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!

As I wrote in my last post, I am working on a voluminous translation project about Turkish legislation on EHS. The direction is from English to Turkish, and sometimes, I find it difficult to grasp the meaning of certain sentences, expressions, and terms. And after some back-and-forth, the true meaning occurs to me like an “Aha” insight!

Just a moment ago, I was trying to translate a certain sentence explaininig the aim of Turkish Law No 1380 on Aquatic Products. The sentence reads: [the Law] delineates the water quality standards for goods containing water.” It was like a difficult riddle at first. Simply, I felt that it is incomprehensible or I am lacking something critical.

Ant after a while, it came like a revelation that the expression goods containing water should in fact be aquatic products! Yes, the Law in question regulates the water quality requirements for aquatic products. I now understand that the source document is in fact a translation from Turkish.

That is to say, I am translating a document from English to Turkish which is itself a translation from Turkish to English! A backtranslation! Having noted this funny blooper, now I can return to work.

I am translating a series of documents on the Turkish legislation on Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) currently applicable in Turkey. Documents cover up-to-date information on almost all regulations, decrees, laws, communiques, etc. with a direct relevance to EHS with extensive citations, examples, etc.

The project is rather large. It will take a whole month or so to deliver the project. After completing it, I will take a break (well, a long break) in July. Therefore, I will not be available for new English Turkish translations until August 1st.

If you reached this page while searching a Turkish translator, please visit our freelance Turkish translators page to find an available colleague for your project.

If you have a blog with a decent PR, your blog is exposed to a specific kind of automated link spam attack called commentspam. A botlike program crawls the web, identifies the blogs, and tries to post comments to each and every message it finds with backlinks to the spammer’s site. And this is what I am experiencing recently.

By default, I turned the comments option off as a guard against comment spamming. Nevertheless, and to my disappointment, WordPress (at least Version 1.5) is unable to defend itself against comment spamming even if the comments option is turned off. My blog receives some 50 comment spams a day on the average. All are related to some credit card, mortgage, casino, travel or pharmacy sites selling viagra or similar drugs.

Thanks to God they are not published automatically, as I checked the “moderation required” option to moderate any comments. But I need to check my blog once in a while to delete all the comments posted so as to prevent the blog database from swelling too much.

I recently read a post in Google’s blogpost on comment spam again. It recommends using “nofollow” attribute for links in comments to fight against comment spam. But it is of no avail in many cases. It only tells the search engine(s) that you do not vouch for the link, that the link is “worthless” to visit. It does not prevent the spammer from stuffing your page with keywords that are in no way related to your site or the topic of your page. The only way is to ban such comments alltogether.

Perhaps it is time to upgrade my wordpress. I will check if the WordPress 2 has a way to prevent such automatic posting of comments.