AI manga translation start-up Orange gets $20 million in funding - Comics Beat - Translation

Orange Inc., developers of a Japanese-to-English language manga localization tool, announced earlier this week that it secured 2.92 billion yen (approximately $19.4 million USD, based on the current 1 USD = 150 yen exchange rate) in pre-Series A round funding.

This round of funding for this US/Japan-based start-up include investments from Japanese publisher Shogakukan (publisher of Shonen Sunday manga magazine, and part owner of VIZ Media), and investment funds Globis Capital Partners, ANRI, SBI Investment, JIC Venture Growth Investments, Miyako Capital, Chiba Dojo Fund, Mizuho Capital, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and GFR Fund. 

According to Orange’s press release, “The resources will go to increasing the pace of manga localization currently done in Japan roughly fivefold, to 500 titles per month,” and to ultimately, “deliver entertainment through the Japanese manga art form and its rich history to generations to come.”

So what will this cash infusion do for this start-up? According to their announcement, Orange will further develop Factory, their manga localization tool, and launch Emaqi, their website/ebook app for manga in English in Summer 2024.

These funds are also presumably being applied toward the establishment of their US offices, and hiring employees, freelancers, consultants, plus what looks to be an ambitious online marketing plan involving paid ads, manga trailers, onboarding social media influencers, and more.

The centerpiece of Orange’s service offerings is Factory, a “dedicated manga localization tool.” According to Orange, their “world-class machine learning engineers are leveraging deep learning models centered on computer vision and natural language processing to automate much of the time-consuming localization processes required to release foreign language versions.”

You can see a demo of how manga creators and publishers can use Factory in this YouTube demo video, featuring Mr. Orange (turn on closed captions to read the English subtitles)

The other part of Orange’s entry into the English language manga publishing scene is Emaqi, their e-bookstore that will “make it easier (for readers) find favorites while also offering recommendations.” Promising to “allow fans to enjoy manga on the go,” Emaqi is scheduled to launch in Summer 2024 in the US, and “will feature works translated using Orange’s technology, recommendations, curations by manga influencers, and manga trailers.” Emaqi promises to offer “unique titles of all genres,” with the lofty goal to “unite readers with titles that will impact their lives regardless of nationality, age, or gender.”

Orange’s earlier AI-assisted manga translation projects

This isn’t the first time that Orange has announced its intentions to use AI-assisted technologies for Japanese-to-English manga localization. 

Earlier this year, the company’s technologies were used to translate for the English lettering on Rugby Rumble by Daisuke Miyata, a sports manga series on Shueisha’s Manga Plus website/app, but was swiftly met with criticism from readers as well as freelance translators and lettering professionals. 

UPDATE: The English translation for Rugby Rumble on Manga Plus was not done with Orange’s AI translation tools, but it did make use of its lettering capabilities. Mei Amaki is the translator for Rugby Rumble, and a few other series on Manga Plus.

But even after the outcry from their first releases on Manga Plus, Orange’s AI-assisted manga translation technologies have been in use on a smaller scale: to offer simulpubbed chapters of  Neko Oji ni Tensei Shita no Ojian (The Guy Who Got Reincarnated as a Cat), a quirky comic strip about a middle-aged office worker who gets reincarnated as a cute kitten.

Yajima, the Japanese manga creator of Neko Oji has been using Orange’s AI manga translation services to simulpub Japanese and English versions of their online comic via their X/Twitter feed at @neko_oji_en for several months now:

From Neko Oji chapter 89 by Yajima

Neko Oji is a quirky, cat-centric twist on the “reincarnation” trope — in this case, the older man/kitten adopted by the president of the company where he once worked. The company president is a stern, no-nonsense executive at the office, but once he’s home, he’s a total softie who absolutely dotes on his new pet, Mr. Pun, never realizing that this curious kitten has an old man’s soul.

