...and recaps it. You can easily watch Spoony's review instead of the movie. The video is 46 minutes long, but when you take into account that "New Moon" is 130 minutes, you will save 84 minutes of your life (without the drive to the cinema) and 7 pounds. All in all, a pretty sweet deal.

Here's the link: The Spoony Experiment: New Moon.

A fellow Spoonynite found probably the next worst book since Twilight: "Gamer Girl". And, to chronicle it for the ages, he's making an audiobook. Here:

( Youtube embeddlement under cut )

Grandma: "Madeline Anne, you look like a dead prostitute."

Holy shit, Grandma is awesome. XD

Sigh, the laptop is acting up again - it seems it gets as hot as 70 degrees Celsius when idle and while I'm not supposed to worry until it hits 80 (that's what I gather from around the Internet, at least), I'm pretty sure it hits higher temps at other times and it has mysteriously shut down on me a couple of times already.

I unfortunately didn't bring one of my mini-screwdrivers for it (why do I take that thing out of the laptop bag? I should put it there permanently), so for today I'm just going for the simple solution: propping it up. Result: negligible. Sigh...

In good news, I finally got myself the bank account I needed and the university intranet is finally up and running, so now I can finally access all my module homework.

Hey, everybody! Minstrel here. I am writing to you from stereotypically drizzly England to let you know how everything's going.

I've been neglecting this LJ for some time now and it's fair to say you'd probably miss the one or two posts where I mentioned it, so here's the deal: I got into the MA Translation and Interpreting programme at Westminster University. On the 28th, I flew out to England, where I stayed for a week with my uncle and aunt, who were kind enough to put me up as I started sorting everything out.

And boy was there a lot to sort out. From the most basic things, like enrolling and applying for a student hall, to things like getting a bank account and Oyster Travel Card, the last two of whic are still up in the air, but that's not important.

Fortunately, this trip isn't all about going from office to office and queueing up to get requisition slip for another slip. It's also about the loads of opportunities I am presented with. Right off bat, I was offered a place at the International Student Welcome programme, where I got to meet people of nationalities which almost never appear in Poland: I hung out with Phillipinos, Malaysians, Antiguans, Jordanians, all very cool. The ISWP featured a boat ride on Thames and a trip to Brighton that I decided to pass up in favour of spending time with my aunt and uncle.

Other opportunities are, for example, a free of charge placement in a language class of my choice (I opted for Spanish) and the chance of working on campus. I'd really like to get that job, because it would be tailored for my timetable and contribute some much needed income.

But by far one of the best things that happened to me was getting one of the last two rooms available at Wigram Hall. Why is this awesome? Because of this: click for pictures.

The web album up there is made of photos I took while walking from my hall to my campus. Discerning eyes will notice that this trip takes me under Buckingham Palace, the Victoria Memorial, the Duke of York Memorial and Picadilly Circus. By far, the best route ever, even better than the Market Square route I had during my first year of college.

So, yes, my trip has been great and life is looking very well for me right now. I have a nice timetable which gives me plenty of time to work and study, British cuisine isn't half as bad as people claim it is, the beer is great, I have a comfortable and well located place to live (with a real Internet connection) and my classes are looking very interesting. I also get loads of support from the various student services on campus and my family, so surviving here shouldn't be that hard. The only way it could be better would be if Anna was here.

Adios and see you soon. Be on the look out for a new projectMAPLE and more on life in the UK.

You thought there couldn't be anything more offensively boring than Twilight? Well, here's a preview of Stephenie Meyer's bio-comic: http://previews.diamondcomics.com/public/default.asp?t=1&m=1&c=23&s=216&ai=87238&ssd=

Highlights include: Dracula!Etrigan as narrator, Anita Blake-like artwork and juice. In boxes too.

...or I could guide you guys to the newest Sam & Fuzzy storyline about Edwin, the vampire: http://www.samandfuzzy.com/1127.

Just needed to share the good news: I was accepted into the University of Westminster in London!

Yes! Marek is going to college abroad (again)!

Anyway, I already have some arrangements made: I will be living with my aunt and uncle until December and I will be flying out on te 28th. I've already decided to spend Christmas over at Anna's, though I will visit her as soon as I find a gap in my schedule (which I still haven't received).

Are you as giddy with excitement as I am? Okay, that's just me...

Want to have get a sneak preview of the next big thing in fantasy roleplaying and webcomics? Check out http://tineya.net, a page about a fantasy world created by my friend, which I had the pleasure of trnaslating into English.

