7月
29
2009
我推荐了 Andrew Brown 的 Fishing in Utopia，把书名翻译成《垂钓乌托邦》。上网查了一下，却发现有些地方把书名翻成了《乌托邦的渔业》，在中国国际竞争力促进会的网站上，有这段文字：
《乌托邦的渔业：瑞典与消逝的未来}(Fishing in Utopia： Sweden and the Future that Disappeared)(作者安德鲁•布朗)渔业、新闻业以及处于消亡痛苦中的瑞典社会体制是这本发人深省、勾起回忆的自传体回忆录中毫无前途的要素。
译者理解错了书名中的 Fishing 的意思，也难怪，中国还没有把钓鱼作为一种正式的爱好，所以 fishing 就被想当然地想像成渔业了，其实只要看上下文，看一下这本书的介绍就可以避免出错。一般 fishing 如果是做渔业解的话，会是形容词：fishing boat, fishing industry, fishing community等等。
当然“垂钓”也未必准确。我还没有看完这本书，作者的捕鱼手段可能不仅限于垂钓。但是《垂钓乌托邦》会比《在乌托邦捕鱼》更能地反应原文的风格。
10月
10
2008
Andrew Brown 的文章说什么样的数码相机才是最好的相机－－并不是像素越多越好。
At last, technology is making photography better, not worse
Andrew Brown
The Guardian,
Thursday October 9 2008
The phone I bought last month has a camera supposedly better than the camera I bought four years ago. That’s to say it has a 5MP camera instead of a 4MP one. I could have bought a Samsung phone with 8MP, the same as my second digital camera. And the phone does take perfectly usable pictures and recognisable videos. That it functions as well as a mapping device and a recorder is astonishing, but irrelevant to this argument. My cameras will do none of those other things. When I want to take a close-up with the most recent, and expensive, DSLR, I have to go to the trouble of changing the lens first. The phone – and the previous camera – do it all in software.
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