January 14, 2008
Are translators intelligent human beings?
Or: how to get the lowest rate possible.
It's obvious that to be a translator or a subtitler your intelligence has to be above average. But what kind of intelligence can that be? For quite a while I have been thinking... why would translators consciously and willingly choose to go back to the serfdom of feudal times?
In nature animals often cooperate by forming groups. Shoals of fish have a higher survival rate than an individual, lonely fish, and flocks of sparrows can even deter birds of prey.
But apparently translators swarm together for no other reason than to worsen their fate. If, being a translator, you join the Translator's Café, Proz.com or the new, impertinently named "Take a coder", clients can and will put pressure on your rates, and the result of all this will to cooperate is that the rates are lower than ever and dropping.
Of course the makers of the above-mentioned web-companies are smart trying to make translators and subtitlers their serfs. But to me it's surprising to see so many reasonable and intelligent people allow exactly this to be done. And what is the effect on the quality of their work?
At the same time, "simple", supposedly less-intelligent coffee farmers in South America have cast off the yoke of the drug lords and are emancipating themselves, producing quality coffee.
There is one more or less sensible reason I can think of for joining these public auction kind of groups the way translators do in droves, an atavistic fear of being alone, and an equally atavistic belief that there is safety in numbers.
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September 14, 2007
How feebleness of faith leads to fighting
When a nation is in decline, you always see a lot of initiatives to the contrary. In the Netherlands, well-meaning people came up with the idea of a historical canon for the Dutch school system - with "windows" like Rembrandt and "Slave trade". Not a bad idea.
But then Christians - maybe copying the fanaticism of some of the Muslims in the West - came up with their own version, to be used in their (state-paid) schools: and they left out Spinoza!
To try and eliminate philosophical works that are among the most valuable in the world... Praiseworthy educational initiatives turning into downright brainwashing....
The inanity of people like these Dutch Christians used to cause a lot of amusement at the NOB subtitling department. While society was going to the dogs, in TV-shows to be broadcast the Evangelical Broadcasting Company, we subtitlers had to avoid the use of words like "gee" because it was regarded as swearing, "prehistoric bones" had to be translated as "very old bones" because according to the Bible the earth was created about 6000 years ago so the word "prehistoric" was blasphemous, etc. etc.
Apparently, the faith of some Christians and Muslims is so weak that they want to protect it even against undeniable truths. So much so, that often in recent history and in the present, violence has been condoned or advocated by people that erroneously call themselves religious.
Let's call them what they are: pretenders of the faith.
More about Spinoza on this site
August 23, 2007
Madhouse
If a madhouse is a place where people think the opposite of what is real, then the Western world is a madhouse.
We westerners glorify ideas like "democracy" and "spirituality" - and of course with the Nazi-period behind us, these words ring true.
But suppose we are suffering from an epidemic of selfishness and unnaturalness? And suppose "democracy" and "spirituality" are what we are actually trying to get back because we lost these things?
And just like the paranoia of the era of fighting communism, we have now the paranoia of "us" bringing the remedy for our own illness to people who hardly suffer from that illness, forcing it upon them with bullets and bombs.
In the name of a mistaken ideal (behind which the greed for oil definitely plays a role too), in de the name of paranoia, "we" are killing or causing the deaths of 150 Iraqis every day.
Why not let the Iraqis and others live out their Dark Ages? They will anyway. Let them enter our modern times in their own good historical time.
August 18, 2007
Why hollanditis?
The Dutch are the know-it-alls, the smart alecks of the Western world, hence the title of: hollanditis - the Dutch disease. Of course the disease is to be found in other countries as well, but the Dutch version can be striking.
A satirist is a disappointed idealist who has given up almost all hope? Swift must have been like that - he would have loved and hated The Netherlands.
We Dutch believe in gentleman's agreements with tigers and lions: politicians have them all the time with companies. Later on, the politician is rewarded handsomely for his courage.
We believe we are more intelligent, fair and honest than the peoples of most other states, while being totally blind to our own foolishness, greed and corruption (see for instance "The Dutch construction fraud").
We make many rules just to make rules, and we have built up an enormous bureaucracy - still, until recently most of us were convinced that bureaucracy is only found in other countries.