Neko Oji turned its online popularity into a book deal, and there are currently two volumes of the series published in Japanese by Kadokawa. However, as of press time, no English language manga publishers, print or digital, have picked up this series for distribution.

Neko Oji ni Tensei Shita no Ojian vol. 1 by Yajima (Kadokawa)

Neko Oji is not the only Japanese manga series that has been serialized to readers worldwide via Twitter/X and Instagram, but it is one of the few that is regularly posting official English and Japanese versions online.

Yajima is also the artist behind the manga featuring Mr. Orange, a large talking citrus(?) that explains what Orange Inc’s technology can do. Yajima proudly announced this collaboration with Orange Inc. on their Twitter/X feed, noting that it’s quite rare to see a press release done in manga format like this.

You can read the entire 12-page “Let’s Go Mr. Orange” manga in English too.

From the presentation deck sent to the media as part of this announcement, Orange describes their company mission: “to create a world where everyone enjoys manga.” The presentation compares Orange’s goal is to be to manga, what Spotify is to music, and Netflix is to movies: to make a lot of content available online to a lot of readers, worldwide, and make it affordable too.

Orange vision statement, from their presentation deck

The problem statement put forth by the company puts numbers to what many in the manga publishing world have known for a long time: that what gets published in English is just a tiny fraction of the manga published in Japanese.

According to their presentation, “As of 2023, only approximately 10,000 volumes of manga have been published in English, representing only 2% of the total volumes published in Japan.”

What keeps more manga from being published in English? According to Orange, one major barrier is the cost of localization, and the time and numerous steps, and people involved (both employees and freelancers) to produce English versions of Japanese manga. The cost quoted in Orange’s presentation? $7,000 per volume of manga.

Mr Bean explains why manga translation takes a lot of time and money, from “Let’s Go Mr. Orange” by Yajima

In the “Let’s Go Mr. Orange” manga, we meet Mr. Orange, a passionate manga fan, finding out from Mr. Bean that it would take “10 billion yen and 10 years” to publish 10,000 manga series in English. Mr. Bean continues, “Translating manga is a massive undertaking that requires a ton of steps,” involving editors, logo designers, translators, translation agencies, proofreaders and “artists for phototypesetting” (a.k.a. lettering)”

Of course, online piracy is another issue identified by Orange as both a reason for its existence, and a major concern of both manga creators and publishers. Their press release / presentation deck mentions that the “damages caused by online piracy, “exceeds $10 billion USD, annually.”

Meanwhile, Orange predicts that the global manga market will continue to grow, with a total addressable market (TAM) of $15 billion USD. But they also added that at best, the percentage of digital manga sales in the US is ~20% of the total manga sales, which lags far behind Japan, where digital manga sales currently make up 66% of the market.

One reason why the percentage of digital manga sales in the US is way lower than Japan is because of another issue identified in Orange’s presentation: compared to Japan, there aren’t as many dedicated apps to provide “cross-publisher manga sales” in English.

They’re not wrong there. In Japan, there are several manga apps/ebook stores and services that publish manga by many publishers, including Line Manga (a division of Naver, owner of WEBTOON), Comic C’moA (owned by NTT Solmare, which runs the Manga Plaza English manga service), Piccoma (a division of Kakao Entertainment, parent company of webtoon app/site Tapas), Manga Bang, Papyless, which has a Japanese Renta ebook site and an English Renta site, and ebook stores like BookWalker, a division of Kadokawa that has both a global site (selling English manga and light novels) and their Japanese site, which has a much larger selection of titles from more publishers.

For the companies mentioned that have English versions of their manga/ebook sites, the selection of titles they offer in English are very different, and offer a limited selection compared to what’s offered on their Japanese counterpart sites/apps. On these Japanese eBook/manga sites/services, the latest ebook volumes and even some single chapters of manga from almost every publisher, big or small, as well as a deep catalog of backlist and mid-list titles that include classic, popular, obscure, and indie manga series of all kinds can be found and purchased instantly. What about the English versions of these company’s ebook sites? Uhmm. Not so much.

