Author: Werner Patels

  • Learn from the past, but don’t dwell on it

    I recently stumbled across a 2014 film, The Scarehouse, written and directed by Gavin Michael Booth. I had watched one of Booth’s other films, Last Call, which I enjoyed very much, and when Gavin himself told me that Scarehouse was a “polar opposite” of Last Call, my curiosity was definitely piqued. So, I checked it…

  • Why I love remastering music

    People often ask me, “You’re a translator and writer. How come you also remaster music?” Well, here’s my answer. In professional translation, there’s one principle you need to keep in mind: the reader of the translated text must have the exact same experience as the reader of the original text. I have loved this process…

  • Common translator mistakes

    No, this is not about mistakes translators make in the texts they translate, but rather about the mistakes they make in presenting themselves to the world. Native language As everyone knows, professional translators translate into their native language (or native languages in the case of true bilinguals) and no other language. It doesn’t matter how…

  • Variatio delectat et educat

    Do you remember blogrolls? In Canada, we had separate blogrolls for Liberals (Liblogs), Conservatives (Blogging Tories) and so on. Was it meaningful? Not really, because each group was nothing more than an echo chamber, with like-minded people communicating only amongst themselves, without ever exposing themselves to other (and, perhaps, more correct) views.

  • Can the world get any more ridiculous?

    They put people in a bubble for two years. The media and (authoritarian) politicians loved it. At long last, they were able to boss people around, take away their personal rights, lock them inside their homes, destroy lives and livelihoods, and force them to inject untested substances into their bodies.