Brewing up a storm

Often all too easily and quickly labelled ‘paradise’ there’s a tendency to forget that tropical parts of the world, due to their climate, can be periodically subject to devastating cyclones. As the 2012-2013 cyclone season draws, theoretically, to a close in my part of the world – the south-west Indian Ocean – here are some cyclone-related language facts I’ve rounded up.

• ‘Cyclone’, ‘typhoon’, and ‘hurricane’ and are all different words for the same phenomena, used in the Indian, Pacific, Atlantic Oceans respectively. ‘Cyclone’ is also used in Australia & Indonesia, and ‘hurricane’ in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and eastern North Pacific. (Note that as I live in the Indian Ocean I’ve used the term ‘cyclone’ throughout this post).
• Etymologically ‘cyclone’ comes from the Ancient Greek kyklon ”moving in a circle, whirling around,” present participle of kykloun ”move in a circle, whirl,” from kyklos ”circle”. In the modern world it was first used in 1848 by a British East India Company official, Henry Piddington, to describe the devastating storm of December 1789 in Coringa, India [1].

Cyclone Gamede hit Reunion in 2007 and broke most of the world’s rainfall records (already held by Reunion!).

• ‘Hurricane’ is a partially deformed adaptation from the Spanish huracan/furacan from an Arawakan (W. Indies) word for the Taino storm god Juracán, whom the Taínos believed dwelled on El Yunque mountain and, when he was upset, sent the strong winds and rain upon them. In Portuguese, it became furacão. The OED records 39 different spellings, mostly from the late 16th century, including forcane, herrycano, harrycain, hurlecane. The modern form became frequent from 1650, and established after 1688. Shakespeare uses hurricano (in “King Lear” and “Troilus and Cressida”), but in reference to waterspouts. [2] [3]
• The word typhon (Τυφῶν) exists in Ancient Greek, personified as a giant, father of the winds, perhaps from typhein ”to smoke”. The current meaning of the word, in reference to titanic storms in the East Indies, first appears in Europe in Portuguese in the mid-16th century. It is probably of Sinitic origin, Mandarin 大风 (dàfēng, “big wind”), Cantonese 大風 (daai fung, “big wind”), via Arabic طوفان (ṭūfān), Persian  توفان (tufân), and Hindi तूफ़ान (tūfān) meaning “big cyclonic storm.” So although the Arabic word sometimes is said to be from the Greek it is unrelated and the latter has likely contaminated the eastern word. [4] [5]

What’s in a name?

Why name cyclones? Due to their long-term persistence, and the need for a unique identifier in issuing forecasts and warnings, cyclones are given names to ease communication between forecasters and the general public regarding forecasts, watches, and warnings. Since cyclones can often last a week or longer and more than one can be occurring in the same basin at the same time, names can reduce the confusion about what cyclone is being described. According to one source [6], the first use of a proper name for a cyclone was by an Australian forecaster early in the 20th century who named them “after political figures whom he disliked. By properly naming a hurricane, the weatherman could publicly describe a politician (who perhaps was not too generous with weather-bureau appropriations) as ‘causing great distress’ or ‘wandering aimlessly about the Pacific.’”! The official practice of naming cyclones started in 1945; until then as well as annoying politicians they had been named after mythological creatures, saints and place names. Generally cyclones are named when they are judged to have sustained windspeeds of 65 km/h, although at this stage they will still only be a ‘tropical storm’ and not yet a ‘cyclone’.

A consequence of cyclone Dumile, January 2013, Reunion Island

• North Atlantic - cyclones are named by the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Six lists of names, alternating between masculine and feminine, are used in alphabetical order, and maintained by the World Meteorological Organization with them rotating on a yearly basis.
• Eastern Pacific - there are two Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers (RSMCs) who assign names, in Miami and Honolulu. Should a cyclone pass from one area of responsibility to another it retains its original name.
• Southern Pacific - cyclones are named by the Regional Specialized Meteorological Center in Nadi, Fiji (RSMC Nadi).  Cyclones that move into the Australian region retain their original name.
• Australian Region - there are 5 different official Tropical Cyclone Warning Centers who assign names to cyclones (Jakarta, Port Moresby, Perth, Darwin, or Brisbane). However as three of the warning centres are run by the Bureau of Meteorology of Australia, only 3 lists of names exist.  In Australia the names are assigned in alphabetical order, alternating between masculine and feminine names, with the lists used in rotating order without regard to year. A name may be skipped if it is not deemed appropriate when it is due to be used (e.g. it is the same as the name of a public figure who is in the news for a sensitive or controversial reason)!

