Lost in translation

 

I am working on a piece on reading chemistry articles in other languages. I am reading "Chemistry Through the Language Barrier," written in the late 1960s when Google translate was science fiction. The advice is practical - how can you wring what you need from a paper written in Czech or Polish or...Russian or Chinese? Well, when it comes to that last, the author's advice is best summed up as "Good luck and godspeed!", but Japanese is not out of reach he assures you.

Exercises are left for the reader, in part so you will believe his methods possible.

Yesterday I was happily ensconced on the divan in my office, a cup of tea on the side table and went to grab my yellow pad to jot notes and thoughts. Argh, it was across the room on my desk. Too lazy to get up, I grabbed the nearest blank writing surface: the next blind date book on my stack.  I happily scrawled away. Now I am trying to transcribe what I wrote into my electronic notes and finding myself at a loss translating sentences where the ink failed to write on the tape.

_____

Earlier I had been reading the foreward and mentally debating the author. Imagine my shock when I reached the end to discover my father-in-law had written that foreward.