Translator ('fixer') dies in Afghanistan

I'm not familiar with the circumstances, and I'm simply posting the links to the Guardian reports entitled "Journalist rescued in Afghanistan pays tribute to translator who died in raid" and "British journalist's rescuers left dead Afghan behind" as examples of yet another thought-provoking episode in the 'Afghanistan saga'.

50 things that are being killed by the internet

Thanks to Steven Marzuola for passing on the link to this article in the Daily Telegraph.

Re. item no. 8, I'm not going to mourn the end of phone books - see also my letter in the Leicester Mercury.

Item no. 14 is quite alarming: "The internet's draw on our attention is relentless and increasingly difficult to resist", although come to think of it, I was probably quite restless even before the Internet...

Item no. 29 is the reason why this post ended up in my translation blog rather than my other blog. It says "Sites like Babelfish offer instant, good-enough translations of dozens of languages". I'm not sure about that.

Bundestagswahl, Wohnsitz im Ausland

My application to register as a voter in the forthcoming German elections proved to be quite an 'educational' experience, especially if one is interested in the finer technical details of PDF forms.

LinkedIn Crowdsourcing Translation Controversy

Thanks to Iwan Davies for pointing out Rachel McRoberts' excellent presentation describing the background to the recent LinkedIn crowdsourcing translation controversy.