The GITS Blog

My wife and son were walking the dogs when this little critter came running out of the sugar cane fields. Which is pretty unusual, since cats usually don't go running after strangers, especially when they're walking two dogs.
Assuming it was a stray (a depressingly large number of people come to the cane fields to abandon [...]

Via the Honyaku mailing list, I read an interesting article on localization from a developer's perspective. As both a translator and software developer, I'd like to comment on this article from a translator's perspective.
The author (Wil Shipley) recommends that you only send string files to your translators to localize:
To make our localizers’ jobs easier, what [...]

I've just released version 2.0 of Count Anything.
Download the latest version here.
This version adds support for Open Office files (Writer, Calc, and Impress), and features a newly designed front page.
Support for Open Office
Count Anything now supports Open Office document formats. You don't need to have Open Office installed to get word counts of OO documents.
New [...]

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
   – Mark Twain
Often you'll hear relatively inexperienced translators complaining [...]

I would not have made this so long except that I do not have the
leisure to make it shorter.
—Blaise Pascal

As with all writing, conciseness takes extra effort in translation. Although what you write is pretty much decided in translation, how you convey that information isn't, and interference from the source language tends to result in [...]

At the end of July, I traveled with my family to the US for two weeks, mainly to visit relatives and old friends. By the time I got back last Wednesday, I was so tired from my vacation that I needed a few days to recover. I wonder how restorative a vacation can be when [...]

… you acknowledge that you owe me a hamburger by next Tuesday.
If that sounds silly, why would this disclaimer in an email signature sound any less so?
By receiving this email, you are acknowledging that it contains attachments or other information that is intended solely for the use of the named recipient or recipients.

Often, an English word will be adopted into the Japanese language, and then take on a life of its own. It comes to be used outside the original English meaning, but clients are resistant to using a different English word in the translation ("It's already English, you don't need to translate it."). One example is [...]

If you were looking for the GITS blog, then yes, you're in the right place!
Today I upgraded my Wordpress installation to version 2.7.1, and while I was at it I switched to this cool atahualpa theme.
I decided to upgrade after setting up my son's blog, and noticing how much cooler the admin interface has gotten. [...]

As a computer geek, I tend to like things to be cut and dried. When shopping for a product or service, I like to compare the prices and what I'm getting for them, and make a rational decision. That's why I can't stand places that try to make as much as they can off of [...]