In N. America, there’s no single ebook site/platform/app that will allow you to purchase and read the latest manga chapters or graphic novel releases in English from any publisher. For example, I buy a LOT of manga and webtoons, as ebooks and single chapters, in print and digital format. My digital library of manga and webtoons are contained in at least 10 different digital apps/subscription services, which may or may not disappear if any of these companies go under (pours out a 40 oz. for J-Manga).

However, this isn’t a problem that Orange’s technology or Emaqi e-bookstore is likely to solve. This is mostly because it’s up to the individual manga publishers, both US and Japan to decide where the digital versions of their stories will be available. THIS is the main reason why US/Canada manga readers can’t buy all of their digital manga on one site/platform/app. It’s not because there isn’t a unified platform for publishing and distribution for manga in English, and it’s not for lack of trying from various manga ebook apps/platforms to try to get a bigger selection of top titles from more manga publishers on their apps/ebook storefronts. It’s just how it is now, and all the whiz-bang AI technology in the world won’t change that, or at least it won’t fix it quickly.

Given the current state of affairs, it is highly unlikely that Orange’s Emaqi ebook service for manga will magically convince all English manga publishers, big and small, to start offering their titles on their app, when so many other manga websites, ebook platforms and apps (even Amazon Kindle!) have failed to do this before.

We’ll just have to wait and see what Emaqi will have to offer to manga readers, when it’s launched later this summer.

Reactions from readers, translators and lettering pros

After Orange’s announcement, manga translators, readers, and lettering professionals weighed in, with many disputing Orange’s claims of saving time and money for publishers, given that this would come at the expense of readability and would likely result in double work for less pay for translators, localization editors, lettering professionals.

Here’s a sampling:

Fatimah Haji-Asiri (@saffronapplepie), JP-to-EN Translator/Localizer:

 

“For everyone commenting that they’re gonna have humans “proofread and check” the translations — just know that these translations always end up having to be redone from scratch because of how much of a mess they are. This is used as a justification to pay translators less because they’re “just checking” and the translation “is basically done” when it’s actually wayyy more work for less pay. It takes more time and effort to fix it than to just have a translator do it from scratch. I’ve been there, and most translators know what it’s like. Both the consumer and those in the industry deserve better. May they crash and burn and they will eventually. And frankly, this generally comes out to be more costly and less efficient. It’s not sustainable. This kind of thing is cannibalizing the industry. You could just pay people and it would be cheaper and more quality in the long run.”

Jan Mitsuko Cash (@jmitsu) – translator and editor

“Market rate is $5~$6/page for translation, let’s say $6/page for basic lettering $19.5 million in USD could pay for the translation and lettering of 1,625,000 pages That’s about 10,000 books they could have paid a fair rate for” 

Sara Linsley (@salinsley) – software engineer, font designer, and comic book letterera

“Reminder that all AI relies on underpaid workers. Do not work with this company. This is directly from their website“

So what do you think of Orange’s announcement, their AI-assisted manga translation service, and the upcoming release of their ebook service? Add your comments below.

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I'm single, live in Spain, and find it difficult to date local men - Business Insider - Translation

Health

I've been living in Spain for 12 years. I've stopped dating locals because too much gets lost in translation.

Essay by Nicola Prentis

2024-05-10T01:44:02Z

Nicola Prentis doesn't feel like her real personality comes through when she tries to speak in Spanish. Nicola Prentis

• Nicola Prentis moved to Spain in 2012 but isn't fully fluent in Spanish.
• Prentis is single and finds that when she dates in Spanish, she never feels like herself.
• Now, she prefers to date English speakers.

"Say something to me in Spanish," said my date in the small Catalan city where I've lived since 2016. But despite his great English and being interesting and attractive, his question immediately made me both self-conscious and irritated at what I knew was coming next. It's an inevitable part of the first date scenario I've come to hate while dating in Spain.

