'exprimer des idées et la nuance complexes, et naturellement à la privation systémique de sommeil.

Well, the first sentence is great. But the last paragraph is a mess. “J'espère écrire comme prose franche comme je bidon”? I don't think that's quite what I meant.

Reminds me of the old joke about the test for a translation program. Supposedly, during the Cold War there was a lot of research on Russian-English translation for use on the hotline between the White House and the Kremlin. The story goes that the spec called for a program that could take an English phrase, translate it to Russian, then when the output was run through the program again in the reverse direction would translate it back into the original English. So the engineers came up with a prototype, and input their test phrase: “Out of sight, out of mind” and got back some Russian. When they input the Russian, they got back “Blind drunk”.

Posted in Completely Different, Discourse.net | 3 Comments

An Unexpectedly Weird and Slightly Guilty Pleasure

Posted on September 24, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

There is obviously something slightly egotistical about starting a blog—the assumption that someone, somewhere, maybe with luck a number of someones all over, might care about what I have to say. I was prepared to plead guilty to that one. In my defense I'd say that the primary purpose was more to join what seems to be an ongoing conversation rather than simply to climb a soap box.

That said, at least in these early and little-travelled days, it's weirdly interesting and pleasurable to see who is linking to this site .

And one link in particular is just inscrutably odd and tantalizing. It reads, in its entirety, as follows:

"Prof. Michael Froomkin has a blog.
I will link to it
for reasons I cannot say."
Posted in Discourse.net | 2 Comments

A New Blog

Posted on September 15, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

The world needs another weblog like a hole in the head. It seemed to me, though, that I had a few things to say. And although I’ve been running a weblog called ICANNWatch for years, it’s very specialized, and unsuited for more personal musings. So here it is.

In future posts I’ll try to say a little more about who I am and what my interests are. My main goal right now is getting the site running and redoing the templates. If you stumble on this now, before the official roll-out, I suppose I ought to point out that I also have an official (boring) homepage, and a somewhat more interesting personal homepage at law.tm–although it’s a little disorganized.

Posted in Discourse.net | Comments Off on A New Blog