In The Netherlands the risk of being caught and the punishments are so low that we are attracting a lot of people who have chosen crime as the way to earn their living. In our media, blind to human nature, we keep on expressing our astonishment about what criminals are capable of. For years judges, lawyers and journalists here used to say: "Punishment doesn't help." The media often speak of "horror" - to stress the enormous gap between our understanding and reality.
We firmly believe we are a realistic people, but many times we are totally unable to get real.
20 years ago we welcomed many immigrants for low-paid jobs, telling them they should not adjust, but keep their own culture, and we gave them education in their own languages. Now, when for many it's too late, they are forced to adjust and learn Dutch.
So even we Dutch learn, albeit very slow.
Many Dutch (all too human) absurdities will find their way into these pages - to bring them to light, to not let them go unnoticed.
August 8, 2007
Natural intelligence, and whose?
We often think we know and understand a lot, but how much of reality do we really know or understand? Probably very little.
Whoever looks at this picture - a four-day-old orang utan, making something clear to someone - can only be amazed:
...
Move the mouse here for my commentary.
August 6, 2007
In Dutch fado, my hero Huizing works at the filing department of a discount bank - can there be anything more pointless? Still, most of us in the Western world work at some sort of filing department of some sort of discount bank.
It was a wink at the future, of course, because in 1958 bureaucracy was not yet as rampant as it is right now. And it contrasted well with Huizing's romantic aching for freedom.
As Carlos Drummond de Andrade wrote in his poem "Slave in Paper City":
O, bureaucrats!
How I hate you, and if only it was just hate...
It's also the feeling
Of having lost life by being one of you.
The important things we don't know. What is the meaning of life? We just don't know.
To find out, we'd have to be rid of ourselves, totally free, the way Krishnamurti must have meant, living without living.
August 4, 2007
Tomatoes and apples in a rich country
The Netherlands is one of the richest countries in the world. A high productivity is probably one of the reasons. But what happens to quality when quantity is all-important?
When on holiday, we Dutch discover the answer. We bite
an apple or tomato in some village in some less rich country, and suddenly we say: "Hey, an apple/tomato can taste really good! I almost forgot that."
The Netherlands
has become very rich - and very poor.
August 3, 2007
The Dutch construction fraud - in the middle of it...
In some cases a scheme is so big that it just cannot come to light, even if people bring it to light.
Dutch builders over the past few years have, on a large scale, worked with underhand contracts, using local and national civil servants and politicians, and having two sets of books.
After a lot of pressure from some journalists, the NMA - Dutch Competition Authority - was prepared to estimate the damage at 1 billion euros, a little over 1 billion dollars. The damages some companies had to pay amounted to a total of 70 million euros.
So, according to the NMA, every Dutch citizen:
- was robbed of about 67 euros
- received 14 euros in compensation.
The NMA thought that this was fair and that it had done its work properly. Recent investigations, though, showed that the damages amount not to 1 billion but to 15 billion euros. So every Dutch resident:
- was robbed of 1000 euros
- received 67 euros in compensation.
Only a few builders were "punished", most of the civil servants and politicians got away with it, straight faced and neatly dressed. A lot of them now even have the nerve to tell the media how well they mean by The Netherlands and the whole world. See it all in the Dutch TV-show Zembla, starting with an interview with one of the politicians involved: http://omroep.vara.nl/Uitzending_gemist.167.0.html
And the NMA found real victims in the Dutch literary translators, one of the poorest professional groups: they started telling them that they had formed a cartel with their collective rates.
The Netherlands, a Swiftian country where people act as if they are better and know everything better - while their hypocrisy makes them worse.
July 31, 2007
A Taoist table tennis player in times of crusades
"That those Chinese leaders still don't realize that they should embrace democracy" - tv-host Joris Luyendijk laughed cynically, maybe imagining the whole of right-minded Holland backing him.
"I think," former world table tennis star Bettine Vriesekoop just said, "they are still afraid of chaos."
Joris, shaking his head over Chinese ignorance, and not listening to her: "Can you get into trouble because of being here and saying this?"
Ask an Asian for his or her opinion and you'll get an answer in the first person plural: "we".
We, here in the West, are trying to get back a little of the lost "we" in our individualized societies.
And our "high-minded" want to force our last resort "democracy" upon the East, where the illness of individualized egoism is far from being epidemic as yet.
