I am amused by this stone bench up beyond the bull ring in Arenas de San Pedro, Castilla y León, central Spain.
Well, not so much amused by the bench, but by the engraving on it, which seems to be extraordinarily apt:
Banco de Castilla no longer exists as an independent bank, but I am glad the benches it sponsored have not been removed. They are indeed bancos de Castilla – Castilian benches.
My university maths lecturer would never have believed it, but now, 30-something years later, I am fascinated by statistics. So my attention was caught when I visited the ‘Freshy Pressed‘ page which shows some of the recent posts on blogs hosted by WordPress.com.
I took a screen shot of the stats box yesterday afternoon and then again today, just over 24 hours later:
The revista literaria El Malpensante has an interesting article based on the column written in a Polish newspaper for 30 years by the Nobel prize winner Wislawa Szymborska.
In Cómo escribir and cómo no escribir poesía they have selected a few of the replies Szymborska made to readers who aspired to write poetry. Most of the article is interesting, but I have selected just two snippets.
The first, chosen because it ties in with my interest in translation:
Para H. O., de Poznan, un posible traductor
El traductor no está obligado a serle fiel al texto únicamente. Debe dejar ver la belleza de la poesía conservando su forma y reteniendo, en la medida de lo posible, el estilo y el espíritu de la época.
Continue reading “polish/spanish/english: a few thoughts on poetry & other writing”
There’s a story up on the BBC website at the moment that quotes Charles Duncombe, “an online entrepreneur”, as saying that a single spelling mistake on a website can cut online sales in half. (For Spanish readers of the blog, there’s a Spanish version of the article available on “BBC Mundo”.)
Duncombe is apparently “shocked” at the poor quality of written English of staff recruited by his companies.
Spelling is important to the credibility of a website, he says. When there are underlying concerns about fraud and safety, then getting the basics right is essential.
(Edit 14/4/2013: anyone looking for invisible cat hammocks won’t find them here. You might try physicscentral for a light-hearted look at the subject, or download the pdf on graphene from the Nobel Prize site)
don't confuse the narrator 