I went to the Western Bank Library yesterday (pictured below) and had one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.
Most of the books are actually stored on 4 levels underground. Each level where the books are stored are called stacks. Stack 1 is at deepest level. It was probably thought of as an excellent idea in the 50s when the library was planned and built. The area which the library occupies above ground is kept to a minimum and the underground atmosphere is probably very good for preserving old texts.
To enter the stacks you have to go down a narrow staircase on each level. The stacks themselves are deadly quiet (I was the only person down there), dark in places (some of the lights don't work) and are like mini mazes. It was true horror movie material. Below is a picture of stack number 3 where all the Russian texts are kept. I kept my nerve down there just long enough to find my two texts and then I ran to find the stairs back up!
By the way, the library is also home to the National Fairground Archive. From a leaflet about the archive: "...it is a unique collection of photographic, printed, manuscript and audio visual material covering all aspects of the culture of travelling showpeople, the history of travelling fairs and the entertainments presented." The archive contains 3500 books, 120,000 photographs and 20,000 printed advertisements.
Created: 2008-09-27 18:47,
Tags: Sheffield,
university,
Comments: 2
Google now has an online translator for Lithuanian-English and English-Lithuanian. I carried out the same test as I did for another online translation service I wrote about in an earlier post. Let's take a look at the results:
English: you can see how good my Lithuanian is.
Translator: jūs galite pamatyti, kaip geras mano lietuvių yra.
Real Lithuanian: jūs galite pamatyti, kokia gera mano lietuvių kalba.
It's probably unrealistic to expect miracles from online translators. After all, any significant developments would make my efforts as a translator or interpreter pretty much redundant. People probably use these online translators to get the gist of the foreign language text. People don't necessarily need a perfect translation. I had a go at translating part of a post from Tomas' blog, but the translator came back with rubbish:
"Patį pirmą kartą keliaudamas atgal į Lietuvą taip pat važiavau anksti ryte, bet po bemiegės nakties, be hostelio, šaltą žiemą, neturėdamas planų Berlyne. Galiausiai miegojau rytinėj stoty tarp bomžų. Šiandien turėtų būti geriau."
"Very first time, traveling back to Lithuania also drove early in the morning, but after sleepless night, without a hostel, cold winter, without having the plans in Berlin. Finally, the sleep stations in the eastern bomžų. Today should be better."
I was in a seminar about learning languages from scratch and the professor made an interesting remark. He said that you can only be fluent in a language when the reader or listener has to do little or no work to be able to understand you. Obviously Google has a long way to go.
Created: 2008-09-26 20:18,
Tags: Lithuanian,
Comments: 0
I'm back at uni in Sheffield. I became an official member today! So there's no going back now. Plus, I bought a Russian textbook/workbook for my course which would have cost £100, but luckily I spotted second hand copies in Blackwell's. I had a book voucher for £15 which brought the total for the two titles to £55 which is still an insane amount.
Anyway, I hope to do more blogging soon. I have a lot of stored up material, but just never got the chance to post it over the Summer. I think I'm going to take the blog in a different direction and write more about learning Lithuanian, German and Russian. I'll still write about cool things I've seen and also I'm planning a post about the paternoster in the Arts Tower at Sheffield.
I made a nice meal tonight. I'm not sure where the inspiration came from. It may have been indirectly from this blog. Anyway, it was honey and soy sauce glazed chicken drumsticks. Basically, just coat the chicken in a mixture of 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and 4 tablespoons of honey. You can add a chopped up clove of garlic to the soy and honey mix as well. Then just pour everything onto a baking tray and cook in the oven at 200 degrees for something like 45 minutes. I also made a little salad from tomatoes, mozzarella and chopped parsley in some olive oil to go with it. I think it turned out pretty well. The chicken was really sticky and sweet.
Created: 2008-09-24 17:49,
Tags: food,
life,
recipe,
uni,
Comments: 4
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