Unlike in bigger cities like Madrid or Barcelona, most of my local dating pool only speaks Spanish or Catalan, so I'm always grateful when I find someone who speaks English. Navigating the apps with my level of Spanish is easy, and I can even manage whole dates. But it's not just the language barrier that's the challenge

"No tengo nada para que decir," I replied, hoping to get his judgment on my Spanish over with as soon as possible. Plus, it's kind of true. I really don't have much to say in Spanish because I'm not yet (ever?) going to be at the level where my real personality comes through.

Related stories

"Terrible," he said.

Whether he meant my accent or the grammar error I'd made, I didn't know. But it wasn't the first time I've been mocked for speaking Spanish in a supposedly romantic context. I still remember the belittling way a Mexican boyfriend laughed at how I pronounced the restaurant name "100 Montaditos" in 2012. All this has very much shaped my attitude toward the language and how I feel speaking it.

I'm overly compliant and naive in Spanish

It's not just unpleasant memories that are to blame for my unwillingness to date in Spanish. There's also research that suggests personalities can change when you're speaking another language. "Environmental cues, such as language use, can lead to adjustments in mood and demeanor. Multilinguals often use different languages for distinct purposes, and those purposes will influence your emotional states," Nate Young, a former Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Oslo who worked on the study, told Business Insider. Young holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Queen Mary, University of London.

So, as much of my experience in Spain involves frustration with my own language limits, it's shaped how I feel when speaking the language.

The result of this is what some refer to as "nodding dog syndrome." If I'm tired or if the social situation means multiple people are in the conversation, I end up nodding along, "sí, sí" to everything. Debating something complex in Spanish is beyond my language level, but I also know I'll sound rude if I disagree using the blunt language tools I do have.

Added to that is the naivete that comes with dating outside your own cultural context. I can't tell if that guy who said "joder" in front of an 80-year-old priest is crass and disrespectful or not. The swear word is much milder in Spanish than in English (it translates directly as "f**k) but is it mild enough to use in front of a priest? I also couldn't tell if the guy who paid me a million compliments and texted me all the time was enthusiastically open or love bombing, something I'd be fully tuned into in my own culture.

I'm a terrible listener in Spanish

Listening intently in order to understand is tiring to do for a whole date, let alone a relationship. But sometimes I'm not paying attention at all whereas, in English, I have really good active listening skills.

In Spanish, I'll find myself using the break where the other person is speaking to go over whether I made a mistake in what I just said. Then I'll ask them about the related grammar query instead of what they were just telling me. Even worse, because I'm either not truly listening or I'm focusing so hard on how to express myself, my memory of the actual content of these conversations is scant at best. Being more concerned about verb endings than how the date might end isn't exactly conducive to a great date.

I've come to much prefer people who speak English, and who don't make fun of my Spanish, just so they get to know the real me and not this version of me who's sometimes bolshy, sometimes overly agreeable, and often inattentive. After all, I wouldn't date me in Spanish.

Got a personal essay about dating abroad that you want to share? Get in touch with the editor: akarplus@businessinsider.com.

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Germany-based AI translation unicorn DeepL seeks to expand in Middle East - The National - Translation

DeepL, the AI-fuelled language translation company based in Germany, is keen to strengthen its presence in the Middle East and is making efforts at improving its Arabic translation services while courting potential clients in the region, its chief executive has said.

The company's AI neural translation technology has set the pace for much of the language-translation sector in recent years, chief executive Jaroslaw “Jarek” Kutylowski, 41, told The National in an interview in Dubai.

The technology translation unicorn's efforts to increase its presence in the region come amid a global race from various companies like Google, Microsoft and Grammarly, who are vying for a slice of the lucrative language translation sector.

Mr Kutylowski said DeepL offers plenty of VC funding and hundreds of millions of users and is trying to stay ahead of the competition.

Its translation offering for business customers, DeepL Pro, is used by more than 20,000 businesses, according to DeepL.

