"Post Edit": The Problems Of AI Translation

In between my journalistic and academic writing assignments, I also do translation work for a translation company based in Switzerland. I've been working for them for 13 years and although translation work in the last few years has paid very little in comparison with other academic work, if you were quick and efficient, you could still earn quite well.

This has all changed in the last couple of years. Like other translation companies and indeed companies in general, most translation is now done by AI tools. Of course, since these tools are not perfect, the result needs to be proofread or "post edited" by an actual translator. Both customers and translation companies view this "post editing" as "tidying up the text" or "just doing a quick check", because (they argue) it has already been translated. Payment for the "post edit" is thus absolutely minimal, nowhere near what the translator would be earning if they actually translated the text themseves from scratch.

The fact of the matter is that the translator usually has to change the entire text. At the end, they have retranslated the text. In fact, it would have been less work if the text had not been pre-translated by AI at all. And for this re-translation, or actual translation, the translator is paid a fraction of what they would normally earn for a translation.

In short, the "post edit" is a big con. The customers save money while the translator works for peanuts.

Allow me to list some more disadvantages of the post edit for the translator:

1. Researching terminology: Customers should provide a glossary of how they would like terms to be translated. This can be fed to the AI programme and used in the translation. On the whole, however, customers don't provide a glossary (or a comprehensive glossary) and the AI programme uses random terms, which might not be suitable for the customer or the context. This means that the translator has to research every single term anyway - which is the same work as if they did the translation from scratch themselves. The AI programme has been no help here.

2. Consistency: In addition, the AI might translate a term in a certain way in one sentence, but in the next sentence transate the same term in a completely different way. This is a particularly sneaky problem, especially if the term appears at the beginning of the text and then much further down in the text with a different translation, because the translator has to remember that this term was previously translated differently. As both translations might actually be correct, it is not immediately obvious that two different terms have been used and it is up to the translator to try and remember this.

If you are doing a translation from scratch yourself, you will keep your terminology in mind and not use different terms. Consistency is very important in translation. This is different in a post edit situation because you're trying to understand the "mind" of an AI translator which uses no logic whatsoever.

3. Incorrect translations: While many translations produced by the AI tools are quite good, some are utterly wrong. These hit you from left field quite suddenly, as you're not expecting the tool to go off piste quite so drastically. Obviously, these incorrect translations need to be re-done.

4. Style: The AI tool's style is often poor or stilted. This is a very difficult problem as it takes the translator just as long to rewrite these parts of the translation as it would to do the translation from scratch.

5. Hindrance: The AI-translated text is, in short, more of a hindrance than a help in many or even most cases. The translator not only has to check that the translation corresponds in terms of completeness and correctness to the original text, but at the same time bear in mind consistency and style. These are too many elements to take into account simultaneously, so that more than one thorough proofread is always necessary and possibly even three proofreads might be required. The post edit is thus usually more work than an actual translation.

For these reasons, it is very easy to overlook minor mistakes in a post edit. In some cases, if an inordinate amount of changes have been made, to the extent that the translator has spent more time reworking the text than they would have spent translating it themselves, major mistakes might even be overlooked, due to the fact that the translator has been battling simultaneously on all fronts.

At the end of a post edit, I'm usually less satisfied than I am with a translation I've done from scratch (and often frustrated with it). 

Conclusion: I therefore appeal to customers - if you really must use an AI tool for a translation, then please respect the translator who is rewriting the text and honour their work with the appropriate fee.

Thank you.

 

It's Too Late For Happy

I saw you in a magazine

My heart just missed a beat

I thought you'd gone for evermore

My sadness was complete

So then I read the article

It told me about you.

They said that you were with a girl

Too awesome to be true?

But photos showed you chic and bright

Your clothes were new and smart

Your girl was cute and looked like fun

She'd clearly won your heart

You must be thrilled and so relieved

They said to me that day

But it's too late for happy now

You've really gone away.

Your Funeral

Today I should have gone

But instead I went shopping.

As I tried on a sweater in Mango

I thought of our trips to Africa, France, Scotland.

I remembered us young and full of energy.

I wanted to go today.

But it was too sad.

Today I should have gone

But instead I went to Starbucks.

As I drank my Filter Coffee Tall

I thought of our fights, in cafés, caravans, living rooms.

I thought of us young with all our lives to live.

I wanted to go today.

But it was too sad.