If need be with brute force. Iraq as a front... The era of the crusades is not yet over.
All totally contrary to the spirit of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching.
July 14, 2007
Totally overestimated: Almodóvar, Hable con ella
Because of the scenes showing bulls being tortured I hadn't seen it yet, this film that was supposed to be so fantastic. And one night it's on television and I think to myself: don't be so arrogant, go and watch this masterpiece.
But I had too high an opinion of all these enthusiastic, deeply moved fellow men.
What a sentimental monstrosity!
A clever use of music is what touches people. A B-filmer who knows what music to choose, that is all Almodóvar proved to be.
The moaning at Benigno's grave - ten or twenty years from now, people will see what it for what it is - a clumsy, maudlin piece of kitsch.
Ecce homo
I was telling someone what an unforgettable impression a BBC documentary years ago had made on me. And then I noticed that I had started forgetting it quite a bit already.
China. A boy outside is busy cooking. He stirs in pots and kettles, adding ingredients. A woman and her six-year-old daughter come along. The mother stoops a little, pointing and conferring with the little girl. They are in high spirits. The woman talks to the boy, he nods, then enters a big cage behind him. There are cats and dogs in the cage. They run around screeching and howling. While the boy quickly grabs a cat he steps on the paws of another one. You see the cat's paws breaking under the boy's foot. He carefully closes the cage behind him, thoughtlessly holding the cat by the scruff of the neck.
Then he dips the cat in a pot of boiling water, and pulls the skin off the animal. He puts the now suddenly white cat on the ground, grabs a frying pan, pours oil in it and puts it on the fire. The cat is mewing plaintively, eyes wide open: it seems to be surprised at what has just happened to it. The boy stirs intently in other pots and picks up the cat...
I could not bear to watch this any longer. This white cat, its treatment in China apparently the most natural thing, unparalleled by any Edgar Allan Poe black cat - in my mind it is still standing there, telling me something I don't want to hear or know. About man and what he is worth.
A Dutch response might be: "This should not be allowed to happen". But how many inhabitants does China have? And are people in other countries any better?
For me this white cat is an earth-shattering "ecce homo".
For an opposite and more comforting view on mankind, please click here...
Rent tribunal - civilization in decline
There is a housing shortage, room-renters are being exploited, and administrators do something about it: they set up the rent tribunal. Every landlord and landlady has to comply with... a points system, neatly put together by well-intentioned devisers at the Department of Housing, Regional Development and the Environment. But how has it turned out in reality?
A girl looking for a room rings the doorbell of a building where an apartment can be rented for 800 euros, gas, water and electricity included. "Did you say yes?" her astonished father says. "Yes, I've no other option, have I," she answers. "Well, you could have said that there is a points system." "Then they won't give me the apartment!" "This can't be happening." "All the other people looking for apartments accept it."
The father keeps on nagging her. The daughter goes to the rent tribunal. A nice woman says, "Well, I would think about it carefully, if I were you. Maybe you won't enjoy living there anymore if you call us in." "Yes," the girl says, "I think the landlady will give me a hard time if I do. She will never put up with it." "Think it over," the woman says, and gives her a manila envelope filled with rules and regulations, forms and fair words like "rent protection".
The girl knows the housing market as she has been looking for quite some time. She calculates that according to the points system, the rent should be no more than 600 euros at the very most, including 100 euros for gas, water and electricity. So she's paying 200 euros, i.e. 30% too much, but she keeps on living there, just like more and more other people are forced to do.
And in all the Dutch cities and villages many, many fake people go to their fake jobs at the local rental tribune. They feel good about their comfortable, well-paid position, where they do, so they tell themselves all the time, good work.
And what about the makers of laws and rules and regulations, and the vain politicians? They have all gone on working on other laws and rules and regulations, pretending to offer solutions for other problems. They too look back with satisfaction upon what they created, saying: "People do have their own responsibilities. If they want the government to act, it will - if not, they have themselves to blame."
In a lot of ways, a civilized country like The Netherlands is a fake country, with fake laws and rules, fake people in fake positions, acting straight-faced as if everything is neatly organized.
And now and then, in some Dutch home, without there being a quarrel between the residents, a terrible cry can be heard, a primal scream, full of helpless anger.
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