“We are starting to talk to customers to see what their requirements are. We are looking in the UAE and we’ll see what develops in the future,” he said.

Mr Kutylowski said he’s speaking with various companies in the UAE, particularly in the real estate sector to better see how DeepL could potentially assist with their international clients.

DeepL, an AI-powered language translation service started providing Arabic language capabilities in December last year. Photo: Cody Combs

He’s also seeking to better understand the nuances of Arabic in the business world.

“One of the reasons I’m here [in Dubai], I’m intrigued by the language and I’m keen to learn more by my time spent here,” he said.

DeepL, headquartered in Cologne, currently has offices in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Tokyo and the US, and while it doesn’t have immediate plans to open offices in the UAE, that could change.

“It depends on the success of the market and how the reception from the customers are and how much on the ground support our potential customers might need over here,” he said.

The company, founded in 2017, reached a $1 billion valuation last year and also launched its Arabic language translation capabilities in January of 2024.

Despite advancements in machine learning, because of its complexity and diversity in terms of dialects, Arabic has proven challenging for various online-based translation services.

Mr Kutylowski said Arabic was the first language translation implementation launched by DeepL that is written and read from right to left.

DeepL Write is one of several products offered by DeepL through several pricing tiers. Photo: DeepL

“The grammar is a bit different and a few things in the AI translation training need to be done in a slightly different way,” he said.

“The beauty of AI is that you don't have to teach it the grammar rules, it's able to pick it up already, but there are some preparation steps that require additional work to get it done,” he said, noting that Japanese also required more time to perfect.

Mr Kutylowski said introducing Arabic translations is also a matter of prioritisation and staffing, something he said DeepL has tried to put front and centre.

“It's work,” he said. “It's not so complicated when you look at it from an engineering perspective, but it just needs to get done.”

He said DeepL is fast approaching having about 1,000 employees.

“60 per cent of that is research and development because this is a complicated topic [translation] and we also have this large platform to engineer, we’re among the top 100 domains in the world in terms of traffic, and you want to keep that stable and running,” he said.

“There’s also the research that goes into the neural networks,” he said, noting that the DeepL has about 50 people working on the mathematical and technical aspects of such networks.

Mr Kutylowski also said the company employs editors and others providing input for the 32 languages supported by DeepL.

According to its website, the company has 100,000 business customers currently using DeepL to communicate both with customers and internally.

Japanese news agency, Nikkei, is among those mentioned by Mr Kutylowski as a DeepL client.

“They’re publishing some of their articles written in Japanese and translating them to English and Chinese,” he said.

DeepL’s translations are made possible through artificial neural networks, a vital component that makes artificial intelligence possible. In short, these networks, used by most modern translation apps and services, train in ways that are similar to the human brain.

According to Mr Kutylowski, DeepL was among the first to use this approach, and while other translation services have also used neural machine translation in recent years, DeepL has improved its approach through an increased focus on training data and methodology.

“When you’re able to design the best neural network architecture, when you’re able to train those networks properly and find the best training data, then you can achieve the best quality and that’s what we’ve been doing for six years,” he said.

Along with its free and basic translation offering, DeepL provides various iterations of its translation services, apps, services and APIs through tiered pricing.

The company also recently launched what it describes as an AI-powered writing companion called DeepL Write, which will go toe-to-toe with Grammarly, a similar product widely considered to be a dominant player in the writing assistance space.

Mr Kutylowski said most of DeepL’s clients are using desktop and laptop PCs and DeepL’s browser extensions, although a mobile app is available.

“In business and enterprise, this is still what it is,” he said, talking about users preferring to use DeepL’s services on PCs rather than mobile devices.

“If you’re working with sophisticated applications … most of what you’re doing during the day is at the desktop.”

Although he declined to give specifics over revenue, Mr Kutylowski described DeepL's business model and financial outlook as “good”, and said that the company's web traffic routinely puts it among the 100 biggest web domains in the world.