Today I should have gone

But instead I went to the city.

They sent me a photo of you and your urn.

"Don't cry because it's over,

Smile because it was so lovely," says your urn.

I wanted to go today.

But there are tears in my coffee cup.

It's All Over Now

Are you really single? Or do you have a wife?
Have you got a girlfriend from a former life?
Are you busy chalking up the number of your lays?
You gotta query every flipping thing these days!

Your home is lovely. I thought you lived alone
Until I heard the lady on the answerphone!
I guess I'm just too gullible to understand your ways
You gotta check a billion flipping points these days!

I've no time either. You're not the only one.
Although you convince me you're important bar to none.
In your world of treachery, it seems that lying pays.
You gotta cover every flipping base these days!

Walk With Me And Take My Hand

 

When I'm sad and all despairing
When I don't know how things stand.
That's when you will be there for me
Walk with me and take my hand.

When I'm in that deep dark cavern
Far from any homely land
That's when I will hear you calling:
"Walk with me and take my hand".

When concern is all-consuming
And my trust is built on sand,
That's when you will touch my shoulder,
Walk with me and take my hand.

Love Lost

It was the nightingale and not the lark
That sang when you embraced me in the dark
I wished that time would put her hands to rest
And we could lie in love, as lovers blessed.

Affirm your love for me with each caress
Your passion you in tenderness express
Yet still you fail to hide the flagrant lie
And I must face the truth I can't deny.

My love is empty, it is lifeless, lost
Succumbed to painful falsehood at high cost.
I wish that time had put her hands to rest
And we could lie in love, as lovers blessed. 

Sometimes My Heart

Sometimes my heart
Catches in my throat
And everything I am
Struggling to not remember
Hurtles through like a
Tsunami of memories
And love.

Sometimes my heart
Goes into a corner
And cries alone
It picks up its broken
Pieces from the floor
Clutching at its memories
And love.

The Color Of Pain

I am in pain and I see the color blue.

Or rather I do not see it, but I feel it. A very bright blue, the color of my favorite handbag. I wonder if this is the color of pain, and if it is, if I feel a sense of affinity towards pain, as I do towards my handbag.

Of us three children, I was the ugly one. Not that anyone used the word ugly. But it was made clear that it was my little sister who was the pretty one. Even when I asked if I was pretty, there were a long pause before I was told that I was... "um... attractive". We all knew that attractive was not where it was at.

When I was 10 years old, the Sunday Times Magazine ran an article on sex appeal. I asked my mother what sex appeal was, and she told me that my little sister had it. She did not hesitate to add that it was something I did not have. My little sister was 4 years old at the time.

In addition to not being pretty and lacking in sex appeal, I was clumsy, awkward and "uncoordinated". Nobody in the family understood what this really meant, but we all knew that it kind of meant clumsy, awkward and ugly. It was strange because I loved dancing ballet, I wanted to be a ballet dancer. Later in life, I danced ballet on the stage while my sister watched from the audience and continued to call me "uncoordinated". My younger siblings hurled these epithets at me until I was in my 30s, until we stopped speaking. They had been taught from very small that this was how I was. Nobody could blame them.

Now, when I look at the old photos, I realize that it was I who was the pretty one, I who moved graciously. In a family of dark-haired, dark-eyed souls, I was the red-haired, blue-eyed mystery. In a family of short people, I was the tall one. My sister looked like my mother - small, with dark hair, dark eyes and large breasts. You will find those in your own likeness to be the ones you cherish. You will label others ugly because you do not understand. 

Now I think, even in pain I feel beautiful colors because I perceive beauty all around me and because I perceive beauty within me. Because beauty is of prime importance for me and ugliness is only wayward, falsely directed beauty which has taken the wrong path. Because it did not understand.

Big Sister

 

The Analog to Digital Converter

When I left university back in the early 1980s, my first job was as Materials Manager in the Computer Department of Siemens London. I know! We Cupcakes are full of surprises.

Actually Siemens London was nowhere near London but in Sunbury in Middlesex. Also I had never been technical in my entire life and had studied mainly politics and history at university, but I had also studied German and apparently that qualified me for a job in this multinational German technology company.

