31
Oct 11

How do you really feel about it Pete?

Pete Townshend wrote an overwhelming majority of the songs for The Who. He's considered one of the all-time great rock guitar musicians.

Pete Townshend: iTunes Is A ‘Digital Vampire’

LONDON — The Who’s Pete Townshend on Monday branded Apple Inc.’s iTunes a “digital vampire” that profits from music without supporting the artists who create it.

Townshend said that faced with the Internet’s demolition of established copyright protections, iTunes should offer some of the services to artists that record labels and music publishers used to provide. These include employing talents scouts, giving space to allow bands to stream their music and paying smaller artists directly rather than through a third party aggregator.

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The guitarist was delivering the first John Peel Lecture, named in honor of the influential British radio broadcaster who died in 2004.

Townshend asked if there was any reason iTunes “can’t provide some aspect of these services to the artists whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire” to make money.

ITunes declined to respond to Townshend’s comments.

Apple’s service is the market leader among legal download services, accounting for about three-quarters of music downloads.

Townshend said consumers, as well as the industry, needed to change their attitude to digital music.

“It would be better if music lovers treated music like food, and paid for every helping, rather than only when it suited them,” he said.

“Why can’t music lovers just pay for music rather than steal it?” he said.


31
Oct 11

Translation Please?

Haruki Murakami

Guess what? There are some amazing non-English-speaking authors out there that are well worth reading! Thanks to excellent translators, I’m reading them.

I’ve read several translated books and have been impressed with the fact that they didn’t seem like translations. In fact, once into the book, my hesitancy to read a non-English-speaking author vanished. The translations are that good.

I’m not sure where the hesitancy comes from; is it an innate feeling of superiority over foreigners or because of the awkwardness of different grammatical rules between different languages.

Stieg Larssen

I’ve even steered clear of British authors because of that bias. But I have a feeling that I’m not alone in my hesitancy.

Today’s modern translators are unsung heroes of the literary world. Think about it. They must not only translate the actual words. They must also accurately convey the authors intentions for every passage. And, perhaps most importantly, the reader must not be aware that it is a translation.

Ninni Holmqvist

Most of the translated books I’ve read have been wonderful.

  • The whole of Swedish author Stieg Larssen‘s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” series held me like few books can.
  • “The Unit”, a haunting book by another Swedish author, Ninni Holmqvist, left me wanting more.
  • I’m about to read Haruki Murakami’s just-published “1Q84”.

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