When I looked closer, it turned out that it was a cache folder for Windows Media Player. The thing is, I never use WMP. It is on my computer because I installed Windows. It seems that by default, WMP runs a service that writes to the WMP cache all album art I download through iTunes – and that repeatedly. I found a Microsoft forum entry where someone claimed that WMP had accumulated over 2 million files. Whenever you do a virus scan or a data backup, all those files have to be handled, which can slow down the process considerably.

If WMP is not your preferred media player, you want to make sure that the cache is empty and the service turned off. Here you can find a description of how to turn off the service. After that, delete all art in the folder C:/Windows/ServiceProfiles/NetworkServices/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Media Player/Art Cache/LocalLMS. You have to have your Windows Explorer set to show hidden and system files to see the content.

This remedy may seem scary to some. One possible alternative is to use Piriform CCleaner. With this program you can set up any number of custom files or folders to be included in the general cleaning routine. Go to Options > Include and Add the path to the WMP cache. Then, when you run the Cleaner function of CCleaner, any newly accumulated art will be deleted.

Thank heavens for the Internet. For translators, it has made researching subjects in their target language easier than ever. It was not so long ago that I had to buy countless dictionaries, reference books, and magazine subscriptions, just to keep my head above water. Today, the Internet is my major go-to resource. However, clouds have appeared on the horizon. More and more I find that German material published on the Internet has fallen in quality, and has fallen deeply. It has become more complicated to negotiate one’s way through the ever-increasing mountains of garbage that are published on the Web. These days, translators relying on the Internet as their resource have to exercise great caution to separate the useful from the ridiculous.

At first, it seems puzzling that more and more translators take to the Internet only to be forced to discard more and more of what they find – if they are conscientious. But the Web is indiscriminate. Good material appears right next to barely understandable language. Yet for many, the fact that something can be found on the Web is a stamp of approval. Which closes the vicious circle: Some phrase or terminology is used in a new translation because it appears on the Web. This new translation is then published on-line, and even more indiscriminate translators use it, which leads to even more Google hits.

There are many sources of sub-standard German. Translation memories, for example, much more so than anyone would admit. It would go a long way toward quality improvement if translation companies (and some direct clients) would spend as much time and effort on proper TM maintenance as they do on ferreting out percentage matches to reduce their cost. Editors, even of specialized trade publications, often shoot from the hip in order to include German versions of news quickly. The disastrous results then find their way into the on-line version from where indiscriminate translators gobble them up. And then there is the infamous crowd-sourcing, particularly popular with companies that live mainly on the Web. The idea that a bunch of non-translators can achieve, for free, a better result than professional translators is just laughable. Faster maybe, but better? Or even simply clear and correct? Here is an example of the “wisdom of the crowd” from an on-line company, which I will call MapBoys (to protect myself – there are no innocents in the commission of this text), a real-time mapping application:

Die Fahrer-Community in Ihrem Land hat soeben begonnen sich aufzubauen, daher mag es eine Weile dauern, bis MapBoys den vollumfaenglichen Dienst in Ihrer Zone leistet. Merken Sie sich, dass am Anfang moeglicherweise noch keine Landkarte vorhanden ist und Sie die Strassen in diesem Fall neu registrieren muessten. Falls Sie mapping moegen, ist dies eine fantastische Zeit sich fuer MapBoys einzusetzen, und Sie werden sich koestlich vergnuegen

Translation skill is not something every native speaker is born with. It has to be learned, practiced, and honed. The idea that the “hive mind” leads to better results in translation seems to assume that the choice of words, sentence structure and tone is like the choice of a favorite ice cream flavor. Except that with language there are rights and wrongs, there are cultural expectations, and there are distinctive style levels, with some of which you may not necessarily want a product or service to be associated. Sure, language changes. Written language, however, changes a lot more slowly than one would think. And yes, the above example is understandable to any German speaker who can extrapolate. But that doesn’t make it acceptable, not as a translation and not as a simple piece of German text. Still there it is, on the Internet, and by now, it probably has been used as a template for a couple of new translations already.

And than there’s Linguee. Again, I am glad it exists and I use it a lot, not so much as a “dictionary” but as a German thesaurus when I need suggestions for different phrasing. I used to work in the editorial department of Collins on their big English-German dictionary. I know how much scrutiny the work of entry compilers received before their material even made it to the desk of the editor – let alone how much of it did not survive the eye of the editor. The aggregation of multi-language Internet content in parallel form is hardly a dictionary. But how can we stop people from treating it like one? A conscientious translator would read a number of results in Linguee, go to the links to see the larger context, and consider the source of the target-language section. Yet from many translations I edit it is painfully clear that the translator just picked the first choice Linguee presented. And tools such as Linguee draw from the ever more polluted pool of German translations on the Web.

