turktrans blog

Well, finally I decided to upgrade my blog to Wordpress 2.0.3. As I noted previously, WP 1.5 has some security issues that need to be addressed. Current version seems fixed a number of such security issues. I hope that this also involves preventing automated comment spam.

I also changed the “skin” or “theme” of the blog from “connections” to “default.” I made this change due to a “bug” in the functioning of “connections” theme: I inserted a conditional ”noindex, follow” tag for the archived content in connections, assuming that it will work as required. But yesterday, I noticed that the “noindex, follow” tag is generated outside the “head” metatag. That is to say, it was not functional in terms of instructing the crawlers not to index the archieved content, but follow the links contained there. From another blog of mine, I already know that the default theme works well in this regard. Therefore, I switched to the default theme, and implemented the code.

But this time, I noticed that the “is_archive” encompasses all archieves, i.e., archieved content grouped both in terms of dates as well as categories. This is something that I do not like to have. So I changed it to “is_month” which only have an effect on monthly archieves. And it seems working perfectly. Finally, I decided to remove this instruction for a while. For those who are concerned with duplicate content issues, but also wants to retain the PR of their category pages can use conditional “is_month” instruction safely.

When asked about the most popular or most favorite Turkish to English translation blooper, perhaps all translators would mention “chicken translate” as their all-time favorite. It is so popular that it became a real “classic” in translation bloopers. It had some media coverage too. Feature writers wrote about it, newspapers published it, and it is included in most of the web pages on translation bloopers. Even, there is a Yahoo group with that name. I myself registered a domain both with net and com versions for it: chickentranslate dot com and dot net (now expired, unfortunately due to lack of time to dedicate to that domain). Then, what is this chickentranslate?

The Message

Now, let us see the picture of the medium for the message hung over a busy street to attract the attention of foreigners:

The Medium

Be it a small local restaurant, or a multinational giant corporation, being seen and heard is crucial for any business.

A busy street in a Turkish town. A local restaurant owner, being aware of the importance of visibility, hung this banner to attract foreign tourists to his restaurant serving, as the ads says, chicken translate (“rotisserie”) on charcoal to its customers. An exquisite taste if you are not a vegetarian! If only you could get the message.

“Çevirme” in Turkish means, inter alia, to translate, turn, rotate, etc. As a noun, it means rotisserie , or barbeque within the context of cooking, i.e., the name is derived from the technique.
It seems that our lay translator, perhaps the restaurant owner himself, picked up a dictionary, found the first English word for “çevirme,” and translated accordingly.

Having thus English version as well, the owner now can be sure that the message would be received by his potential foreign customers!

He has the medium, but unfortunately lacks the message!