Because Spanish and English are two different languages with a myriad of histories, cultures, and ways of conceptualizing the world, they use different rhetorical strategies to form ideas and construct sentences. These strategies and their results in written discourse—which, after all, is the most pertinent for the translator—can be not only interesting but entertaining in their own right. Any time spent dwelling on the comparative gems of the Spanish and English languages is time well…
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Knowledge Organization and Dissemination In a world that is increasingly globalized and interconnected, consumers and businesses alike have come to inhabit a marketplace of goods and services that have also become increasingly globalized and technology-driven. In this modern-day context, marketing as an academic field and commercial practice has become all the more pivotal for businesses and companies. And as a corollary of this importance of marketing for businesses, there is an evident need not only…
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In the wake of every origin story that makes its way into the popular imagination—be it in athletics or academics, politics or entertainment—there is the same tendency to elevate someone who has attained a measure of success above their prior conditions. Human beings, as has often been said, love the story of the underdog, and no doubt the opinion of the majority would see injustice in considering those who were previously impoverished as anything but…
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We have a world aflame with the chatter and mile-a-minute passions of the Internet; access to technology that spans every imaginable medium; exposure to more people and more places than ever before; the fleet and evanescent flicker of thoughts and ideas uttered by those who are both anonymous and celebrated, top of mind and ushered into oblivion. Never has the challenge of integrating the thoughts and ideas of others been more overwhelming—or more imperative. In…
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Action is of the utmost importance. How could it be otherwise? How many people have said again and again that the utility of knowledge is in its application, that knowledge is useless unless applied to the world of action or taken advantage of for some ulterior purpose? Something has to be made of knowledge, they say. And yet almost everything about my own experience, together with that of many others, has told me that knowing…
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In the second episode of the wonderful 2000 Dutch documentary series Of Beauty and Consolation, which features 26 interviews with 26 of the world’s leading turn-of-the-century scholars, authors, artists, and intellectuals, the late Roger Scruton makes an insightful diagnosis of what is likely to be one of the great human conundrums of the twenty-first century: while we have more information as a society as well as more access to more information than ever, our understanding…
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Both inside and outside the translation industry, confusion often abounds about the difference between the terms translation and localization. Some clarity is therefore in order: the two words are indeed different, though far from being so distinct in all situations that they could occupy different sectors of the industry. In fact, it’s just the opposite: they are closely related—so close, to our collective chagrin, that we find ourselves in a little translator tizzy. Let’s get…
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What are these repeated machinations of a world gone mad and doused in a thousand oils? It is the mechanical clinking of the behavioral timepiece that sooner or later falls into silence—which is always, of course, only for a while. From time to time, whenever I have the opportunity on a Sunday afternoon to watch my father playing on the well-preserved and luxuriant fairways of a golf course, tautened like a drum head from tee…
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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 the wisdom of books that I can include among the most influential on my worldview as a human being, such as Confessions of a Philosopher…
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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 concede the simple and credible assertion that human existence is filled with all kinds of inexplicable phenomena, then the only reasonable response to these phenomena…