One thing that I didn't mention at the interview but which probably really did qualify me for the job was that all through my childhood, I had spent most evenings sitting with my Dad in the workshop he had made in our garage. We didn't have a car, so my Dad, who was a hobby carpenter among other things, filled our garage with wood, formica (formica is the material of the future, my Dad said) and a workbench that he himself had constructed from pinewood with various interesting technical gadgets attached. He went to carpentry evening classes once a week and learned how to make all kinds of furniture, with which he proceeded to fill our house.

Now my Dad was a bit of a dreamer, not so much of an organizer or a manager type. So mostly he spent his spare time designing furniture with his propelling pencil (in the future there will only be propelling pencils, said my Dad) on pieces of spare paper and explaining to me precisely how he was going to implement the construction and make all the parts fit together. He was very heavy on the details and spent ages perfecting his dovetail joints, which merged together like those of a master craftsman. The only trouble was that a lot of his furniture remained unfinished - unpainted, uncovered, just the - often cheap - bare wood. It didn't bother my Dad. I think he looked at it and simply saw the perfect beauty of the design and the construction (especially the perfect dovetail joints), not how it looked to the consumer (me), who wanted it to look pretty as well. He was a real technician.

So when I started at Siemens Sunbury, I guess that was mainly why I just fitted in with all the technician guys I worked together with. I was way younger than most of them, but I suppose that made it seem more normal for me, like they were kind of Dad figures for me. The technicians' workshop was in the room right next to my office, and I had to go through it to visit the bathroom, as well as to get to the stores where all my technical parts were located, plus the big Siemens Sunbury stores, which was like walking through a portal into a huge new magical universe when you opened the door behind the bathroom. Opening the door into the Siemens Sunbury stores from our offices was a bit like walking into Narnia from the back of the magic wardrobe.

A Full-Time Job

This is the fourth episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

Previous episode: Siegfried and the Professor

After a couple of weeks, I realized that the part-time job was not going to cover my costs. This is partly due to the high taxes in Germany, but mostly due to the fact that under German law, I still have to pay private health insurance. It’s so complicated. One of the main reasons I took a job as an employee was so that the employer would contribute to my massive private health insurance costs. In fact, the university’s HR Department promised me on the phone that they would take over almost half of these costs, as is customary. After two weeks, it turned out that the guy who assured me of that had got the facts totally wrong! Instead of paying what was discussed, it turns out that they will only pay about one-eighth. The net pay is so low that it makes a big difference. Plus, there are higher travel costs than I expected and more tax. Quite literally, it is not worth me doing this job at all!! I am left with so little net that I could be earning more by staying at home and doing a couple of small translation projects every month.

There is no other solution at the moment but to take on a full-time job in order to survive. However, I am not convinced that, even with a full-time job as a secretary here, I will be earning enough to be living a half-way comfortable life. I simply hadn’t foreseen this situation and to be honest, the HR Department has screwed up a lot.

Siegfried and the Professor

This is the third episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

Previous episode: Not Moving Forward

Nobody explained much to me about anything when I first got here. For a little while, I thought Kurt was the Head of our entire Institute, which has around a hundred people, most of them men. On the second day, Kurt introduced me to a guy who I assumed just happened to be standing around in the secretariat, with something along the lines of, “This is the big man who knows everything”. It was a bit puzzling as the “big man” was only a little taller than me (I am not tall!) and himself did not expand on the everything it was about which he was so knowledgeable. He showed very little interest in me but did join us for lunch, where by chance I sat next to him. I was very polite and tried to engage him in conversation, with very little success. He did mention that he used to live in Paris and had done his PhD there, whereupon I told him I had also studied for one semester in Paris, but he showed literally no interest and did not respond. Looking back, I guess he was wondering what kind of a secretary studies in Paris!

A couple of weeks later we had a meeting with the entire Institute and this guy was moderating it. Afterwards I googled his name, Hagen Eichner, and found out that he was actually the Head. Of the whole Institute. Bingo, there was a photo of him in a gown and everything. Boy did I feel embarrassed that I didn’t know he was actually the boss! According to the bio he is going to be 48 soon. He is smartly dressed and very clean-cut, but apart from that I have ascertained nothing about him at all. It didn’t help that he wasn’t interested in me at lunch. I kind of closed down after that.

Not Moving Forward

This is the second episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

Previous episode: A New Job

In life, I have learned, if you are part of a large company, or in my case, a large German public sector institution (several thousand people work at this campus), your entire existence there is determined by your immediate superior. If something goes wrong, you really only have that guy that you can talk to about it. You would not want to go over their head and complain, nor would you want to become embroiled in discussions about your boss with other employees, as it will always get back to them eventually. So your immediate boss very much determines your life, career and circumstances, and ultimately happiness, within the organization.

