John Baker’s Blog

The Guardian reports on the honourable dealings of the much loved supermarket chain:
Writers criticise Tesco for ‘chilling’ Thai libel actions
· Leading authors sign letter to retailer’s chief executive
· Supermarket chain urged to uphold human rights
*
Jacob Russell looks at beginnings:
I wanted to begin with opening paragraphs rather than sentences, precisely to get past the “hook” –the [...]

Hu Ling at Words Without Borders: Some say a good story should be like an iceberg.
. . . perhaps a translator is a bit like a Chinese restaurant owner, who finds himself serving mostly a non-Chinese clientele: should I assume my diners have unadventurous palates and always serve them the familiar “chow mein” and “kung-pao [...]

Spark Publishing in the USA have translated nineteen Shakespeare plays into modern language. The series is published under the No Fear imprint .
Carlin Romano over at the Philadelphia Inquirer takes a look at some of the texts and illustrates why the task fails miserably and how it should never have been undertaken.
I’ll confine myself here [...]

A taster:
It’s a lousy Napoleon cake. The cream should be a pale yellowish white and light, but this one is feverish yellow and sticky. I eat just the top and leave the rest on the plate. I ought to complain, hold the cake up in front of the lady at the counter and say: “This [...]