Why, is this phase 6 already?

( Proceed to Phase 6... if you dare! )

I'm Minstrel. I read Twilight so you don't have to!

Why, BECAUSE IT'S SUMMER!

While other people find more things to blog about during the summer (hiking, parties, what have you), I find less time to blog, because I'm doing things with Albert, Anna or other people. So, you will get less updates, but those updates I will make will be of a higher quality. Including the long awaited phase six of Project MAPLE!

It's half finished. Still.

See you guys!

Yes! Time to hear Marek swear like a sailor over wifi technology. Because it never works for him!

Seriously, right now, I'm doing a clean install of my laptop. All partitions formatted. Windows XP is reinstalling right now (second time today!) and I'll only be feeding it drivers from the original, Vista-prescribed driver CD (I hate you Fujitsu Siemens. My next laptop will be an HP). It won't touch any of my potentially-infected-with-something-that-blocks-wifi USB drives until I get a clean, fresh Spybot and antivirus from the Internet.

If I get the Internet to work, which is the point of this excercise. Bottom line: if the clean-slate no-way-its-virused lots-of-hyphens laptop cannot find the damn Livebox, I'm throwing in the towel and going back to Grapefruit, my old laptop. It's not like the new one is better in ANY conceivable way. Both have crappy graphics cards, the new one has more RAM (which I don't need) and Grapefruit has a bigger hard drive (which I always need).

Bottom line - I need to switch to abetter machine. And a better ISP. And never, ever try this wifi crap again.

[EDIT]

Fix'd! turns out there's something in the wifi here that blocks you from getting connections. The solution is to install SpyBot and enable TeaTimer (go to Advanced Mode, then the Tools tab and then select Residents. There you can toggle TeaTimer). The weird thing is I can't find anything on Google about such a trojan or virus. Anybody has any clues?

...and the score is... let me quote Faith from Buffy: "Five by five, B". Literally, two fives, as in two As, for the the thesis and for the defence.

I'm officialy a Bachelor of Arts now.

Yes, I know we are all expecting the next instalment of Project MAPLE. But give me a break - as per usual, I'm all cool on the outside when it comes to exams and finals, but underneath is an emotional turmoil of stress that maybe this time, this time my luck will run out (I consider myself something of a Karma Houdini and I'm always on the look out for the cosmic comeback that awaits me). So, instead of ranting on my current favourite topic ("Twilight"), let me rant just a bit on some unrelated stuff.

You know, therapeutically.

To start off, I found a new Sean Stewart book. I've only read two books from this author so far, those being the supernatural tearjerker "Ressurection Man" and the technofantasy mini-epic "Night Watch", but just those two books have earned this guy a spot on my "buy blind" list. Basically, if I'm out searching for a new book and I come across one written by someoneon that list, I buy it without looking at the blurb in the back.

It's a fantastic deal - the blurbs usually spoil the book a bit, by telling you what it's about. If you've read enough, you will instantly know what kind of tropes and cliches a book will incorporate. But when you buy a book blind and start reading before even looking at the back, you're in for a treat. You are literally dropped right into the story, while more careful readers just dip into it at first. Basically, buying blind is diving into a pool from the highest board and reading the blurb is just taking the ladder on the kiddy side.

The book is good. I've only read like 30 pages, but I can already tell I'm in for a treat... if I somehow turn off that part of the brain that points out and classifies every rookie mistake the translator makes.

Seriously, the translation is awful. It's just sloppy. If a pizza chef was this sloppy, you would get a vegetarian pizzas covered in salami. If an engineer was this sloppy, you would have stair steps of varying lenghts. If Odysseus was this sloppy, he would still be on that one frickin' Island eating bacon and wondering where the Hades has his crew gone.

You know that adage that "a life unexamined is not worth living"? Well, same goes for translations! I don't think the guy ever went back and read what he wrote, because if he did, he would've realised he's sending off a rough draft of a translation and not a complete work. I know translators are subject to draconic time constraints, but if I found time to correct my translations while pushing dangerously close to deadlines, there is no excuse.

What's more, the book is filled with such stupid mistakes, that the editors themselves set out to fix. Like, oh, I dunno... giving all temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit?

Yes. The guy couldn't even be assed to do a simple conversion of Fahrenheit to Celsius. Come on man, that stuff is ten seconds tops - you don't even need to know the formula, you just need to type the thing into Google! It's that easy!

So the editors are forced to put in little footnotes, like conversions and cultural notes, that the translator failed to incorporate into the translation. I mean, every Pole knows what the Houston Astrodrome is, right?