Images of the seven tropical cyclone “basins” where storms occur on a regular basis around the world and the Regional Speciliazed Meteorological Centers in charge.

For all of the cases above significant cyclones have their names retired from the lists with a replacement name selected at the next World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Regional Association IV Hurricane Committee meeting.

• Northwestern Pacific Ocean - there are two separate agencies who assign names to cyclones which often results in a cyclone having two names. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) names cyclones to the north of the equator between the 180° and 100°E. Names are contributed by the 14 states or territories members of the ESCAP/WMO Typhoon Committee who each submit 10 names, which are used in alphabetical order, by the English name of the country. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration assigns names to cyclones which move into or form in their area of responsibility (135°-115°E and 5°-25°N) even if the cyclone has had a name assigned to it by the JMA.
• North Indian Ocean basin – the Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre in New Delhi has assigned names since 2006. There is no retirement of cyclone names here as the list of names is only scheduled to be used once before a new list of names is drawn up. Should it move into the basin from the Western Pacific it retains its original name.
• South-west Indian Ocean - it is the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre on Réunion Island who decides when a cyclone should be named. However it is the Sub-Regional Tropical Cyclone Advisory Centres in Mauritius and Madagascar who actually name the systems. Mauritius names the cyclone should it intensify between 55°-90°E; and between 30°-55°E Madagascar assigns the name. New name lists are used every year, whilst a name is normally only used once thus no names are retired.

Track map of all storms in the 2012–13 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season. The points show the location of the storm at 6-hour intervals.

After a few relatively quiet years this year’s cyclone season has been pretty active in the SW Indian Ocean, as you can see from the map above. Nine systems were named.

A few proverbs and sayings based on storms:

• “Any port in a storm”
• “In the eye of a storm”
• “Storm in a teacup” (Incir cekirdegini doldurmaz - “Storm in a walnut shell” in Turkish)
• “Whoever sows wind shall harvest storm.”

Finally I’d like to leave you with the following links:

• The American Meteorology Society’s Glossary of Meteorology
• Tropical cyclones in popular culture  and What fictional books, plays, poems, and movies have been written involving tropical cyclones?

Do you live in a cyclone-prone part of the world? Do you have any storm-related proverbs to add to the list? Let me know in the comments.

Sources:

[1] [2] [4] http://www.etymonline.com

[3] [5] http://en.wiktionary.org

[6] Dunn, G.E. and B.I. Miller (1960): Atlantic Hurricanes, Louisiana State Univ. Press, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 377pp, quoted here.

The ‘blogosphere’

Both my blogs (this one and my other one) are mentioned in the current edition of Reunion Multimedia, a local bimonthly magazine about Information and communications technology (ICT).

 The article says:

“REUNIONESE BLOGOSPHERE

Smart Travels & A Smart Translator’s Reunion: two local blogs in English.

Originally from London, Catharine has lived in Reunion for 17 years [sic]. Realising that there was little information about Reunion island for non-French speakers, the freelance French to English translator started blogging. With the same idea in mind she also tweets at @NewsFromReunion. Her first blog, Smart Travels (http://travelssmart.blogspot.com) recounts her travels (mainly in Asia, where she live and travelled for three years) but also – especially – her walks and hikes in La Réunion. There’s also a lot of practical information for all those who want to visit or learn more about the island. Her second blog is called A Smart Translator’s Reunion (http:// asmarttranslatorsreunion.wordpress.com). As its name indicates, it is “Another language & translation blog (but probably the only one from Réunion Island).” On this blog she publishes her thoughts on this theme, her chosen field of expertise, but also writes articles about our island, especially Reunion Creole, and literature in English referring to Réunion.

