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 a taxi or a supermarket—for the student of a foreign language, the importance of a grasp of multiple registers is often underplayed or overlooked. And…
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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 that it in itself matters enough to be worth watching, much less valorizing and investing the better part of our nighttime leisure and emotional livelihood…
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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 captivated and unsettled by the performance in the ring and the apparently high-flying stunts of our little siblings, translators have front-row seats that make them…
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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 upheaval is nothing new—in fact, these changes should come as no surprise to the more veteran translators on websites and digital watering holes such as…
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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 is used most commonly in Europe to classify the proficiency of learners of a foreign language. Given that I reside here in the United States,…
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It happens all too frequently that even when they’re worth the trouble—and God knows there are plenty of different kinds of trouble—too many books appear on the shelves to announce themselves with the fanfare of their packaging, a fine illustration, or the sheer volume and heft of their multitudinous pages, often with some kind of pretentious adornment like deckled edges. It wants to scream to the potential reader: I am important and goddamn it I’m…
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In the browbeating rage and turmoil running like a poisoned artery through the body and life of Johnny, a low-class and frustrated shmuck of an intellectual from Manchester, a rapist wandering London in search of a living, breathing person on whom he can inflict his spleen and disappointment, something of the glory of Hamlet rises to the surface. It might be only an illusion, or a slow-rising something like a bubble that just pops before…
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The style of put-‘em-up scuffles erupting from time to time in The Strawberry Blonde, directed by Raoul Walsh, is a glove-like fit for the belligerent character assigned to the impressive, balletic, and pent-up James Cagney, who had a background as a dancer segueing into his film career that shows in his powerful, tightly coiled movements. That character, Biff Grimes, is supposed to be a dentist in turn-of-the-century New York ready at any moment to fling…
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In the fourth part of Albert Camus’ humane and heartfelt masterpiece, The Plague, taking place in the French port of Oran on the Algerian coast, there is a moment of quiet surprise following a scene where an innocent child lets out a final, death-rattling wail as he expires in a hospital ward, tortured to the end by the deadly bacillus that is overtaking the town like a wildfire tearing into the heart of a forest.…
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The close-set and benign features on the face of the Italian actor Ninetto Davoli seem to incarnate stupidity more completely than in any other actor that I’ve ever seen. It is almost uncanny, the perfect embodiment of a trait not always easy to bring out—and not always gratifying to bring to life as an actor, to be sure. But Davoli does it, and so utterly that I’ve moved beyond seeing in his performance that of…
