Mark Rogers' Tumblr blog

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those lips ...

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yep

[ejacutastic]

[idirot]

you know what really fucking gets my cookies frosted sometimes??? i’ll be on the goddamn blue website scrolling along and suddenly come across a picture like this and i actually stop scrolling and go out of my way to share a picture of a man with a sly grin holding a fucking pineapple with a bunch of people who choose to look at what i put on my blog. people expect this from me. i hold the power to grace a plethora of people’s eyes with this picture. almost 20 thousand other people have looked at this and subconsciously decided that this represents the type of image that they want to share with others with no context. look at this man

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The wee umbrella ...

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I was trying to explain English spellings to our au pair this morning and got into talking about Chaucer and Wycliffe's Bible and why the "gh" in "bought" is silent. Wycliffe's Bible - it turns out (thank you Wikipedia) -is in part the work of John Purvey, who wrote this unimprovable summary of a translator's duties:

"Firstly, the translator must be sure of the text he is translating. This he has done by comparing many old copies of the Latin bible to assure authenticity of the text.

"Secondly, the translator must study the text in order to understand the meaning. Purvey explains that one cannot translate a text without having a grasp of what is being read.

"Third, the translator must consult grammar, diction, and reference works to understand rare and unfamiliar words.

"Fourth, once the translator understands the text, translation begins by not giving a literal interpretation but expressing the meaning of the text in the receptor language (English), not just translating the word but the sentence as well."

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Outside the Cambridge Computing department.  I think this speaks to the weird culture clash here.