While I like Kurt a lot and feel very much supported by him, it is still puzzling me why he has virtually no work for me and I am beginning to wonder if anyone else knows that I actually have nothing to do – apart from the occasional proofread, as I mentioned before. I know that I’m only supposed to be a secretary here (which of course I’m totally over-qualified for, having spent most of my life working in informatics) but I think even a real secretary would have limits in this situation. I have literally reached the stage where I am embarrassed, ashamed, and yes – even scared – to mention this state of affairs to a single person, either inside or outside the entire Institute. It just doesn’t seem right. I keep asking myself if I should be working on something that I’m not aware of, or if I haven’t explored things enough. Kurt has explained very little to me – he’s shown me the project’s website in English, and I have digested it and made linguistic corrections. And he’s given me access to all his project e-mails for the last few months, to read – but they mostly seem to just contain inconsequential, insubstantial discussions about minor topics between Kurt and the other two project heads in our partner institutions. And without further in-depth explanation, I can’t really make head or tail of them.

When I first met Kurt at the interview, I was a little taken aback by his seemingly awkward manner of talking, his fixed way of staring at me unblinkingly and his slightly jerky and awkward movements and walk. In the meantime, I’ve become more used to it. And because he is kind to me, and because he chose me for the job, I feel fairly confident with him. I am not the world’s most confident person, and despite whatever show I try to put on for people, I am really quite shy. So it took a lot of nerve for me to pluck up the courage after about two weeks and tell him that I had nothing at all to do.

I should explain that I don’t actually meet with Kurt every day. Only maybe once or maximum twice a week, when he comes to my office. I guess he thinks that is obligatory, that he at least sees/talks to his secretary/personal assistant for about 20 minutes a week, just to show he is interested in the fact that she is there at all. Kind of an “alibi” visit. I mean, I see Kurt most lunchtimes, because I have chosen to go to the canteen with the group – we meet every day at precisely 11:37 a.m. outside Kurt’s office – his stipulation – but if I decided to bring lunch with me from home and warm it up in the microwave, or chop up a salad, as some people (the other secretaries) do, I wouldn’t see either the group or Kurt at all on a regular basis. In fact, I would probably see almost nobody at all, the entire morning. I would be like a ghost, flitting in and out and not doing anything!

And what happens in these little meetings? Just about nothing. A lot of hot air is blown around and Kurt makes much of the one or two tiny tasks I have that week. He can waffle on profoundly for ten minutes about a two-line e-mail of no consequence that I have to write. Or he will use pompous words and flamboyant phrases to describe insignificant events that might or might not happen should certain measures might or might not be implemented, all the while nodding to emphasize the seriousness of the situation and staring at me with his unblinking eyes. It is a superpower of academics, I think. To make you believe that the subject matter is of vital importance and that they absolutely own it.

Anyway, Kurt’s reaction to my telling him that I had nothing at all to do was to make a little kind of “Mh” noise in his throat, then turn on his heel and march out of my room without a word, with his awkward stiff walk. He also closed the door, which I always have open, and I called out, “Please leave the door open –” but my words were just gone with the wind. This first time, I was surprised at his rudeness, but then I thought, Maybe he didn’t understand me properly. Maybe it’s my English accent in German. So a few days later when he paid me one of his flying visits, I said the same thing again: “Kurt, I’ve got nothing to do”. I thought he would understand this truly hellish situation, sitting around for four hours a day staring at my screen or out of the window, by myself in this room, isolated in a completely different building from my group, not interacting with anyone. But Kurt just made his little “Mh” noise again and turned around and marched out of the room, with me calling “Please leave the d–” and my words being lost in the ether while he closed the door on me again. It was almost as if he were trying to close me out of his head, or as if he thought if he closed the door with me inside, I wouldn’t exist for a while. And quite honestly, that’s how I feel. As if I don’t exist.

After my third attempt to convey my desperation, I extended my usual complaint with the addendum, “Please, could you give me something to do?”

This time, Kurt stared at me with his unblinking, emotionless eyes and snapped, “Then do something that moves you forward!”, in a cold, almost aggressive manner, and turned on his heel and marched, head down and stiff, out of the room, almost slamming the door behind him and closing me out of his life and possibly his conscience yet again.