A great way to publicize and promote the culture of Réunion to our fellow English speakers”.

Etes-vous prêt pour le SEPA ?

Vous êtes au courant ? A partir du 1er février 2014 le numéro RIB disparaitra et de nouvelles coordonnées bancaires vont devenir obligatoires pour tous les virements et prélèvements réalisés dans la zone euro. Les comptes en banque seront numérotés différemment, à l’identique dans toute l’Union Européenne. En effet, après la monnaie unique il s’agit d’une nouvelle étape pour l’Europe qui entend achever sont “espace unique de paiements en euros” ou Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). Tous les pays de l’Union européenne, même ceux n’ayant pas l’euro comme monnaie, plus Monaco, la Suisse, le Lichtenstein, la Norvège et l’Islande sont membres du SEPA.

Single Euro Payments Area avec ses 32 membres.

Donc à partir de février toutes les opérations interbancaires devront être SEPA-compatibles. Une nouvelle numérotation remplacera celle des Relevés d’Identité Bancaires qui étaient jusqu’ici la norme pour les virements en France. Le bon vieux RIB qu’on connait est généralement composé d’un code établissement, d’un code guichet, d’un numéro de compte et d’une clé RIB. Par contre le code IBAN s’articule autour d’un code pays (FR pour la France), de plusieurs séries de 4 chiffres, suivi d’un code BIC (en 11 caractères) qui désigne l’établissement. Cette codification sera la même pour tous les comptes domiciliés au sein de l’Union européenne.

En France les identifiants BIC et IBAN figurent sur les imprimés des RIB depuis 2001. Les virements aux normes SEPA sont possibles depuis 2008 et les prélèvements depuis 2010. La différence c’est qu’elles seront désormais obligatoires. Actuellement en France plus de 30% des virements sont déjà effectués selon les normes SEPA, mais seulement 0,7% des prélèvements.

Nous voila prévenus – au-dela du 1er février les banques n’accepteront plus les anciennes coordonnées bancaires. Ce qui risque d’occasionner des rejets d’opération, donc des retards de paiement et des couts supplémentaires. Une entreprise qui n’aurait pas basculé au 14 février 2014 se retrouverait de fait en situation de cessation de paiement. Les enjeux sont énormes car en France les banques traitent chaque année 2,9 milliards opérations de virements et 3,4 milliards de prélèvements, mais il faudrait travailler le passage au SEPA car le changement ne va se faire tout seul.

Orange = IBAN uniquement. Bleu = SEPA et IBAN

Quels sont les enjeux pour nous, traducteurs ? Si vous avez des clients qui vous paient par virement bancaire assurez-vous qu’ils ont tous l’IBAN de votre compte bancaire afin d’éviter des retards de paiement inutiles.  Notez que l’une des nouveautés pour les destinataires de prélèvements est un délai de contestation sans justification de 8 semaines après la date de débit. Et rapprochez-vous de votre banque pour tous vos virements et prélèvements.

Pour en savoir davantage:

• SEPA, l’échéance 2014 approche : êtes-vous prêts ? (article dans Les Echos)
• Comité national SEPA France
• Ministère de l’économie et des finances
• Union Européenne 
• Wikipedia

The Translator Diaries

The Translator Diaries series is a weekly series of interviews conducted by colleague Lloyd Bingham with current freelance translators, looking at how and why they went into the industry. As Lloyd says:

“In this set of interviews, we will learn what makes them so passionate about translation, how they established themselves, and what obstacles they have overcome to succeed as a translator”.

Previous interviewees have been German to English translator Sarah Pybus, as well as French and German to English translators Clare Goodman and Megan Onions. I was honoured to be Lloyd’s fourth interviewee, and you can read the interview here.

Next week will see Lloyd interviewing French and Spanish to English translator Lydia Smith.

