Artificial intelligence - like chopping your own legs off?

If you ask any translator (like me) about work this year, they will all tell you that work seems to have dropped off a cliff. Some people are getting only 50% of their normal workload.

And if you ask them why this is the case, the response will very likely be that companies are saving money by using (often free) apps such as Google Translate and the like to satisfy their translation needs. We've all heard about ChatGPT recently, right? And how it will eliminate many a thinking person's job. Professions mentioned include, for example, law professor, social worker and English teachers.

So the companies can save money on translation...but the knock-on effect is that with a thousand euros a month less (on average), I'm not spending money like I used to.

Ultimately, the companies will be about as well off as before: they'll save money on outgoings, but have less money coming into the company in sales of goods and services.

For an economy to flourish, money has to flow. It's a cycle. It's not about hoarding so you die with the biggest pile of money under your mattress. What goes around comes around is a saying that means that you will ultimately have to deal with the consequences of your actions. If the money isn't going around and flowing through society, the consequences will be many more poorer people and lower sales.

A rather short-sighted approach, don't you think? Rather like chopping your own legs off to save the expense of shoes and trousers.

My sinister life

Sinister is a word that means "giving the impression that something harmful or evil is happening or will happen". It is based on the Latin word for "left" (sinister). 

In the past, the right hand was considered the right hand to write with. Left-handed people were described as 'cack-handed'. The opposite is 'dexter' - from which we get 'dexterity' meaning "skill using the hands".

Anyway, why is my life 'sinister' right now? Because it seems that the left-hand side of the body is breaking up.

Three summers ago, I came back from holiday and rammed my elbow into the thin end of a door handle and since then, my shoulder has given me pain and still does. Two days later, I banged my left arm into the same door handle, making a big dent about 5 cm above the wrist. The index finger is still slightly number, but it's nothing like as bad as it was in the summer of 2020.

Recently, I overused my left thumb when typing on the computer, which means my left thumb now clicks - very painfully, too.

And then even more recently, I slipped on the cotton mat in the bathroom. My feet went skywards and my body was parallel to the ground. As I came down, two parallel lines of thought went through my mind: "This must look like something from a slapstick film. Oh, God, I'm going to come down. What's going to hit the floor. Please, not my head. I'm too young to die like this. Who's going to find my body?"

And as I came down, the left-hand side of my body hit the side wall of the bath. And then I tilted towards the right and landed on my right buttock. Strangely enough, I had no pain there. And even more weirdly, I had very little bruising on the left-hand side of my body. In fact, the only bit of bruising I could find was high up on my ribcage, just where the bra strap runs round the body to the back: it was as though someone had laid three sooty fingers on my body. The ribs were black - but not the space between them. That side of the body was swollen, though. 

Sneezing, coughing and laughing were very painful, but, thankfully, things did go the way Dr Google said it would. The information online said it would take two to four weeks to clear up and that's what happened. 

Now if only my shoulder, index finger and thumb would clear up so fast. It's a good thing that I'm very right-handed.

P.S. I forgot to mention that there are days when I wake up to toothache in the monstrous wisdom tooth on the left-hand side of my mouth. It's so huge that it towers over the rest, like Goliath over a crowd of Davids.

TV series recommendation: Professor T

Originally a Belgian series, this UK remake stars Ben Miller as the uptight hero of the UK series: Professor Jasper Tempest. You might know Ben Miller from the first series of TV crime series Death in Paradise. He was Richard Poole, an equally uptight character.

You might also recognise the actor playing his mother: Frances de la Tour, who was Ruth Jones in the classic 70s sitcom Rising Damp and, for younger audiences, Madame Olymp Maxine in the Harry Potter film series.

The poor man has to put up with not-so-bright students and his OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), not to mention his overbearing mother, a drip of a boss, and a secretary who is unusual to say the least. His ex-wife (one wonders how they ever got married in the first place) is a police officer. He is called in by the police to assist with a case and he basically never stops helping. Oh, and there is some mystery about his father's death when he was a child. He keeps having flashbacks and his mother is very anxious about him uncovering the truth...

The episodes are all very scenic as the series is set in Cambridge. If you like McDonald & Dodds, you'll like this.

Bennet Evan Miller and his on-screen mum Frances de la Tour:

TV series recommendation: Harry Wild

This is a crime series set in Dublin and starring Jane Seymour. She is an English literature lecturer who retires from the university right at the start of the first episode. And like Loriot in Papa ante Portas, she finds herself at a loose end.

With the aid of a tearaway but bright young boy and her 14-year-old granddaughter, she solves crimes by referring to works of literature. Her shenanigans annoy the hell out of her son, who happens to be a detective.

All very enjoyable - especially since it combines crime with literature - and I'm watching the first series again.

For more information:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14527610/?ref_=tt_sims_tt_i_4

TV series recommendation: Miss Scarlet and the Duke

If you enjoy cosy historical crime series, this is a series for you.

Set in late Victorian London, a father dies and his daughter, Eliza Scarlet, steps into his shoes as a private investigator. Over three series (with a fourth in the pipeline), we see how she struggles to acquire cases and to be taken seriously as a female private detective.

Obviously, there is a dashing police officer (whose looks put me in mind of a young Clint Eastwood or Hugh Jackman) to assist her, and to be completely annoyed by her insistence on doing things her way. As is also the case with the Murdoch Mysteries, we also have the stock character of the at first clueless and hapless young police officer who has to be taken under the wing of the astute inspector. The loyal housekeeper, with Eliza since her childhood, provides good advice and acts as a haven for our young heroine. And then there is a shady, but kind-hearted, criminal who also assists with the investigations. 

Good sets and costumes, mainly filmed in Dublin and Serbia, it seems. Interesting plots. All highly entertaining. If you like the books by Charles Finch and his hero Charles Lennox (also set in Victorian London), then you should enjoy this TV series.

More information here:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8270592/episodes?season=1

Length isn't everything....

 ...as the actress said to the bishop*.

Over the Easter weekend, I went out with my walking group on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday.

The walk on Easter Sunday was 20 km long but flat - in the countryside near the Dutch border. Lakes, fields, a heath and forest. Easy peasy.

The walk on Easter Monday was supposed to be 12 km but hilly. I was more tired after the first 10 minutes (with 124 steps to get out of the valley and on the hillside) than I had been at the end of the previous day's walk. Phew. 

We had some newcomers to the group who thought that 12 km was going to be easier than 20 km, but as I soon told them, you can't go by length. The main criterion as to how knackering a walk is going to be is how hilly the countryside is. 

*In the UK, you can make a double entendre simply by adding the words "as the actress said to the bishop" at the end of any sentence that can be read with a salacious [wollüstig] meaning.

Quo vadis, ChatGPT et al.?

I can understand inventing machines to take the heavy loads off human beings so that they don't get worn out by a lifetime of heavy toil, but what is going to happen when people no longer need to think because those jobs are being done by machines?

I translate for a living and this year, all the translators I speak to (German to English, English to German) have said that work seems to have fallen off a cliff. I've gone from a position of being able to buy what I want (I have modest wants) to not even covering costs.

All the translators I have spoken to say that they believe that clients are using things like DeepL to translate documents. However, they are also waiting for the penny to drop when they realise that those programs are incapable of actually thinking things through.

I tried DeepL out on a price list. The word 'Preise' was above a table of costs. The euro symbol was repeated throughout the table. How did DeepL translate that single word? As 'prizes'. Yes, the German word covers both meanings: prizes and prices.

That's why my colleagues are certain that when the clients get bitten in the arse because they've relied on such a faulty computer-generated translation, they'll be back.

I bloody well hope so.