The International Federation of Translators (FIT) published a position paper on #MachineTranslation (MT) to draw attention to the consequences of using MT both for the users and for professional translators. Read it at en.fit-ift.org/position-and.... #Translator #ai #Language #Tech #xl8 #1nt #atanet

It starts with Palestine protests. But where will the crackdown on Britain’s democratic freedoms end? | Owen Jones

Miniature kiwi fruit harvest from the garden. The vine was planted three years ago, but it's the first time they've ripened enough to eat.

Please sign this petition to restore the funding due to be cut from the Arthur Rank Hospice in Cambridgeshire, which would result in the loss of 9 of their 22 beds. www.pippaheylings.org.uk/campaigns/sa...

This is why mixed messaging doesn't work. Everyone ends up annoyed.

This remains an awful and unfair proposal. For one thing, a lot of people genuinely struggle to find time to volunteer, and for another and more importantly, it’s not volunteering if you’re being compelled to do it!

Cuddly Milo came up from London to visit, and we went for a long Fenland walk and pub lunch with him and his humans. After which we both needed a good lie down for a while.

If a woman is walking fearlessly at night, you know she is AI

There are 4.24m people with Indefinite Leave to Remain (or equivalent). 82% are in work, compared with 74% of Britons 3.8m are in relationships with Britons They have about 2.4m British-born children. This bullshit is never going to happen. Again. But... www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

I asked the librarian for that new kids book where Pavlov's dog goes on adventures with Shroedinger's cat. She said it rings a bell but she can't be sure if she has it or not until she has a look

In this week’s Private Eye. How long before other big agencies follow suit?

We have it as a contract point that translations of my work have to be performed by actual humans, I think actual human readers deserve to have actual humans translating and making the works as excellent as they can be regardless of language

Come join us! #translation #booksky

📣 Applications are OPEN for BCLT Translators-in-Residence 2026! ✨ We're offering two BCLT translation residencies for UK-based literary translators. Find out more: www.uea.ac.uk/groups-and-c... #LiteraryTranslation #Translation #CallForTranslators

How can this possibly be "malicious communication" under UK law?

In his Viewpoint column this week, Andrew Brown considers two contrasting views on the future of #AI

£1,035. Per Person. Per year. FOR 10 YEARS. Immigration Health Surcharge + 10-year route to settlement = poverty, anxiety and hardship. Thanks to @rfuk.bsky.social, @ramfel.bsky.social, @gmiau.bsky.social + others for sounding the alarm on this madness 🚨👇 www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Very good from John Harris (and apologies for the misattribution in my now deleted post). www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

In a showpiece event they have been trailing for weeks, with the added publicity boost of this week's murder in the USA (which was all over British social media) they still couldn't get more numbers than Trans Pride. Not only are they smaller than Palestinian solidarity marches...

Explain!! 😻😆 OK! Here it is: The Japanese text (ネコ飛出し注意) translates to “Watch out for jumping cats” or more literally “Caution: Cats dashing out”. It’s a local road sign sometimes put up in Japanese neighborhoods where there are many stray or outdoor cats.

Just spent 10 minutes at the end of the evening dog walk scrubbing a swastika off the old barn door up our road.

Narrator: “Unfortunately, on September 19th the tunnel spontaneously connected to R’lyeh and London became part of C’thulhu’s penumbral horror…”

Anyone here studied at @openuniversity.bsky.social and it changed their life? How?

Excellent article by Jonathan Liew that states what many of us are wondering: where will all this end? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Five years after moving in to our house, we're painting the kitchen, the final room to be redone. This has involved the purchase of seven new tester pots in addition to the ones we had already.