Tweaking Productivity

Over at Translation Times, Judy Jenner recently mentioned one of her bad habits as being Shiny Object Syndrome, i.e. getting distracted by something else when you should be concentrating on the task in hand. In my case the shiny objects are definitely e-mail and Vienna (my RSS feed), and to a lesser extent Twitter and Facebook. One of the reasons I get so distracted by e-mail and RSS is that both have a bright red ‘unread count’ badge which appears in the Dock on my iMac. Since I upgraded to Mountain Lion there are also notifications that appear on the opposite side of computer screen. Help! When I’m working I find it very difficult to avoid the red badge and am generally not happy unless nothing is showing there – but constantly interrupting myself like this is not conducive to concentrating on my real, paid work.

So this week rather than just submitting I finally got round to doing something about it. On my computer I’d configured Mail to check for new e-mail every 15 minutes and Vienna for new RSS feeds every hour, and I haven’t changed that. But in the Preferences of the current version of Mail (6.2), surprisingly, it’s no longer possible to hide the unread count. After a bit of snooping around on the internet I found the solution – you need to go to System Preferences, where you can turn off the notification alerts, as well as uncheck the Badge app icon. However I did add an application called Mail Unread Menu which allows you to have a tiny icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen with the number of unread e-mails – much less distracting. For Vienna it’s easier, as in its Preferences you just need to select ‘Do nothing’ under ‘When new unread articles are retrieved’ (a discreet icon remains in the menu bar). I could of course just hide the Dock which shows all the software icons, but I prefer when it’s visible.

The Notification center for Mail in System Preferences

Having done this I definitely found it easier to concentrate on the work in hand, as I had less distractions. And just a few clicks are needed when I need or want to change things back again.

What adjustments have you made to help your productivity? Please share in the comments.

Parallel novels

I recently finished reading Geraldine Brooks‘ March, which I think along with Jean Rhys‘ Wide Sargasso Sea, is only the second parallel novel I’ve read. What’s a parallel novel? According to Wikipedia:

 ”Parallel novels are written within, or derived from, the framework of another work of fiction by another author. This does not include franchised book series, which are typically works licensed by the publisher of the original work to use its settings and characters … . Works … usually have the same setting and time period, and many of the same characters, but are told from a different perspective”.

So for example in March, Geraldine Brooks took the character of the (absent) father from Little Women - who had gone off to fight in the American Civil War – and wrote an original story recounting his experiences. It’s a powerful book that I enjoyed reading which explores themes such as injustice, a woman’s place, miscommunication, abolitionism, racial bigotry, slavery, and obligations. I last read Little Women when I was, well, little, and couldn’t remember very much about the story but that wasn’t a hindrance in understanding or following the story in March. I’m not surprised it won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, although it has been compared to ‘respectable’ ‘fan fiction‘ (see here).

First edition cover of ‘March’

I read Jean Rhys’ most successful novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, a few years ago, and enjoyed it too, although maybe not quite so much as March. Published in 1966 it acts as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, written in 1847. It tells the story of Antoinette Cosway (known as Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre) from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage with Mr Rochester and relocation to England. Rhys, who was born in Dominica, re-imagined Brontë’s ‘madwoman in the attic’, and deals largely with the theme of racial inequality. She used several narrative voices: Antoinette, Rochester and Grace Poole (the caretaker). In 2005 WSS was named by Time as one of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923, and is rated N° 94 on the list of Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels.

First edition cover of ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’

Have you read any parallel novels? I’ve been unable to find any in French – if you are aware of any do let me know in the comments. What about in other languages?

Some other examples of parallel novels:

• The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (based on Homer’s Odyssey)
• Jack Maggs by Peter Carey (based on Dickens’ Great Expectations)
• Foe by JM Coetzee (based on Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe)
• Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton (based on Beowulf)
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham (based on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway)
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet)
• Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike (based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet)

Further reading:

• List of fictional works using settings created by other artists (Wikipedia)
• List of/article about parallel novels (West Milford Township Library, New Jersey, USA)

A British member of the Académie Française

The poet, translator, literary critic and academic Michael Edwards has recently been elected to the Académie Française, becoming its first British-born member.

