Cultural context is one of those terms that you hear a lot in the translation world. And here I must thank my friend Trevor for sending me the enclosed photo, which nicely illustrates the concept.

If I'd seen this Volvo driving down the motorway in Britain, it probably would not have made much of an impression. But in a diffrent cultural context, when spotted by a French driver as he trundled along the autoroute in France, the number plate gave a very clear message.

And no, I won't translate it. And no, I won't tell you what it means in French. But it is a lovely example of cultural context!

Good to see that the NWTN (the North West Translators' Network) is hosting an evening seminar on "Marketing for translators". The event takes place on Wednesday 25th June 2008, with the seminar commencing at 19:00. Venue is the Manchester YHA in Castlefields, and the speaker is Heidi Kerschl, an experienced translator with a background in marketing and an engaging presentation style. Highly recommended - I might even go along myself!

I learned a lovely new word today at an STC UK workshop. Sarah O'Keefe from Scriptorium has kindly flown over to run a workshop for STC UK, and as part of her "Paradigm Shifts are Never Pretty" presentation, Sarah introduced me to the phrase WYSIOO. This describes the XML paradigm. WYSIOO stands for What You See Is One Option, a lovely reflection on the fact that with XML documentation, content and formatting are two separate things. A lovely term - thank you, Sarah!

Usability is a big issue in the high-tech sector, so I was interested to read an article which reports that 95% of gadgets returned to the manufacturers are actually working fine - the users simply didn't read the manual. Doh!