"[A]n AI system does not have to be super-powerful for management to use it to degrade, deskill, and kill jobs. This, it seems, is what translators, interpreters, and localizers are experiencing, right now, on the front lines of the real AI jobs crisis." (via @yunod.sustainabletranslator.scot)

Publication day! This was one of the hardest stories I’ve ever translated, both for the language and content. It’s also one of the most important stories I’ve translated. I hope as many people as possible will read it and reflect on the reality of war. #booksky #translation #literarytranslation

"We are the patriotic party" says Nigel Farage, who just spent the past few days slagging off his own country to a foreign superpower, while encouraging them to impose sanctions on our economy if we don't do what they say

Angela Rayner accidentally pays less tax than she should have, resigns, and the media gives her hell. Nigel Farage deliberately pays less tax than he should have, and the media gives him a free pass. That, right there, is the problem.

"If kiretsu are found, launch them as soon as possible." for 「キレツを発見した場合は、速やかに打ち上げること」 Yeah I don't think that's getting through to the English readers 😂 at least they're letting me proofread! (It should be "alert management if any cracks are found")

Home at last.

Day 18, and we stopped off to see the Bronze Age rock carvings at Tanumshede. Some of them show dogs! With pricked ears and curled-up tails, like me!

Day 10, and to go up in Norway you first have to come down. To sea level, in fact. So this is my first fjord.

It was so calm that you couldn’t tell where the water ended and the sky began.

A gorgeous flush of poplar fieldcaps, Cyclocybe cylindracea.

My children were born overseas. That does not make them any more likely to be criminals than their British-born cohort.

Another Pride and Prejudice remake on the way and still no Muppets version. When will the world get the Miss Piggy as Mrs. Bennet we deserve

The business secretary Jonathan Reynolds says the racist protesters intimidating asylum seekers in Epping are "upset for legitimate reasons.” I don't remember any Labour frontbencher saying the same about people protesting the genocide in Gaza. On the contrary, they've criminalised peaceful dissent.

Sure seems like a good few members of our press have gone from 'worrying there might be riots this summer' to 'really hoping there will be riots this summer' in the last few days

Japan’s Sanseito is a far-right political group that’s pretty much anti-everything — immigrants most of all. They won 15 seats in the parliamentary elections yesterday. And boy, do they want to regulate Japan’s pop culture: blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/pop-and-po...

Great overview of the current state of J-lit in translation with a deep dive into Murata Sayaka's place in the recent boom! Also love how careful the author is to include the translator's voices and name the translator of all the works discussed.

i don't _want_ audiobooks. i don't want podcasts. i barely want radio. i want a clean interface to find an album and play it start to finish, like i used to have

Happy UK+ release day to Mai Ishikawa’s The Place of Shells (trans Polly Barton), a fascinating post-3/11, COVID novel that ties the trauma Japan faced after the Triple Disasters to the trauma the whole world faced in 2020. Out in N America since March.

The problem here is that "checking" an AI translation often takes more time by someone with just as enough skill to translate it as their own -- and they're paid even less to do it! AI and machine translation just aren't good enough to produce "good enough" translation on their own.

The other day, I was telling friends and family how a housewife originated these Tokyo Metro transfer and exit guides, and they thought I was kidding. It used to be a well-known story. If you don't know it, here's a quick summary.

Many ways in which this is stupid and rephrensible but crucially this is a completely false dichotomy. Many things foster social cohesion among an in-group while being very bad for everyone else. That's one of the key *purposes* of bigotry

I've spoken with executives in the loc industry who have admitted straight to me that they're intentionally publishing sub-par translations because audiences "are okay with them". Read: will still pay for a service even if the translation is bad. We need to prove to them that we won't.

Why so expensive for pressing a button? AI 'translations' are already free, but writing a book (and translation IS writing) is a creative act that requires a human brain, so good luck with that. Ultimately it's up to readers to buy real books, not automated garbage. #xl8 #booksky #translators

Sitting up waiting for Evri to deliver a package. It was due yesterday between 17:30 and 19:30; before going to bed I updated my delivery preference to "Leave at back door," but was greeted this morning by, not the package, but an email reporting a failed delivery attempt at 23:04.