Some years ago in Spain there was a clamp down on illegal photocopying.
At the copy shop at the end of our road, they had always been amenable to making multiple copies of whole books – very useful for penniless English teachers who had managed to filch a single text book from their last employer and were now using this to go it alone with private classes. But suddenly the shop changed hands and it was rumoured Continue reading “copyrights and wrongs”
Vale. No puedo decir que yo estoy en Guadalajara.
Ni siquiera puedo decir que mi editora está en Guadalajara.
Sin embargo, mi editora -¡qué bien suena la frase!- me ha dicho que una compañera de una librería de Madrid ha llevado unos libros de Topka a la Feria del Libro, o, como lo llaman en El País, “el mayor acontecimiento de su clase en lengua española”.
Así que, Bubbles (Pompas) está en Guadalajara. Menos da una piedra.
Well, OK, I’m not saying I’m in Guadalajara.
I’m not even saying My editor is in Guadalajara at what was described in El País as “the biggest event of its kind in the Spanish language.”
But my editor – don’t you love that phrase! – tells me that a colleague from a Madrid bookshop has taken Topka book samples with her to the Book Fair. So Bubbles is in Guadalajara.
Which has to be a step in the right direction.
Is it only me, or does the juxtaposition of these two headlines – from the same page of today’s El País – catch the attention of anyone else out there?
Was it the proximity to the first story that forced the headline writer to use such an ugly adverb as “laboralmente” in the second?
And am I the only person who noticed the flyer which fell out when I turned the page?:
Continue reading “explosive news?”
In these days of economic recession, credit crunch, financial crisis, or whatever term the media are using today, it’s logical that we should look back to the Wall Street crash of ’29 in an attempt to make comparisons and perhaps find solutions.
However, in these days of electronic media, blogs, wikis, archives and resources written by “the unwashed masses”, it’s all too easy to get confused by what’s real and what isn’t. Continue reading “reader, beware”
don't confuse the narrator 