This rant wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging the important role in-country reviewers play in polluting the Internet resources. I wish in-country reviewers would stick to reviewing terminology as it pertains to their products and services. How is it possible to convince all those sales people, secretaries, nieces and nephews of bosses, and other assorted specialists of that? There are quite a few abominations up on the Web that have been through successful in-country reviews. Often they are that way because of  the in-country review. Once up on the Web, they are fed into aggregations, “dictionaries,” bilingual searches, and find their way into a new generation of sub-par translations.

It is not good enough simply to find a hit when searching for terminology or target-language context. Each hit has to be treated with caution and the translator has to make sure that the source is reliable. That can be quite time-consuming and work-intensive. But remember GIGO: If you just pick the first result that is displayed and it is garbage, it will be a new piece of “garbage in” when your translation is published on-line, and this will be the reason why there will be even more “garbage out” the next time.

If you as a translator want to be able to continue using the Web as a resource, you have to be aware that the integrity of the output is dependent on the integrity of the input. Make your translation count.

Living in a city where, according to a quote whose source I cannot pinpoint right now, “smoking marijuana is legal, but watering the lawn before 5 pm can get you arrested,” I am pleased to see that someone is addressing the concerns of those who don’t want to ruin the beneficial effects of pot by smoking and the damage it can do to the lungs.

The key term you have to remember here is cannabaceutical. Toffee Turtles, for example, are edible cannabaceuticals. They claim to be “Decadent. Medicated. Delicious.” and in “compliance with CA 215, SB 420 and 11362.5 of HSC.” The manufacturer “is proud to offer its über-gourmet line of cannabaceutical products made using commercial-grade procedures and best practices.” What could go wrong?

To buy pot in one of the special marijuana dispensaries, you need a patient identification card issued by a doctor. Not a big hurdle, if you believe the numerous stories and how-to posts on the Internet. The list of qualifying ailments is all-encompassing and sufficiently vague.

Or you could simple go for a leisurely stroll along the Venice boardwalk and take a couple of deep breaths along the stretch where “doctors” ready to diagnose your pot-worthy ailments and pharmacies to dispense the cannabaceuticals cluster along the east side of Ocean Front Walk.

This famous quote by Dorothy Parker reminded me that as a result of my recent move I keep hearing this question from friends and family: How big exactly is Los Angeles?

There’s no simple answer. In other countries, there seems to be an ongoing consolidation among neighboring communities. Not so in the L.A. area. Therefore I will be writing “city of Los Angeles” to mean the incorporated city of L.A. – as opposed to the larger L.A. metropolitan area.

The city of Los Angeles covers an area of 503 square miles. Click on the map to the right to see a map of Los Angeles county (and the county’s location in the state of California). Areas marked in red demarcate the city of Los Angeles. Other areas are often referred to as Los Angeles, but they are independent incorporated cities (grey) or unincorporated communities in the county of Los Angeles. To have the port of Los Angeles inside the city limits, a long, narrow corridor following the Harbor Freeway connects South L.A. with San Pedro.

Now that we got that out of the way, here are the numbers:

▶ Los Angeles is the second most populous city in the United States.

▶ The city of Los Angeles has a population of 3.8 million

▶ The L.A. metro area (more or less equivalent to the EU’s Larger Urban Zone, or LUZ) has a population of 12.9 million

▶ And the CSA (Combined Statistical Area, a grouping of adjacent metropolitan and/or micropolitan statistical areas) has a population of 17.8 million.

How big is a 503 square mile area? On the left is an interesting map of Los Angeles that has the outlines of other U.S. cities superimposed. Among them you will see some familiar names. Since those city maps have not been distorted, they sometimes protrude into areas outside the city of Los Angeles. Since they also leave some city areas uncovered, however, it evens out to within one square mile. The map on the left also illustrates the point about lack of consolidation: The city of San Francisco in its incorporated limits is outright tiny.

Despite claims such as “x times faster,” Internet service providers usually never quite say faster than what, and the actual speed of data transmission is subject to a whole bunch of factors out of the customer’s control. With the enormous growth of subscribers to its video streaming system, Netflix has some understandable interest in the real-life delivery speed of its data, and they finally have published their findings.

