Bother.

There's nothing like plowing through another page of Shizuoka Translation Contest stuff just to find out that the deadline was two days ago.

Oh well; I would've been more diligent if I'd had some confidence that I understood the two very tough parts, and without understanding those parts I didn't have much chance.

(And then I consider some of the worse professional translations I've seen, and I reconsider, but that reconsideration won't do me much good).

Maybe next time. In any case, I got further than I had before.

From the files of "we reeeeally need to weed this book"

A book on George Bush (the first) that ends:

"The Reagan era was ending. The Bush years were about to begin.... A new and hopeful United States president was on his way to the White House."

Not exactly an original thought, but--

We really, really need more reading material written for non-fluent readers of English who are not six years old -- both ESL/EFL students and low-literacy native speakers of English. The Bluford series is new, and clearly targeted at this audience--the urban American portion of it, anyway. I would not give it to Japanese EFL students who might already suspect that America is armed to the teeth. It's definitely one good step. And from what I can tell about their edited classics, those seem to be a good thing too--though instinctively I prefer books that are written to be readable than classics that have to be edited to make them that way.

The ALA's lists for reluctant readers have some good ones, but sprinkled with titles that strike me as lame, and they don't adequately address what makes someone a reluctant reader--obviously lack of reading ability and lack of interest in reading can feed into each other and get to be a vicious circle, but was I a reluctant reader in 11th grade when I read almost nothing for pleasure except manga and (if I remember rightly) a little nonfiction? I think I was just having a hard time transitioning from liking pretty much everything I read to ... not. And I was old enough that I could no longer be impressed with myself for reading hard things. I mean, we market things like Goosebumps at reluctant readers, but sooner or later they'll discover that they're...horrible. And what do you read then?

And, if you don't have the reading skills, it's really hard to find something that's interesting and doesn't insult your intelligence.