Michael Edwards (source)

For those who don’t know the Académie Française it’s the French body entrusted with safeguarding the French language. Officially established in 1635 it has forty seats (although four are currently empty) and members are known as immortels. Most immortels are writers, although there are or have also been politicians, lawyers, scientists, historians, philosophers, and senior (Catholic) clergymen. There’s no rule that they be born in France, though they must hold French nationality. Immortels hold the post for life, but can’t be elected if they’re over the age of 75 (Edwards is two months shy of his 75th birthday). They are voted in, and this was Edwards’ third attempt, although applying several times before finally being admitted is apparently a sort of rite of passage. In this year’s vote, Edwards beat Jean-Noël Jeanneney, a former minister. Although he’s the first British-born immortel, there have been several bilinguals before him, notably the Franco-American writer Julien Green.

The reason I was especially interested in Edward’s election is that he’s a former pupil of my school, Kingston Grammar School, which is where he discovered French. Born in Barnes, he read modern languages at Cambridge before teaching at Essex university and holding the chairs for French and English at Warwick University. He later took up a post at the prestigious Collège de France higher education and research establishment. He is married to a Frenchwoman and has dual British-French citizenship. A prolific writer and poet in both English and French, he has written on Shakespeare, Molière and Racine and Rimbaud amongst others.

Lovekyn Chapel, Kingston Grammar School, which dates from 1309.

The Académie Française works to preserve the purity of the French language, and is against the use ‘franglais’ and English words in French. Will Michael Edward’s membership change anything? Quoted in The Independent (see below) he hopes his contribution will be “to show that the presence of English is not only a threat”. He recognises that the French are on the defensive, seeing their language under threat from an English invasion, but believes that English can actually help French to develop: “Rather than being a menace, it could help enrich French,” he says.

To find out more (in French):

• Biographie & Bibliographie sur le site du Collège de France
• Christophe Carlier: «Michael Edwards est élu trop tard» - Le Figaro, 21/02/2013
• Michael Edwards, élu à l’Académie française - Le Figaro, 21/02/2013
• Michael Edwards devient un Immortel - Le Mot Juste blog, 24/02/2013
• Michael Edwards – Collège de France, 2005 – Le génie de la poésie anglaise (video)

To find out more (in English):

• British poet becomes ‘immortal’ as he’s chosen to guard French language - The Telegraph, 21/02/2013
• Magnifique! Académie française elects first British-born member – The Guardian, 22/02/2013
• Poet becomes first Briton elected to illustrious Académie Française – The Independent, 22/02/2013
• Biography on Wikipedia

Language(s) of Mayotte

Ever heard of Mayotte? Located in the Mozambique Channel, and geographically one of the Comoros Islands, it’s France’s newest département (1). Recently back from my second trip there, I thought I’d share with you some information about the languages of this little-known island.

Location of Mayotte (source)

As a French (overseas) département the official language is French and this is what is used in administration, public education and the media. However French presence in Mayotte only dates from the mid-19th century, whereas the Comoros islands have been inhabited for roughly 1000 years. A 2006 survey showed that about 57% of the population spoke French as a first or second language. Archaeology has established that the island was peopled by a mix of Bantu tribespeople from East Africa, Arabs from the Persian Gulf, people of Indonesian origin (possibly travelling to Madagascar), traders, and sailors. This diversity influenced the languages spoken on the island and today there are two main vernacular languages spoken on Mayotte, which illustrate its geographical position well: Shimaore, derived from Swahili, and Kibushi, of Malagasy origin. Arabic is also known, as children attend Quranic schools from an early age, (where they learn to read from right to left before attending French public school where they learn to read from left to right!).