DeepL is certainly not alone in terms of offering online translation services, with competitors such as Google Translate or Microsoft Bing's translator service, which also have an Arabic translation offering, although not the personalised client model offered by DeepL.

Google and Microsoft also have the deep pockets to improve their searches over time, along with installed user bases that could potentially be a significant advantage.

The translation market also shows no sign of slowing down. According to Straits Research, it could reach a market size of $48 billion by 2031.

DeepL has continued to attract investors and clients, while also expanding its language portfolio.

“We're really good at focusing at what we're doing,” Mr Kutylowski said, referring to DeepL's research into neural networks as well as its emphasis on staffing language and engineering experts.

Jarek also made sure to point out that DeepL is his first company, and he doesn't have any plans to go anywhere else anytime soon.

“Keeping track of all this growth is challenging enough, so I'm not getting sidetracked,” he said.

Updated: May 09, 2024, 12:54 PM

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Reddit tests automatic, whole-site translation into French using LLM-based AI - TechCrunch - Translation

Reddit — now a publicly-traded company with more scrutiny on revenue growth — is putting a big focus on boosting its international audience, starting with francophones. In their first-ever earnings call, CEO Steve Huffman confirmed the company is now working on automatic translations of the site’s content, in real-time, into French, thanks to advances in large language models.

He also touched on ecosystem expansion by way of a couple of u-turns. It wants to court developers with new tools — a surprise given the company’s history on this front; and it is planning a reintroduction of Reddit Gold — another surprise considering the company canned its virtual currency efforts less than a year ago.

Moves like these are anticipating what the future, rather than the present, might look like for Reddit. Today, its news is relatively encouraging, with Reddit’s revenue in the last quarter jumping 48% year-over-year to $243 million, and unique users growing 37% to 82.7 million. (That figure includes both logged-in and logged-out users, similar to how Twitter — now called X — used to count its audience when it was public.)

User growth and translation

Huffman, speaking on the earnings call, said that half of Reddit’s audience is U.S.-based, which points to the company putting more focus on how to increase the international proportion.

“We’re still 50/50 U.S. versus non-U.S., but our peers are more than 80% to 90% non-U.S.,” he said. “I think there’s a huge opportunity there.” He went on to describe automatic, AI-powered translation as “one of the big unlocks for us in the near to medium term.”

“So we’re translating our entire corpus today that is mostly in English into the other languages and hope that will help accelerate international growth,” he said.

The site-wide translation effort is still a test, in his words, although there is a lot of resource being put into it. Huffman noted that this content is also being indexed on Google results for the French language, driving more traffic to the site, and the company next wants to tackle Spanish.

Reddit been offering post-based translation since last year with support for eight languages.

Developer tools

It was surreal to hear Huffman talk about developer tools on the call. It was only in July 2023 that the company found itself embroiled in a massive feud with third-party client developers over API changes — resulting in the blackout of hundreds of subreddits in protest of API changes.

Now the social network is in play-nice mode. Huffman said there are plans for tools that could “push the boundaries of what a subreddit can be.” He gave examples of some ongoing experiments like live scores on some sports subreddits and a live stock ticker on r/wallstreetbets, the subreddit known for the Gamestop stock saga.

A few hundred developers are already testing these new experiences, he said. Reddit aims to include more developers from the waitlist this summer and enable monetization features later in the year.

Other announcements

Earlier this year, Reddit signed a deal with Google to let the search engine company use the social network’s data. In answering a question from the Reddit community, Huffman said that the company plans to license data to other companies as well. This has been a big issue, and in many cases controversial in light of the fact that users may not want their data being used for, say, AI training or some of the other common purposes these days. For what it’s worth, Huffman, you might have guessed, insisted that the company is being “considerate and selective” in how it selects partners.