I don’t even know what that sentence means! I will not be asking him again.

I have developed a method for coping with this situation. As usual, I continue to get up at 6:30 a.m. I perform all my routines: shower, dressing, breakfast, makeup, nails, etc. I make sure I look as nice as possible every day, even though almost no-one is going to see me. I leave the house a few minutes before 8 a.m. and drive the 35-40 minutes to work. The drive is always stressful – a lot of traffic and congestion at this time of the morning. I usually arrive just after 8:30 a.m. at work, having been up for just over two hours, and in peak functioning mode. I fetch a coffee and then start to wind down all my engines, which in the meantime I can do pretty quickly, because I have been practicing it for weeks. I bring myself to a level where I am completely composed and serene, and where I am expecting nothing, absolutely nothing at all to unruffle or provoke me. Effectively, I am in a state where I am not really capable of any kind of challenging work. I would go so far as to say that I am not really capable of any kind of work at all! I am content and relaxed, and I can sit there for the next four hours and just do nothing, if necessary. Essentially, I am almost in a trance. It is my survival mechanism.

Next episode: Siegfried and the Professor

A New Job

This is the first episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

So now I am working mornings as a secretary at a technological institute in our city’s university. It’s one of the better universities in Germany. It has two campuses, one in the center of the city and one on a campus north of the city out in the middle of nowhere in the forest. I also applied for a job at the city campus, but was only offered this one in the forest. It is about a 40-minute drive for me and it has taken a while to get used to the stress of the journey. They have put me in an office in a separate building, not the one in which either my boss or my team are located. I sit completely on my own in this room and apart from saying Hello in the mornings, nobody speaks to me. It’s a bit of a mystery to me why I am in solitary confinement over here when my boss and team are over there. Apart from that, I have almost nothing to do! I’m certainly not being a secretary.

Except that after a couple of weeks, they realized I could write. And so, since then, I occasionally get scientific academic papers to correct in English. Most of the people here are German of course and they are writing their papers in English. I think it’s a pretty well-known fact how academics live to publish their papers in academic journals. That’s their whole raison d’être. So they are really happy to have a native speaker like myself to proofread them. I also get a little translation work to do – German to English – which I enjoy. All of this work might keep me busy for about five hours a week on average, and I have to be here for twenty hours. So for about fifteen hours a week I have to pretend to work. That is a feat and a half, seriously. That’s even more difficult than actually working.

Of course, my pay grade doesn’t match the work I’m doing, when I’m actually working. I found out that I’m getting paid a lot less than the three other secretaries here, who don’t appear to have one academic qualification between them, while I have a university degree. But I don’t care. Sitting around all day doing nothing at all is the worst thing. I spend the morning here, then I go home and research or write articles, or do translation work, which still pays relatively well, in comparison. Usually, I work at the weekends too.

My boss, Kurt, is gay. He made this quite clear on Day One. It makes things easier, I think. Kurt is from Dresden, in the old East Germany, and he was born and grew up there when it still had a wall round it. I can’t figure out to what extent, if at all, this has made an impact on his character. His partner lives in Bern, and Kurt joins him at the weekends, so he has gone from one extreme to the other really. Communism to Swissness. I find him very fair and I feel that he likes me. I have told all my friends, Kurt is the best boss I ever had in my life. Except he has no work for me.

My friends keep asking, why did they hire you when they have no work for you? I say, I think maybe I am just an outlet for some money they need to spend. Just an item in the balance sheet. That’s why they parked me over here in solitary confinement and hoped I would just sit here like a tiny quiet mouse. I guess I look like that kind of a person!

I don’t know what will happen when they find out I’m not.

Next episode: Not Moving Forward

The People's Princess

The plane was not new. It was the oldest plane Lizzie had ever seen. The cabin crew were not new either. They were the oldest cabin crew Lizzie had ever seen. They were two women who were the most overweight people Lizzie had actually ever seen in a plane. She wondered how they were going to move up and down the aisles with ease. They were like two mothers, waddling along and calling everybody 'Hon'. One of them called Lizzie 'Hon' and she started to cry. She was frightened of flying, she felt sick and her head was spinning. She wanted somebody to take her in their arms and tell her that everything would be all right. She knew that the doctor had been right, that she should not fly with concussion. Her head would probably explode at take-off.

