Is that a fish in your ear?: translation and meaning of everything

by David Bellos

“[Bellos] offers an anthropology of translation acts. But through this anthropology a much grander project emerges. The old theories were elegiac, stately; they were very much severe. Bellos is practical, and sprightly. He is unseduced by elegy. And this is because he is onto something new . . . Dazzlingly inventive.” —Adam Thirlwell, The New York Times

“In the guise of a book about translation this is a richly original cultural history . . . A book for anyone interested in words, language and cultural anthropology. Mr Bellos’s fascination with his subject is itself endlessly fascinating.” —The Economist

“For anyone with a passing interest in language this work is enthralling . . . A wonderful celebration of the sheer diversity of language and the place it occupies in human endeavour. Conducted by a man who clearly knows his stuff, it is a whirlwind tour round the highways and byways of translation in all its glorious forms, from literary fiction to car repair manuals, from the Nuremberg trials to decoding at Bletchley Park.” —The Scotsman

“Bellos has numerous paradoxes, anecdotes and witty solutions . . . his insights are thought provoking, paradoxical and a brilliant exposition of mankind’s attempts to deal with the Babel of global communication.” —Michael Binyon, The Times

“This informed book props open the door to the idea of translation with pop culture . . . This broad-ranging book reads like a survey course in translation, providing a look at its history, detractors, challenges, future—if computers are the future—and current practice, both spoken and written . . . The result is arresting.” —Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times

“David Bellos writes like a person who chooses his words not only carefully but also confidently and pragmatically. Translation is a challenging enterprise, but one he embraces vigorously and without the gloomy pessimism that leads some to declare that it’s impossible . . . Rich, often playful chapters.” —Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“[A] witty, erudite exploration . . . [Bellos] delights in [translation’s] chequered past and its contemporary ubiquity . . . He would like us to do more of it. With the encouragement of this book, we might even begin to enjoy it —Maureen Freely, Sunday Telegraph

Is That A Fish In Your Ear? is spiced with good and provocative things. At once erudite and unpretentious . . . [it is a] scintillating bouillabaisse.” —Frederic Raphael, Literary Review

“Forget the fish—it’s David Bellos you want in your ear when the talk is about translation. Bellos dispels many of the gloomy truisms of the trade and reminds us what an infinitely flexible instrument the English language (or any language) is. Sparkling, independent-minded analysis of everything from Nabokov’s insecurities to Google Translate’s felicities fuels a tender—even romantic—account of our relationship with words.” —NATASHA WIMMER, translator of Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives and 2666

“A disquisition of remarkable freshness on language, speech and translation. In short, punchy, instructive chapters that take in such things as linguistics, philosophy, dictionaries, machine translation, Bible translations, international law, the Nuremberg trials, the European Union and the rise of simultaneous interpreting . . . I could say anyone with an interest in translation should read Is That a Fish, but there wouldn’t be very much point; instead, anyone with no interest in translation, please read David Bellos’s brilliant book” —Michael Hofmann, The Guardian
“Bellos has adopted a radically different approach: as his Hitchhikery title suggests, he has set out to make it fun . . . Is That a Fish in Your Ear? is essential reading for anyone with even a vague interest in language and translation—in short, it is a triumph.” —Shaun Whiteside, The Independent
“Erudite . . . ultimately illuminating, even transformative.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Written by an award-winning translator and professor of comparative literature, this book is informed by considerable culture and an original, probing intelligence with a mostly light touch—the title riffs off of Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, whose babel fish, when inserted in one’s ear, could translate any imaginable language. If only it were that easy . . . It is a breeze to get lost in translation, and for this reason Bellos cannily exclaims, ‘We should do more of it.’” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The power of habit: why we do what we do in life and business

by Charles Duhigg
In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

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Helping students remember: exercises and strategies to strengthen memory (EBOOK)

Milton J. Dehn

A hands-on memory-training program for children and adolescents featuring dozens of practical, evidence-based memory exercises

A practical workbook designed to assist students whose academic learning is suffering due to a memory deficit or ineffective utilization of their memory capabilities, Helping Students Remember provides numerous strategies and methods to strengthen memory, including chunking, organization, keyword, self-testing, pegword, loci, and mnemonics.

Drawing on the author’s extensive training and experience, this useful resource presents effective techniques and lessons on:

How memory works

Memorization methods

Goals for improving memory

Repetition

Using cards to build memory

Grouping words by category

Study skills that help memory

Using arithmetic to build memory

Using music to remember

Improving recall during tests

Creating and using review sheets

Picturing verbal information

Using context cues

Plans for using memory strategies

Helping Students Remember is the first workbook of its kind for general psychologists, school psychologists, and special education teachers, offering practical, easy-to-implement, and evidence-based methods for working with children with memory impairments.

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Digital material: tracing new media in everyday life and technology

Marianne van den Boomen and others

Three decades of societal and cultural alignment of new media have yielded a host of innovations, trials, and problems, accompanied by versatile popular and academic discourse. New Media Studies crystallized internationally into an established academic discipline, and this begs the question: where do we stand now? Which new questions are emerging now that new media are being taken for granted, and which riddles are still unsolved? Is contemporary digital culture indeed all about ‘you’, the participating user, or do we still not really understand the digital machinery and how this constitutes us as ‘you’? The contributors to the present book, all employed in teaching and researching new media and digital culture, assembled their ‘digital material’ into an anthology, covering issues ranging from desktop metaphors to Web 2.0 ecosystems, from touch screens to blogging and e-learning, from role-playing games and cybergothic music to wireless dreams. Together the contributions provide a showcase of current research in the field, from what may be called a ‘digital-materialist’ perspective.

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