Map showing Comoros Islands including Mayotte (source)

Shimaore is mother tongue for about 80% of the population, and belongs to the same linguistic family as the languages of the other Comorian islands, which are known as Shimasiwa. At a higher level it belongs to the Bantu language group, spoken in most of Central and Eastern Africa, and has similarities with the Shona and Makua languages. Shimaore can be written in Roman or Arabic characters, but doesn’t (yet) have set spelling. It has three varieties: a pure form called swafi, and two varieties influenced by the dialects of the neighbouring islands of Anjouan and Grande Comore. It’s mainly used in public meetings, in the media, and in personal correspondence.

Map of Mayotte (source)

Kibushi is from the Malagasy language family and is native to roughly 30% of the population (some families grow up bilingual, which explains why the percentage total of speakers is more than 100%). It is heavily influenced by Shimaore and Arabic. Here too there are two dialectal forms: Kibushi kimaore, linked to the dialects spoken in Nosy Be and eastern Madagascar, is spoken in south and west Mayotte and probably arrived in the 19th century. Kibushi kiantalautsi seems to be older as it borrows many more words from Shimaore.

A sign in French and Shimaoré

Finally more and more inhabitants of Mayotte (35.2% as a first or second language according to the 2006 survey) speak Shindzwani, the Comorian dialect spoken on Anjouan. This is because Mayotte is currently in the grip of a high level of illegal immigration from its nearest neighbour.

Here are some examples of French, Shimaoré and Kibushi using the short phrase “Welcome to Mayotte!” (note that Shimaore and Kibushi can also be written in Arabic script).

French: Bienvenue à Mayotte !

Shimaore: Namukaribu hunu Maore !

Kibushi kimaoré: Karibu anareu amin-ni tani Mahori !

For what it’s worth before travelling I looked up translators in Mayotte on Yellow Pages and Proz.com and found no results! (That’s not to say there are no translators or interpreters there of course, just that they’re not registered on either of these resources).

(1) For more information about Mayotte see here.

Bibliography

Mayotte Encycloguide by Gilles Nourault and François Perrin, Editions Orphie 2003, ISBN: 2-87763-207-5

Useful links:

• CIA World Factbook
• Ethnologue language entry on Mayotte
• Wikipedia

Further reading:

• Welcome to France: home of sun, sea, sand, polygamy and the Indian Ocean - The Guardian - 26th May 2009
• Mayotte votes to become France’s 101st département - The Telegraph - 29th May 2009
• EU shores spread to Indian Ocean island - Deutsches Welle - 31st March 2011
• Mayotte: Department 101 - The Basement Geographer - 4th April 2011
• Mayotte moves to modernity - The Guardian - 19th April 2011
• More Trouble in France: Mayotte Riots - PJ media - 19th October 2011
• Mayotte: The EU’s—and France’s—Troubled New Exclave - Geocurrents - 27th October 2011

Toad of Road Hall?

Killing time in a cheap toy shop today I couldn’t help being struck by the labelling on the (Chinese-made) toys.

While the substitution of T for R made the first the most amusing to me, the language of the others left a lot to be desired, with their invented words and meaningless sentences…!

What about frogs?

Is it just me, or is the ‘F’ badly placed?

Maybe this next one is just me. ‘Ideation‘ apparently does actually exist as a word, but it’s not exactly common, is it?

If I knew what ideation was, maybe I could enhance it.

The following text is apparently a recurrent error on packaging, given these links: Cheap Toy Poetry, Make Five and Engrish. Presumably should be ‘Once owned, nothing else will do’.

But what about if ‘Once owned, I don’t like?’

The last one is apparently pretty common too, on doll packaging.

Pure gobbledygook!

Useful web tools (part 3)

Here’s another round-up of some useful tools and websites I’ve come across recently which I’d like to share with you.

For Translation

• Jost Zetzsche shared this link to Useful free or inexpensive tools for translators in one of his recent International Writers Toolkit newsletters. It’s a list of 23 useful tools to make a translator’s life easier.
• I’m currently experimenting with Terra TMS which is a web-based translation management and invoicing system for language professionals. You can use it on any platform, and import your contacts from Excel or Outlook. There are different versions: Standard, Starter and Free. The free version lets you add up to 200 jobs and clients. I’ll write more about how I’m getting on with it in a future post. The same people have also developed a free Chrome extension called “Word Counter for Translators” to count the words (and characters) on a web page and calculate the number of standard lines.