It did not explode at take-off but Lizzie felt worse. The one flight attendant who had called her 'Hon' came and offered her some nuts but Lizzie could not speak by this time and the woman asked, 'Are you OK, Hon?'

Lizzie said, 'No,' so the flight attendant said, 'You come to the back with me, just come and sit down, you'll be all right,' so Lizzie went and sat at the back, where they were getting all the nuts and drinks out of the cupboards and the attendant made her sit down on the cabin crew's seat and said, 'Now, I think you need a beer, you'll be all right once you've had a beer,' and poured her one, and Lizzie said, 'I am scared of flying.'

'No need, Hon,' said the flight attendant. 'My name's Maddie. I been flyin with this airline since 1959. I'm still goin.'

Reconstructing History

In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth is the propaganda ministry responsible for ensuring that historical events are falsified in order to maintain the status quo. It changes historical archives and rewrites recorded history for propaganda effect. Unless people can actually remember what really happened, there is no choice but for the general public to accept what is on record and in the “history books”.

But even if people do remember the actual events, there is nothing to corroborate and substantiate their claims if the history books have been rewritten. This thus makes it impossible, for example, for future generations to believe such claims. And of course, once people have forgotten the events themselves, or indeed once the people who experienced the events are no longer alive, people then have no choice but to rely on what exists as a record to present the “facts”.

Following the current obsession with all things World War I, I am reading and researching as much as I can get my hands on (and that’s a lot more than I had previously thought). The wealth of material just lying around waiting to be read is unbelievable, considering it all happened 100 years ago. The fact of the matter seems to be that people just wrote more back then and hung on to it. Or perhaps they just had better quality paper, as most of the stuff I have seen is in better condition than some of the things I wrote just 10 or 15 years ago. Letters home from soldiers in the field, newspapers, photos, diaries, the stuff just keeps on coming if you go looking for it.

Eighteenth Birthday Blues

Another excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund"

Tuesday 12^th April 1977

It was my 18^th birthday two days ago.

I think an 18^th birthday is quite important. Ashley’s, for example, in December, was quite a highlight.

Ashley’s parents gave her a car. It is a tiny Fiat, and it looks a bit like a hamster. It is really small and fat. It is so small that her mother had it tied up in a pink ribbon! Ashley’s mother also gave her driving lessons in their Daimler, so that Ashley just had to take a test and then passed it straight away. So her driving classes cost almost no money at all. Sometimes I was even in the Daimler when she was taking lessons and I can tell you I also learned a lot. Ashley’s mother shouted at her all the time, enough for me to learn everything as well, in the back seat.

This car benefits me too of course. We drive everywhere in it. I think I’m in it almost as much as she is. For example, Ashley picks me up in it to go to school and she brings me home in it; I just have to give her half the petrol money. We feel really independent and exclusive in this car. We just come out of school and everyone else has to go and wait for the bus and there we are, our car. It’s right there.

Mannheim To Frankfurt With Deutsche Bahn

Senk you for trevelling viz Deutsche Bahn. That's what the train "captain" used to announce over the microphone when the train arrived at a station and they said "Auf Wiedersehen!" in three different languages. They don't say that any more. Now they say Senk you for chusing Deutsche Bahn today. I guess they got a new American translator. And I'm always like, duh, did we have a choice?

The ICE train (InterCityExpress, not really cold train) does actually run pretty much on time. 10 years ago, it didn't. 10 years ago about 30% of ICE trains were either cancelled or late. One time, I was late to work in Frankfurt (yes, this is not the first time I've been foolish enough to accept a job in the big smoke) because there was a horse on the track. You heard correctly. The driver got out and held onto the horse until the police came.

This is a train that goes at over 300 kilometers an hour and everybody is relying on it to do that so that they can get to work. When I finally did, my manager did not believe the horse story and who can blame him.

Anyway Deutsche Bahn must have got a new boss or something because now, almost all the trains do actually run on time! I take that back! All of the trains run on time! OK I exaggerate! Very occasionally, there might be a teeny delay of 5 minutes, but the train will almost always have made it up by the time it gets to the next station.

Keep Calm And Vote For Merkel

Interesting posters have recently appeared all over our town, calling for our citizens to vote for Angela Merkel in the upcoming German Federal elections at the end of this September. They appear to be the work of the Junge Union, the youth organization fraction of the CDU and the CSU, the two German conservative parties who, together with the FDP, form the coalition government of Germany, also referred to as the second Merkel cabinet.

