Posts in category: Gloss

Sense of humour required: Beware of translation engines!

21.02.2016

When looking for the easy way out, people come up with the most ludicrous of excuses to warrant their hornswoggle doing: house on fire, dog dead, car stolen, wrong place/time/mood, worst bad-hair day ever, princess all of a sudden. Once the procrastination pole has inevitably run out of length, the dreaded task just has to be tackled, no matter what. Translations, for instance, can develop into a painfully tedious exercise. Isn’t it perfectly legitimate then to employ one of those servile robots available online in order to alleviate detested assignments? It is – if you can live with the results. We have put some of these practical computerised interpreters to the test, feeding them with stretches of German articles published during the early stages of goodmeetings.com’s young history. The English-speaking majority of our readership will have to think in meanders to unravel and realign the contorted texts back to meaning. Even though some of the pidgin might remain a secret forever: as long as no-one has been harmed, reading complete nonsense once in a while can be a great pastime.

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Undoing email on gmail

6.08.2015

Gone it is and trouble it causes: email not meant to be sent. This is not talking about the half-finished ones, those with unfathomable spelling or omitted salutation. Or when a Mr. becomes a Mrs. – an involuntary sex-change that amazingly seems to be far more offensive this way round than the other. Disaster eventually strikes when confidential email or attachments are erroneously forwarded to a least-of-all-trusted person, the certified company chatterbox or – God forbid!- a detested competitor. Or a number of them. If A writes to B that C is a corrupt crook, D to Z are not supposed to be let into the secret, even though they may have long been in the know. However, once the tricky „answer all“ button for multiple recipients is pressed unintentionally, a wicked pointed weapon springs into action only to unleash its evil effect.

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Krautish gibberish: Denglish

13.07.2015

Practice makes perfect? Oh, really! Some of us are just not destined to ever be fluent in English honed to perfection at Oxford or Harvard. The only superior level reached is that of ultimate frustration. Even though talent may be absent, the constant effort does deserve – and at times receive – some appreciation. Native English speakers – be they residents of their respective countries or members of an expat diaspora abroad – display admirable countenance when it comes to unravelling the puzzling matter their poor language is often being minced into. A mother-tongue recognised as official world language no. 1 minimises the necessity for its speakers to conquer foreign language terrain. A linguistic metabolism in constant uproar caused by cruel outlandish gibberish is the price to be paid for being saved humiliation in class, when vocabulary and grammar just won’t surface upon demand, or when a vital exam is failed and thus a promising international future brutally ruined forever.

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Sketchnotes are a valuable tool during meetings.

Scribble + Doodle = Scroodle?

10.06.2014

Serious Sketchnoting on the Uprise

When caught doodling at school back in the old days, one was in for a hefty reprimand by the teacher, who would then maliciously peach on you at home, throwing your poor parents into a state of quiet devastation. Caught more frequently, your next stop was likely to be at the dreaded in-house psychologist’s office, where an expert human lack-of-concentration detector would painfully be deep-probing into the diminishing source of your ability to keep your young mind focussed. Serves you right when you allow your thoughts to go all spaghetti!

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