The name of the game for the company right now is building more infrastructure for revenue generation. So while Gold and another currency effort, blockchain-based community points, were both canned last year, virtual currency is going to getting another airing on the platform because it represents an opportunity for Reddit to diversify its business model. During the earnings call, the company noted that it plans to launch a “revamped” Gold product, with programs for users to spend and earn money on the platform.

Last month, Reddit CPO Pali Bhat mentioned some of these new initiatives in an interview with TechCrunch, and now the company is making moves to leverage those growth instruments.

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Rick Carlisle’s press conference ‘soiree’ line drew comment, including from the Merriam-Webster dictionary - Awful Announcing - Dictionary

It’s always interesting when a coach’s press conference sees the deployment of an infrequently-spoken word. That’s what happened with Indiana Pacers’ head coach Rick Carlisle and “soiree” Wednesday:

Rick Carlisle just dropped a “soirée” during his press conference, referencing Josh Hart’s “soirées to the rim.”

Has to be a first for a coach press conference

— Yaron Weitzman (@YaronWeitzman) May 8, 2024

That even got notice from the official Merriam-Webster account:

noun | party or reception held in the evening

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) May 8, 2024

There are, of course, many other potential ways Hart’s appointments at the rim could be described, from cotillons to galas to shindigs to fêtes to carousals. But “soirées to the rim” is certainly amusing. And it’s a funny description of what Hart has pulled off in these playoffs so far.

This postseason, Hart is averaging 46.6 minutes per game, and has posted 17.9 points and 12.4 rebounds per game. Those are significant boosts over his regular-season numbers (33.4 MPG, 9.4 PPG, 8.3 RPG) this year, and over his regular-season career marks (29.2 MPG, 9.8 PPG, 6.6 RPG).

So Hart definitely has managed to make some notable appointments at the rim. Whether those rise to the level of “soirées” is a question, but it’s a funny way for Carlisle to describe that. And we’ll see how that works out for Hart in Wednesday’s Game 2 (the Knicks won Game 1 Monday) and beyond.

[Merriam-Webster on Twitter/X]

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I used to wonder why the dictionary had so many 's' words - Real Change News - Dictionary

My father wanted me to grow up to be a writer in some vague way he never could explain. I’d say he succeeded in precisely his vagueness.

There were nudges here and there. We almost never spoke to each other, but he managed to get me interested in various word games.

An early one I got hooked on was what I call a word mine problem: List all the words you can make from the letters in “Washington,” for example, using them only as often as they appear. So you could use the two N’s to get “inn,” but you couldn’t get “ass” because there’s just the one S.

Then there were cryptograms. A quote or a set of related words, like “vegetable salad ingredients,” would be written using one simple substitution cipher, which you had to break. He taught me cheats like ETAONRISH, the most frequent letters, in order, used in normal English text.

He tricked me into reading the dictionary. I browsed the dictionary more than I now browse the internet. He sneakily lured me into a guide at the end of the dictionary that laid out the most common proofreading symbols. The attraction was, ‘Hey, you like symbols; here’s pages of them, all for free.’

He made sure I had access to the Encyclopedia Britannica, buying a set when I was born.

He had fellow officer buddies who came to the house to play Scrabble(™). A fourth rack was going unused, so he talked me into joining in. My father could outplay me all the time, but he enjoyed seeing me beat his two friends.

At the time, we were living at an Army base 35 miles outside of Boston, and we were subscribed to two Boston dailies. One was the Hearst paper. My father got me reading the papers daily. I don’t know how he pulled it off. I don’t even know if it was planned. The way it went down was he had a rule that no one read a section of the paper until he finished.

Well, there was just me, my mother and the dog. The dog was not considered a suitable reader of the papers. So my mother and I had to watch Dad read the A-sections, and then we could move in.

But — and here’s where he may have gotten devious — he offered to let me read the B-sections while he was reading the A-sections. On the condition I folded them back up like they were to begin.

The B-sections were the best part! They had the editorials and the letters to the editors. The A-sections were soup and salad. The B-sections were salami and cheese.

