2026-08-03 04:36:09
The morning is crisp and clear enough to hear the plaintive bleating of sheep from over the fields. Sheep always sound alarmed like everything is distressing them. Same, sheep. Same.
I am trialling folding my #SilentSunday photography shares into my weeknotes (see above) because they're both posted on a Sunday. The Silent Sunday posts, by design, don't have any accompanying text so they don't really make sense as their own post.
Had my first pitch this week. I've written countless slides for pitches, had much input from a technical side, but never actually been invited to present. This client is local and works completely remotely so we hosted the pitch. In a novel twist, we ran it like a working session instead of a two hour presentation which seemed to go down well. The client is lovely and our team did themselves proud with a comprehensive plan that clearly responded to their brief, added some bells and whistles, and showed how the proposal breaks down into an MVP and builds up into the full ask and then beyond. I got a lot of praise afterwards, which was nice.
My Inseparable Pen arrived all the way from Japan in the most well-packaged delivery I've ever had. I've been using it all week for work and it's really lovely. The magnetic dock is brilliant and, once you've trained yourself to use it, really speeds up that "thought to note" time by removing the "where's my pen?" cognitive drain.
I heard two songs this week that referenced Vincent Gallo's "Buffalo 66" which is a clear sign from the universe to buy it and watch it. In other cinematic news, I watched 85% of "Lost Highway" as my #SecondScreenCinema on Friday mostly because the soundtrack is fantastic.
Rounded the week out with a canal-side stroll to the supermarket foraging blackberries on the way. Picked up still-warm-from-the-oven pastries from Marks & Spencer's. As is customary, we knocked any bourgeois sentiment off by eating them sat on the floor outside the shop like raccoons.
2026-08-01 13:13:02
Happy August!
Here are a few photos from my phone from the last month with neither rhyme nor reason to the theme.
2026-08-01 03:50:02
I have actually fallen in love with Mouth Ulcers. The band. Obviously. Seven-track EP "Silent Pictures" (a bargain at £5 on Bandcamp) is simultaneously fresh and 40 years old. Aside from the obvious comparisons to Joy Division and The Cure, the goth four-piece from London channel Long Blondes and Maven (ex-Nitzer Ebb); a confident swagger pervades the frosty guitar and militaristic rhythm section.
In the proud tradition of bands like Visage, Depeche Mode, and Mesh, we also have Actors — darkwave synthpop from Vancouver; the weather really infects the music up in that Pacific Northwest, huh?! Shannon Hemmett (from Leathers) adds that "Steve Strange" dispassionate murmur lost in the mix that feels isolating in a dreamlike way. Jason Corbett brings a lovely Bowie impression at times. One of those bands I am surprised I haven't come across before but will listen to again. The disturbing video for "Face Meets Glass" (YouTube link, sorry) is worth a watch.
2026-07-31 05:21:04
Lo Blackwell is an aspiring travel journalist who gets the gig of her career; the maiden voyage of an intimate luxury nordic cruise liner, and witnesses a murder — or did she?
Our erstwhile heroine is a borderline alcoholic with a head injury and so sleep deprived she's the end level boss of unreliable narrators, meaning this is not just a 'whodunnit' but a 'did a crime even occur?' — very "Woman in the Window".
There is quite a lot to enjoy about this book; I love it's a woman in her 30s. This is a demographic I feel is underserved in this type of fiction; plenty of youngsters, plenty of old dears.
I also have a deep love for the alluring combo of "Scandi + boat" setting — and I've seen enough "Below Deck" to be able to visualise the yacht without resorting to a Google.
The encapsulated boat setting miles out to see in international waters speaks to "solving crimes without cops" which is another genre I'm well into.
Isolation is a constant companion through the book; Lo doesn't speak the native language, there's a clear class divide between guests and crew, the physical isolation at sea; even down to faulty WiFi preventing outside contact.
Another neat writing device was including news reports at the end of each part to build a sense of dramatic irony and make me wildly speculate.
I don't want to come across cocky but I clocked the twist earlier than the reveal. It didn't spoil the end of the book for me though because it continues to twist and turn like a twisty turny thing.
A quick read, not too taxing. An interesting take on a genre but not mind-blowing. I can see a handful of these getting me through a holiday by the pool.
2026-07-27 05:09:31
The weather broke overnight. Woke to the blessed sound of rain on the window pane. The rush of cold air as I opened the back door as welcome as a lover's touch; the fine misting drizzle, a kiss.
A short week at work coupled with multiple project kickoffs and a pitch meant it was less like three days working but five days worth of work done in three days. The pitch we're working on is being framed as a "working session" so needs less slides than usual. On the other hand, I have been previously accused of heavily editing my technical approach back and cutting critical detail because it's obvious to me. lol. That resulted in me putting too much detail into this deck and having to whittle it into executive summary slides on my day off.
