Those who first encountered robotics through Isaac Asimov’s stories may be delighted at recent technological advances regarding artificial intelligence. Those whose first encounter was “The Matrix” or “Terminator” might not be so thrilled...
Mexico has a curious relationship with death. While other cultures tend to view death with sadness, uncertainty, and even fear, in Mexican culture death is considered part of the cycle of life: inevitable and a little sad for those left…
What were the odds? In what strange, ironic statistical game would we have guessed that, 32 years after the most terrible earthquake in our country’s history, there would be another one on the very same day, just two hours after…
If we want to know what a country’s culture and psychology are like, we just have to listen to how its inhabitants cheer. Whether formally during national holidays or casually in sports events, each country has a particular way of…
In 1969, project ARPANET managed to send a message from a computer at University of California in Los Angeles to another computer at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park...
A widely accepted “truth” of translation is that it should be a faithful representation of the source text. Unfortunately, most translators who try to follow through on this end up peeling back their eyelids or chewing on their keyboard as…
One of the barriers that our ever more globalized world still faces is the language barrier. With almost 7 thousand different existing languages in the world (2009 data, Summer Institute of Language International, quoted by Linguistic Society of America), learning…
There are certain words whose mere utterance is usually followed by the unleashing of a whole arsenal of human gestures and expletives indicative of unrepentant incredulity, ranging from a rolling of the eyes to howls of utter contempt. One such…
For this first ever Babel blog I thought it would be a good idea to open with the subject of bananas. And while I’m at it, I might as well mention the topic of national security too...