11/30 (C)

Bellos: I think his focus on just Google Translate and other statistical modeling applications might be somewhat narrow-minded. There is no guarantee that a breakthrough in natural language processing isn't right around the corner at some lab somewhere, and if one does pop up, it could pose an existential threat to us translators. It's unlikely that the tech private sector and academia have put all of their eggs into just the Google Translate basket after all, so having a little bit of paranoia might be healthy for us in this field.

Steiner: This text was written in English, but I had to do more head-scratching to figure out what it was getting at in some places than I did for many of the Japanese texts we've read this semester (though maybe I was just tired). Had to look up as many words too. I need to read more, probably not good that I had this much trouble ('-_-) 

TIL there are texts that are seen as inferior to their own translations. I didn't know that was a thing, it's interesting... I wonder if this is just an issue of authorship, or if there are actually languages that are better equipped to discuss certain topics than others (maybe they have a more robust vocabulary, special idioms, or certain grammatical features that can enhance things somehow)?