Free Google Chrome extension

• On his Translation Tribulations blog Kevin Lossner shared his Excel rate equivalence spreadsheet that allows you to express your source word rate as a cost per standard line or page of target text. The downloadable file is full of Kevin’s own calculations to show you how it works, but you can replace it with your own statistics.
• Finally, CAT guru Dominique Pivard compares Terminotix Toolbar for Microsoft Word with the similar Intelliwebsearch in this video. Both are free; Terminotix is best suited for translators who work with French, English and perhaps Spanish and who translate directly in Word or use a Word-based translation tool, while IntelliWebSearch is more difficult to configure but is also more flexible and can be accessed from any Windows application. However as both are for PC computers only I haven’t been able to try them out myself – but I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has.

Language

• If, like me, you’re a non-native speaker of French you might occasionally get confused when you have to write out French numbers as words (do I need a hyphen? is it cent or cents?). With dCode you just enter the number as a figure and it gets converted to words.

Des chiffres et des lettres

General internet

• Collusion is an experimental add-on for Mozilla Firefox which allows you to see all the third parties that are tracking your movements across the Web. The result is quite … scary. Of course not all tracking is bad, but most of it happens without our knowledge and consent. So if you’re at all interested in internet transparency this is for you.
• Still on the subject of  Mozilla, I’m a great fan of Ted Talks, and in this short talk Mozilla Foundation’s COO, Ryan Merkley, shares Popcorn Maker, a new web-based tool for easy video remixing.  It’s based on the principle  that videos on the internet should work like the web itself: dynamic, full of links, maps and information that can be updated and edited live. With it you can use your web browser to combine video and audio with content from the rest of the web — from text, links and maps to pictures and live feeds. Impressive!

• 

  Ryan Merkley at Ted talks

• Gaelle Gagné of Trëma Translations recently mentioned IFTTT, a service that lets you create connections (it stands for If This Then That). The idea behind it is as follows: if  ’This’ happens Then it triggers ‘That’ action. An example of This might be ‘I publish a blog post’ or ‘I’m tagged in a photo on Facebook’, and the action that you’ve defined might be ‘send me a text message’ or ‘publish on Twitter’. There are currently triggers and actions for more than 56 channels (LinkedIn, Foursquare, Flickr, Dropbox, etc).
• Not long ago I was travelling for a month with my laptop, and of course checking my e-mails using my e-mail software (I prefer this to using webmail). When I returned home and was using my main computer I didn’t have access to my recent Gmail messages in my e-mail software because they’d already been downloaded onto my laptop. The solution is to go to your POP client settings and replace ‘username@gmail.com’ with ‘recent:username@gmail.com’.  This downloads messages from the past month.
• If you follow Marta Stelmaszak’s Wantwords blog you might have seen her three posts “Do We Use The Right words on Our Websites to Offer Translation Services?” which took a look at the texts agencies and freelance translators use on their websites. To do this she used the nifty tool Online-utility.org which finds the most frequent words of web site content (or any arbitrary text). (The 5 most frequent words on the English version of my website are: to, smart, translate, a, of).

Twitter

• Curious about who has retweeted you the most on Twitter? http://whoretweets.me is a little web-based application that will tell you just that.
• Want to unfollow Twitter users who don’t follow you back? http://unfollow.ferrastudios.com/Unfollow.

Books

• Small Demons is a literary search engine and self-proclaimed ‘storyverse’ that lets you explore the world of books. You can search for a person, place or thing and see which books they or it occur in. It only searches books in English, and to be honest I found it somewhat limited – a search for Madagascar as a place brought up no results, for example  - but I’m sure it will improve over time. But for the moment I think I prefer sticking to a tag search on Librarything (546 tags for Madagascar, by way of comparison!).

You might also like:

• Useful web tools Part 1
• Useful web tools Part 2