Maybe you're thinking "hey, maybe the guy did incorporate it and the footnotes are a joint effort on his and the editor's part". No. They aren't. The guy has his own footnotes, in which he, for example, notes which Bible passages some people are quoting. And even this he can't get right: all he writes is Revelation 3:17, or something, never noting which of the twenty Polish translations he's using. I'm afraid he's actually translating them himself.

And the style, oh God... the story is told from a first person perspective, the perspecive of our hero, Will "TK" Kennedy. TK is kind of a loser, yet the translator opts for formal equivalence, translating the text almost word-for-word, like there is something hidden and mystical in the very word order TK is using. Uh, hello, rookie! TK is a high-school dropout, he will be using slang, short sentences, simple words and not your overblown, bloated style. You don't need "animated shorts featuring Popeye as the herp" - "Popeye cartoons" will suffice!

Oh, but the translator does try for slang. And fails miserably. And I'm pretty sure he never even heard of the term "equivalence". How the Hell is a Polish reader supposed to know what "show and tell" means?

It pains to see such a grat writer receive such awful treatment. The book was published by this newcomer publisher "Redhorse", which seems to think that if you stick a book in an "artistic" cover with glossy highlights, you will duplicate the success of "Fabryka Słów".

Yes, I just compared them to "Fabryka Słów". Unfavourably. In my mind, they are now worse than that bombastic, exploitative pulp machine.

I hate all these newcomers to the publishing market. I know competition is the motivation for improvement in a free market, but you guys don't even deserve to be called "also-rans". You are completely off the mark when trying to anticipate a reader's needs - a glossy cover is no substitute for a decent translation. Hell, you want to know how to compete with "Fabryka Słów"? Just put out a decently edited book. Seriously, the main accusation leveled against "Fabryka Słów" is the abysmal level of the very language of their books. They like to call it "transparency", while it's just blandness. And it's not even transparent - the short production cycle they impose on their writers makes them sometimes put gibberish in their books.

If you can put out a fantasy book that you can read without stopping every five sentences, trying to work out what the author meant, you're already better than the biggest modern Polish fantasy publisher. Hell, if you get somebody to do a foreword, you'll be playing in the big leagues, competing with Znak and others.

So, yeah. Bad translations - one of my biggest pet peeves since vampires started sparkling. To which point in the book I am slowly nearing. God help me.

So, it turns out one of my teachers actually reads this LJ. Wow. I need to up my game. Don't worry, miss, I will try to keep the swearing... at a reasonable level.

And seeing I'm halfway done with the next projectMAPLE phase, the reasonable level is still pretty high. But then again, in the next one I tangle with one of the things that particularly grates me with the book: how it can take such a simple, yet exciting concept (vampires trying to pass off as humans in Smallville) and screw it royally up two times before Sunday mass on a rainy day. With a rusty rake. Sideways.

But hey, all's well that ends well, so let's end this post on a positive note, with a quotation from "The Deluge".

One of the most recognisable characters of the book, nay, the whole series is Pan Zagloba, Polish wit, cunning, lechery, hypocrisy, earnestness, cowardice, courage and faith all rolled into one paradoxical, but wonderful and likeable cur. Zagloba is recognised for his self-contradicting life stories and numerous bon mots.

Here is one of his friendly insults directed at everybodies favourite diminutive soldier, Pan Volodyoski:

Original: "(...) sklepu z rozumem nie założysz, bo go na sprzedanie nie posiadasz, (...)"

Curtin: "You will not fill a vault with your mind, since you have no wit for sale;"

And with that, I bid you adieu, you crabmongers (I'll explain this joke later).

So, the date is set: on the 29th, I'm going in and defending my thesis. To celebrate this, I will post some of my favourite "Deluge" (the book I based my thesis around) quotes, in the original and English.

Here's what I think is the most powerful metaphor in book I:

( You know somebody's a fantastic writer when he can write stuff like this. Though the quasi-KJV English does not do it justice. )

THIS is effing WIN!

It's a collection of classic Disney comic books (including my beloved Don Rosa's Scrooge McDuck stories) that are just waiting for you to read them. Go. Now. Before Disney's legal department catches wind of it and takes it down.

So, my promoter told me that if I make the final corrections to the thesis by Monday, I can defend it on June 29. Which is awesome, but also means that I have to get all my paperwork in order by that time too. And get some photos. And learn how to make an automatic TOC in OpenOffice.

No, seriously, WTF?



Japan...