Facebook to translate posts into different languages AUTOMATICALLY
Well, AUTOMATICALLY is the interesting aspect of all this. Not because the capability is there, but because it has some ethical aspects to it. Why should something be able to do that? What if I post a Portuguese poem? How is FB going to translate Shakespeare?
Naturally 99% of what is posted on FB is irrelevant and could be translated for ease of comprehension. But in any case the way a translation is made can have a great impact on the perceived message. Great translators can capture the aesthetic of the original and sometimes paraphrase to capture the play of words.
Facebook can’t do any of these subjective things. FB is not going to achieve anything else other than sterile translations. And for the cases where you could express something other than words … well don’t share on social media. Read, enjoy, write.
Paris oldies
Paris decided to ban old cars. Not the classics, just the old, polluting cars. Anything pre 1997 can’t circulate from 8am to 8pm. Well, me owning a 1998 car, makes me wonder if I should start thinking about replacing mine. Anyway Lisbon is starting to become a bit claustrophobic for cars anyway.
Are tablets dead?
I’ve been looking at my iPad sitting in the shelf for so much time that I started to wonder if tablets are becoming a type of XXI century CD. Very hyped in the beginning but suddenly no one want’s to use them anymore?
I went to see my website statistics and smartphone visits beat tablets 6:1, so is there a reason for this or is it just an outlier? Maybe with all the big screen smartphones no one wants to lug around a tablet anymore.