The good news is that my readers in Kansas City have the opportunity to subscribe to the fastest ISP service: Google Fiber. The rest of the results is not quite as clear-cut. Most of the providers bunch around the middle of the scale, and DSL services fall, as one would expect, somewhat behind.

It is a good idea to test the real speed of your Internet connection to make sure that you get what you pay for. Most providers have some sort of test page on their website, and you can always go to an Internet speed test site, such as www.speedtest.net. Speedtest.net also offers an app for testing connection speeds on your smartphone.

You may not know this, but there is catholic boarding school in my past. It was a small school, and we gathered thrice daily in the refectorium, our dining hall. There, we were not allowed to talk. Instead, one student was delegated to read to us, usually an edifying text of a religious nature. Of course, you cannot have boys of that age together in one room and not expect them to make noise. Whenever the noise level threatened to drown out the reader, the padre on the head table would sharply ring a bell and call out “Silentium!” As strange as it may seem today, it worked with us. We’d all fall silent immediately, for a while anyway.

I had to fly to the East Coast the other day and was stuck for about five hours in front of a woman and a man. At the beginning of the trip, they did not know each other. But that soon changed. The woman started before take-off and continued throughout the flight to tell the man her life story, at the top of her voice. Not even jet engines could drown her out. I learned about her 15 [!] surgeries, her mother’s cancer, her 21-year old son’s run in with the law, the new home they were building, and much, much more. It was enough to want me get off the plane at 30,000 feet. How I wished I had a bell and the power of my boarding school’s call for silentium!

One of the reasons that I put this blog on hold in June of 2012 was that the all-consuming task of purchasing a condominium in Los Angeles made it impossible to set aside the time necessary for blogging. When we started to visit properties up for sale in the city, we were still renting a house in Claremont on the easternmost edge of Los Angeles county. We had been trying for many years to find a place to buy in or around Claremont. Since it seemed to be impossible to find a property that would have justified the very high real-estate prices in the Claremont area, we decided at the end of 2011 that the time had come to move back into the city after 20 years of more or less rural living in the U.S. We wanted to be close to LAX so that traveling would be easier, and close to the ocean. We started to look in earnest in February of 2012 and submitted a number of offers on short-sale properties. Nothing panned out. In the end we found a great standard-sale place – though perhaps a little bit further north and east than we had hoped. We closed on August 28 and moved in on August 30. In all, it turned out to be an even better choice than we had originally thought. We are now “Westsiders,” whatever that means.

In July of 2012, M. started her one-year sabbatical. She left for Australia in October and I joined her for a long stretch, returning at the end of January. Starting in April, she will be working at two German universities until the end of July. I hope to have an opportunity to visit Germany as well.

Searching for a suitable property, negotiating (not one of my strong points) with lenders to secure the financing, organizing the travel to and time in Australia and Germany – it all made it impossible to devote any time to this blog. I hope this will change now.

Ich finde ja Kameras nicht halb so schlimm wie Fotoapparate. Kann man das sagen, Fotoapparate? Fotoapparats? Apparato? Apparati?

[Quelle: SpOn]

Rudyard Kipling’s (1865–1936) ballad (“East is East, and West is West…”) is often quoted to suggest that something is or appears to be set in stone. The company responsible for the required evacuation signage in our condo building, Progressive Media Works, thought that this was too confining a world view.

Evacuation signs, by law, must indicate how the building is oriented. They are to be displayed at every exit on all floors. When I first saw the signs in our building, I was intrigued to note that the street grid in our neighborhood does not run in straight north-south and east-west directions. But then I noticed that on all signs in the building, west was indicated to the right of the north-south axis (and east to the left) – which would mean that the sun sets in the east.

This isn’t even just a question of proofreading. Who does not know where east and west are once north is fixed? I will bring it up at the next HOA meeting and probably be known thereafter as the pedantic old fart from the 4th floor. It’s my revenge for the HOA’s interference in our choice of window treatment colors.

I am breaking radio silence to wish all my readers Happy Holidays. For me, this holiday season will happen in the southern hemisphere: M’s sabbatical year has taken her to Australia, and I will join her for an extended period of time. That means we’ll have Christmas in summer!

So Happy Holidays to all readers, but especially to those for whom 2013 will be their year – the Year of the Snake (蛇).