It made more sense to read the editorials first every day because they tried to make sense of the previous day’s news. The A-section just hit you with today’s news without preparation, raw and unprocessed.

Some of the editorials of those times reinforced my dictionary reading. I needed help to get through William F. Buckley’s pieces.

In his twenties, my father, who wasn’t able to go to college (it was the Depression), had a long-shot plan to get to be a writer. He signed up with the Government Printing Office (GPO) as an apprentice printer. The goal was to somehow end up owning a press and supplying his own writing to it. He told me he got the idea from Izzy Stone, somehow. I never understood that. Anyway, WWII and the draft interfered with the plan, so he became a cryptanalyst for the U.S. Army instead, which is a position all about words.

One of my father’s projects at the GPO before he was drafted was helping create a copiously illustrated monograph on color printing, which I devoured. To his dismay, I learned straight past it, branching out to other ideas about color, like the physics and biology of the subject. The encyclopedia helped. We argued about which was more important: subtractive color combination or additive.

I studied wave theory to understand physics, and then I got hooked on math. He saw me turning my back on his vague dream for me. I must have seemed to slip away into higher dimensions.

An article on algebraic geometry in the Encyclopedia Britannica made up my mind to become a mathematician.

That’s the problem with buying a newborn baby a set of encyclopedias: You never know what they’ll get out of it.

Dr. Wes is the Real Change Circulation Specialist, but, in addition to his skills with a spreadsheet, he writes this weekly column about whatever recent going-ons caught his attention. Dr. Wes has contributed to the paper since 1994. Curious about his process or have a response to one of his columns? Connect with him at [email protected].

Read more of the May 8–14, 2024 issue.

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Translation troubles: the truth of the milanesa - Buenos Aires Herald - Translation

Trabajo en negro/blanco

In honor of International Worker’s Day, and bearing in mind that the Lower House approved the omnibus bill with its multiple labor reforms, here’s a work-related phrase that’s come up a lot recently and we’d rather it didn’t. In Argentina, people refer to unregistered or informal work as trabajo en negro (literally “work in black”). Meanwhile, employment that’s above board — i.e. with a contract, paid time off, health insurance, etc. — is en blanco (“in white”).

Given the acknowledgment of its racist connotations, in recent years there’s been a push toward just calling it what it is, trabajo no registrado (“unregistered” work — an awkward translation but infinitely preferable to the first). 

Correrse la bola

The ball has moved! Similar to something snowballing in English, when Juan said that empezó a correrse la bola (the ball started to roll) he meant that the word had gotten out. In this case, that Martina’s place is safe haven for cats. Not that she meant to get that ball rolling, which would be the literal translation and means something quite different.

The traditional Spanish definition of correrse la bola seems to imply that the news that’s being spread like wildfire is in fact uncorroborated or potentially untrue. But in Argentina, it just means that the cat is out of the bag — or dropping by Martina’s place to pilfer the cat food meant for her own feline companions.

La verdad de la milanesa

Why would you say something so prosaic as “the truth of the matter” when you could say “the truth of the milanesa”? Friday was Milanesa Day, an informal date to celebrate the quintessentially Argentine dish descended from the Italian cotoletta alla milanese which can be eaten in a myriad of ways: with mash, “on a horse,” or “Neapolitan style” (anathema to the Italian north/south divide, I know). 

But what on earth is the verdad de la milanesa? Ironically, there doesn’t seem to be one true story as to why we say this. Theories range from international debates about the original recipe (the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, or indeed…Milan) to the fact that you can’t know the “truth” until you cut into it and reveal whether it’s meat, fish, soy, whatever the case may be.

Given how important they are to us, I’m not surprised that milanesas were chosen to represent irrefutable fact. Although if our newsroom chats about Milanesa Day are any indication, we’re all out here living our own truths.

You may also be interested in: Five ways to enjoy milanesas, Argentina’s favorite dish

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