Someone in a group chat shared a post from GB News about the revival of an infamous Tango advert from the 1990s. Turns out they're not reviving it in any real sense. I came up with the phrase GB News is anti-woke nostalgia porn for Boomer-coded Gen-xers
and I'm quite proud of that.
Was really nice to see the change in weather didn't deter visitors to the monthly Makers Market. A healthy looking turnout if slightly damp. Had a delicious scrambled eggs on toast at a local bakery, "All Things Nice". 10/10 would recommend if you're ever nearby.
All this time I thought "Bittersweet" was my favourite Cliffords song but, it turns out, it's actually "If The Shoe Fits" … or maybe "Shattered Glass"…
I finished "The Binding" by Bridget Collins the day I got my refurbished Kobo Nia. I hadn't transferred anything onto it but Ruth Ware's "The Woman in Cabin 10" was unread in my Kobo library so I started reading it. Enjoying it so far. Found out later that it's been adapted into a TV Show (film?) starring Keira Knightley which has immediately gone on my watchlist!
The best time to start using an SPF moisturiser was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.
Me
2026-07-25 04:34:45
Why is it that when I see anime nerds discussing translations of anime/manga they use the term "localization" and not "translation"? Are they just trying to be fancy, or is there a valid reason?
David @ Setouchi
This came up recently in a conversation online and, following my rule of "if it's more than three tweets, make it a blog", I wanted to actually unpack it.
From my understanding, there is a subtle but distinct difference; "translation" involves turning the words from one language to another but "localisation" involves rewriting the text for the local market. Some may argue this is the same thing but it isn't — they are distinct tasks. We can see this by comparing a localisation between two countries that speak the same language.
In my British English copy of Julia Donaldson's Room on the Broom, the witch is said to have long ginger hair that she wore in a plait
but, in the American English version, she is described as having long ginger hair in a braid down her back
. Both accurate, both English; linguists call this "intralingual translation" as these are straight swaps; "biscuit" for "cookie", for example.
If, for the sake of argument, the witch is replaced with a trucker and the broom for a truck because of a specific country's supernatural/pagan sensitivities, that becomes localisation; the message ("found family and cooperation") remains the same but the mechanics have been culturally adapted. This is localisation.
Jussi Adler-Olsen's "Department Q" novels were translated from the original Danish into English but when Netflix then adapted them for the screen, they relocated the setting from Copenhagen to Edinburgh. This, I feel, is a clear example of localisation.
If you take "Wuthering Heights" and simply change the words into French, that's a translation — Heathcliff and Cathy would still live in Yorkshire. But if you want your French audience to feel more empathy, or find the setting more recognisable, you might go through a localisation process instead: find the French equivalent of Yorkshire, and relocate the entire story to somewhere like Bordeaux.
In anime, as well as translating the Japanese into, say, English, alterations to the script may have to be made; replacing an obscure reference to a Japanese historical event with a similar European or American one. This would be an example of localisation.
Dubbing introduces a third, largely unique, constraint; translations have to sync to the character's mouth movements. If the straight translation takes longer to say in English, the translators have to shorten the dialogue without losing meaning.
In the case of Manga, dialogue may need to be altered to fit within the original speech bubbles. This is a particular concern when translating to German or Finnish, for example, because of long words.
Historically, direct translation has sometimes caused hilarity, outrage, or confusion. I'm reminded of the (likely apocryphal) tale of "Come Alive with Pepsi" finding its nearest translation in Mandarin as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave." Sometimes a straight translation can cause embarrassment, upset, or worse.
I work with pharmaceutical companies that are heavily regulated, so translation alone may not actually be legal. For example, content written for the US — which allows a direct-to-consumer style of advertising — may use language that's simply verboten in Germany.
Globally approved content may be translated; the exact same text from English to German. US approved content would need to be localised; message retained, but (for example) more heavily caveated or couched in less certain terminology.
Taking that into consideration, just because the text is translated into French doesn't make it suitable for Canada and France, just because it's Spanish doesn't make it legal in California, Mexico, and Spain. Even content for Saudi Arabia that remains in English may need localising without being translated because of the difference in regulations between the UK and Saudi.
The clearest example I can think of here is editing a piece of UK content to adhere to laws in Switzerland (localisation) then translating to French, German, and Italian (translation).
As David himself notes, these terms are often used interchangeably — good translation is localisation to some extent. There's a sliding scale between those who feel translation should stay as close to the source as possible, and those who believe it should be as close to the destination culture as possible. Both approaches are valid in different circumstances.
I'm not pretending my explanation here is the explanation — just how we handle these terms within our industry.
Localisation may be a service or consideration of a good translation partner but, at least in my experience, they are treated as two related but distinct steps. One is language; the other is culture, legal, and compliance.