I was recently poring over some of the excellent books by the late British educator and popularizer in the world of philosophy and critical self-reflection Bryan Magee. Throughout this lovely spree of reading and serpentine contemplation, I was enjoying myself and hop-skipping from page to page, practically dilly-dallying in all…
It is quite simple, actually: that there are phenomena that we cannot explain —such as moments or events that run the gamut of the fortuitous, accidental, absurd, miraculous, paranormal, or otherwise inexplicable—does not in itself justify our attributing a cause or explanation of any kind to these phenomena. If we…
The registers of a language are a fascinating thing. Even the mere fact that registers exist is fascinating. And while everyone can recognize that the kind of language that we use as human beings varies with the circumstance—people don’t use the same vocabulary and phraseology in a courtroom as in…
It is evident as a kind of motive intrinsic to the vast majority of media and entertainment that it believes it matters, and this entertainment continues to exist for a single correlative reason: as viewers in the audience, we believe that it matters. But neither of those assertions actually implies…
For the translator in the twenty-first century, one of the most fervently repeated collocations of the times has to be machine and translation, those two suggestive siblings that have gone on to establish their reputations as the acrobats in a traveling circus of technology. As members of the audience, both…
In the world of professional translation, it goes without saying that the technological advances of the past few decades and, in particular, those of the rampant additions to the translation market such as ChatGPT and other kinds of artificial intelligence have meant the continuous upheaval of the industry. But this…
Known the world over as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages–I assume that all the diligent, methodical precision used to create these levels in the first place has to be applied to the title itself, which is very precise but a pain in the **s to remember–the CEFR…
En cualquier película que tenga la cantidad de energía que se derrocha a raudales en las obras del director manchego Pedro Almodóvar, que dio con Laberinto de pasiones (1982) uno de sus magníficos saltos iniciales a lo que sería una trayectoria artística más que fructífera, como mínimo cabría darse cuenta…
I Recuerdo haber leído en un libro del periodista español Pedro Cuartango, un autor con su propio estilo elegante y filosófico, que la incertidumbre es una cosa que no se puede escapar y que incluso nos es necesaria para vivir. Toda la vida está llena de esa incertidumbre por la…
Un documental de 2021 que mira a España desde la perspectiva marginada de los refugiados llegados a sus fronteras —en algunos casos tras haber aguantado una travesía que ha tenido un precio mortal para sus seres queridos, familiares o amigos— Bienvenidos a España revela sobre todo algunas de las dificultades…