The posters (see photo) appear to the unitiated eye to be very low-key and straightforward, with a pleasant blue background and a simple white font. The text is "Cool bleiben und Kanzlerin wählen" which literally means "Stay cool and vote for the Chancelloress" (that's Angela Merkel). In case you were unsure whether it was about Angela Merkel, the text is capped by a little logo of a pair of white hands with the fingertips pressed together, which is Merkel's signature pose. The hand logo appears, as mentioned, above the text, almost like a little crown.

Now I bet you're thinking, that sounds familiar. But most of our townspeople are walking past it without batting an eyelid. In contrast to this cupcake, who upon seeing it for the first time, chortled, pointed, chortled again, said, oh that's clever, and promptly took a photo.

If you ask the average German here what they think of the poster, they'll tell you that the blue background is very pretty, and also neutral - not the usual color of the CDU, whose colors are usually black or orange. They also find the little hand logo amusing. Anything else? I ask. Nope. Do you know where the idea for the poster comes from? Yes, the Junge Union.

What I love about this is that the Germans, long reproached with a lack of humor, have taken something quintessentially British and humorously turned it into their own. We've been seeing various humorous versions of the second World War poster "Keep Calm And Carry On" for quite a while now, but this is the first time I've seen a German version of it. And when I explain its significance to my fellow townspeople, they are surprised, even slightly amused, but I can tell that they don't really get the joke completely.

The irony of course is that the original poster was referring directly to a state induced by events that would be created by Germans. And it was intended to encourage the British public to show the Germans what they were made of. That was what was going to help the British win the war. So the poster really falls into the category of anti-German war propaganda.

I am wondering if the Junge Union's decision to customize this poster in a propaganda parody was a bit "tongue-in-cheek" or whether they just thought it would be a really good idea to use (what they thought was) a well-known slogan. Basically, it's falling a bit flat here, and that's sad. The Junge Union, clearly staffed with a bunch of Bright Young Things, might just have been a bit too clever.

Duties And Lessons

An extract from my diary of 1972, when I was 13. All names have been changed.

I had to read the lesson in church this morning. I have to tell you it was not a success.

I wish I didn’t have to read the lesson. Mum asked Father Clement if I could read every few weeks and Father Clement said yes, but otherwise only a couple of men used to read it, and I am the only young person and also female to be doing it. And I have to read it about every three weeks. It is awful, I hate being up there and in front of the whole church, I feel that they are all thinking that I want to be the centre of attention or something. And I don’t! It’s like getting up on the stage every time, and if I don’t rehearse, my performance is very bad. But I can’t let Mum down. I think she’s so proud of me.

Dad doesn’t come to church, he’s a Protestant, and he actually doesn’t go to church at all, except on Christmas Day, but because we’re Catholics we have to go all the time. I mean, every Sunday and Feast Days. Mum always takes the children and me, although sometimes the children can get away with not going if they’re sick.

At least it’s not in Latin any more.

Anyway, why Mum wants me to read the lesson is a long story. The thing is, when we moved to London, I started to talk with a London accent. That really annoyed Mum. It’s difficult, because everybody I know talks with a London accent, that’s because we’re living in London. But Mum says you won’t get anywhere in life talking like that and you should speak with an “accentless accent”. Although frankly, everybody always thinks Mum talks with an Irish accent and is always asking where she comes from in Ireland. Mum has never been to Ireland in her life, so this is a kind of joke. She says it is because she grew up with Irish nuns.

Stolen Time

This is another excerpt from my unpublished novel The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund and follows the chapter Fish and Chips in the Park

The week after the meeting with A.J.F. and Peter Grisham, John requested two day's leave. It was only about five weeks until Christmas, but John still had several days leave due to him for the year, and he explained to A.J.F. that he needed to start decorating the house, in preparation for the sale, and that he needed to spend some time with his family.

It still seemed uncertain whether his relocation would take place in the following summer, or several months later. Of course, John could travel to Peterborough on day trips for the initial period, A.J.F. explained. Maybe on one-week trips. Complete relocation, however, would be required by the summer of 1973 at the latest. That was a whole eighteen months away. But eighteen months could pass by very quickly. It had been nine years, this month, since they had moved to England from Calcutta, and they had really only just started to feel that this was their home here. Although deep inside, John knew that he and Aileen would never really be at home here.