Green IT

The recently held Cebit 2008 focused on Green IT. The global warming awareness has come a long way and so has the connotation of the word green. In India we often heard about green revolution in the 80’s! Getting back to Cebit, I was struck by a piece of information which circulated in the media during the fair. The commentators spoke about the enormous energy consumption by the big data stations and servers and our random internet use.  The assumption, that changing our net habit is probably a more effective way of cutting down on power consumption than using power saving computer components was frankly unsettling. It sounds mundane, but then many of us look up even the simplest of information on internet. Not to mention the degree of dependence for professional reasons! I have difficulties imagining a day at work with only traditional dictionaries. Certainly translators won’t go back to the 60’s way of working; no more than the car owners who wouldn’t go back to horse carts. Nonetheless, it is worth giving a thought to our daily net practices as responsible professionals or otherwise.

Learning was fun

The other day I watched “cerfs-volants de kaboul” or the kite runner. It is not at all my intention to do a film review, rather to share a linguistic experience. I watched the movie in “VO” with French subtitles. About one third of the dialogues are in Pashto (hoping that there weren’t any other dialects). Normally I wouldn’t follow Pashto at all, but for the French subtitles. Following the dialogues while reading the subtitles was a kind of revelation. It was really a pleasant surprise to find the extent of similarity between Pashto, Urdu and Hindi: for instance, the noun “guftgu” meaning conversation in Urdu which is often used in North India without forgetting the bollywood movies. In Pashto the infinitive form of this noun means “to tell”. There were several other words. It was a nice exercise to watch an English film with French subtitles while following Pashto (which reminded me of Hindi!). I haven’t read the book , but came across some book reviews where someone has pointed out the linguistic aspect.

A state of negotiated calm

I am aware that this sudden disappearance doesn’t seem professional. Well I have decided to put online some of my previous posts. There are phases in life when it’s saner to get back into one’s own shell and feel protected. May be that can partially explain my reaction. Soon, very soon, I will add the link of my new blog: one which is personal. I will nontheless continue to share my hard earned knowledge as a professional translator.

Beyond national and linguistic identities

A translator has a curious profession: to transmit the text be it technical or literary; to express the essence in another language, thinking mode and culture. As a professional or a student we deal with it everyday and it slowly becomes a reflex. This is specially so when one works in his/her native country. The situation changes though in a foreign country. As a translator I have hardly spent a day without being reminded of my mother tongue and origin. Maybe it is different as a doctor, engineer et al.

This profession enables me to transcend linguistic and cultural barriers very easily, but at the same time it also helps me to remain anchored to my roots.