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In my day-to-day translation work, I get a lot of mileage out of a number of different computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools, one of which is the very impressive OmegaT, an open source translation memory tool that has an innovative approach to the way translation tasks are handled. One of the most impressive things about OmegaT, however, is that although it has many robust features, it is developed by a team of volunteers who make it available to anyone who would like to use it absolutely free of charge.

Because the developers do not ask for any sort of compensation for their efforts, I am always pleased when I see someone write a nice review of OmegaT, like the one Corinne McKay recently wrote in her blog, Thoughts On Translation. I hope other translators who have tried OmegaT and found it useful will do the same, because the word-of-mouth marketing helps call well deserved attention to this useful application.

I seem to have come into possession of a limited number of tickets to the Photo Imaging Expo 2005, which will be held next week at Tokyo Big Sight. If you would like to go, please let me know.

I’ll probably try to go on Saturday the 19th to catch the “Digital Camera Workflow for Freelance Photographers” seminar.

I’m back now from my brief trip to the United States. Overall, things went very well. I was pulled out of line at the airport at one point for a more thorough inspection (which did not exactly put to rest the anxiety described in my previous post), but fortunately I was armed with nothing more threatening than a necktie, so it was a relatively short ordeal.

US-VISIT should be “Do Not Visit US”
My Japanese colleague and I got off an ANA flight from Tokyo to Washington DC, a flight that you could reasonably expect would be populated with a large number of Japanese people—and it was. On the way to immigration, we saw countless posters for US-VISIT, the division of the Department of Homeland Security (an entity that did not exist the last time I was in the States, which was weird all by itself) charged with, among other things, “[Facilitating] legitimate travel and trade.” What would you guess was the ratio of US-VISIT personnel present to facilitate legitimate travellers to the number assigned to deal with American citizens (who were a distinct minority on this flight)?

It was 1:5. That’s right, there was one guy handling an entire flight full of Japanese, while five people helped the 30 or so Americans. Needless to say, it took a heck of a long time to get through the line. (Which was not the case, I should add, when we came back to Narita, where an equal number of immigration officers were available for citizen and non-citizen alike.) No wonder I found The Financial Times noting that the US may soften visa regime for business fliers.

They could start by not harassing my boss for not speaking English as well as I do. 

This week In a few hours I will be leaving on a business trip for the States, my first trip back in more than three years (my last visit was just prior to September 11th, 2001). It will be interesting to see how much my country has changed in the time since then. Unfortunately, I don’t think much has changed for the better. All things considered, I will regard the trip as a smashing success if:

1. Our plane doesn’t crash (I’ve been reading the 9/11 commission’s report recently, which is probably something you shouldn’t do before getting on an airplane).
2. I don’t get hauled off to Cuba for stepping outside of a free-speech zone or something (I’m no Kevin Drum or Atrios, but I am rather outspoken in my criticism of the president—a trait that would almost certainly flare up in the face of authoritarian pushiness).

If the business deal also happens to go well, that will be a really nice bonus.

My wife says I’ll be fine as long as I keep my mouth shut about Bush. If that’s the case, I should get fitted for one of those cone-shaped hoods right now.

Update: Oh, crap. My connecting flight out of D.C. will be with Delta, the same airline that recently harassed Bob Harris of This Modern World for no apparent reason. (I might even be in possession of a camera during this trip, perhaps even more than one! God save us all.)

This is not making me look forward to this trip. As I am getting ready to head out, I find myself filled with anxiety and a lingering fear that Bob Harris’ (or Kevin Drum’s) experience is not simply an aberration, but a symptom of the on-going Gitmoization of America being carried out to create the impression that our president has a clue about how to handle terrorism. Bob’s closing remarks are haunting: “I am in the United States. But I am not home.”

I will soon be on my way back to the States. I wonder if it will still be the home I remember.

My colleague Ricardo was able to score some free tickets (because our company is one of the sponsors) to the World Press Photo 2004 exhibit going on now at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, so we went to check it out. It was quite good.

For those who are unfamiliar with the World Press Photo organization, it operates out of the Netherlands with patronage from the royal family. Its sole purpose is to promote the work of professional photojournalists. Each year it holds a contest to determine the best examples of photojournalism in the preceding year. This year’s jury had the daunting task of sorting through 63,093 entries from 4,176 photographers in 124 countries to select the pictures it felt were the most important. The best pictures in each of several categories make up the exhibit.

The winner was Jean-Marc Bouju’s now-famous picture of the hooded Iraqi man trying to comfort his terrified son. Other pictures from Iraq also featured prominently in the first half of the exhibit, as did a number of pictures taken of armed conflicts in other parts of the world (the spot news category was populated almost exclusively by pictures of people involved in some type of conflict).

As with the pictures from Iraq, much of the rest of the exhibit was a vast showcase for tragedies; among them were stories of villagers in China who have contracted AIDS from blood donations they made to earn money, women brought from Nigeria to work in the European sex industry, the story of a woman’s struggle with and eventual defeat by leukemia, and many others.

But there were also touching pictures, like those of the Russian acting troupe made up mostly of people with Down’s Syndrome or the ones of the Sierra Leone national amputee soccer team. And funny pictures, like the annual Twins Days festival in Ohio. There were also many pictures of amazing acts of nature, surprising feats of architecture, and of course, sports. There was no shortage of newsworthy events last year; this exhibit brings out the best and worst of them.

If you have a chance to see this exhibit, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.