If you’ve come here looking for how to contact me in SF, my cellphone number is 951-240-1762 – feel free to SMS (preferred) or call (if you must).

I’ll be updating Twitter rather more frequently, however. You can track that here at the website with the handy “Twitting Steussy!” column on the right there. Much easier to do that when I’m on the road.

I knew that this wasn’t true of our most recent work, and decided to crunch the data. I pulled together information from two years of invoices yesterday afternoon. Below are the top 12 languages by wordcount and the percent of their total contribution to our company’s output over the last two years. Not included are the 33 other languages which each had less than a 2% contribution to our work.

Chinese is firmly at the top, with some 26% of our business. Some of this is explained by our clients translating their backlists (Russian also appreciated from this effect). However, it’s also true that we are only one of several translation agencies working for some clients, and those clients have shifted their Chinese work to us. Whether it’s because we were better, faster or the others just didn’t offer those languages, I don’t know.

Anyway, here are the numbers. Don’t assume they’re the same for everyone in the business — I’m sure they’re not.

An 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Chile last night. Photos are just coming in. See the link here. There is some fear of a Hawaii-bound tsunami coming around 1pm PST.

The entire movie is a CGI animation that doesn’t quite work – anyone looking at the characters sees them as so human that they are revolted by the imperfections of the images. It’s called the Uncanny Valley by robot creators, with some of very reasonable possible explanations as to why people are universally revolted by these near-perfect representations. In order to enjoy Beowulf, you need to ignore the impulse.

My favorite part of the movie (besides a nude Angelina Jolie, which has to top any male viewer’s list) was the mead hall that Grendal attacks in the beginning of the movie. While the speeches describe it as a grand hall, it really looks like a large wooden shack thrown up by near savage woodsmen in Scandinavia 1500 years ago—it basically looked really accurate. The castle that shows up later in the movie is a more typical, unrealistic Hollywood fantasy, but at least someone was thinking early on in the movie. I credit Neil Gaiman, though his input in the film may well have disappeared ten years before anyone started filming (animating).

I don’t know much about the original story. It never interested me like much older tales (Gilgamesh, the Bible, Homer). I always figured it for a Johnny-come-lately of the epic tales, interesting only for being in Old English. I’ll need to revise that opinion since discovering one of the premiere scholars of Beowulf was none other than J.R.R. Tolkien. An early Middle Ages tale of monsters, dragons and heroes. Does this sound familiar … ?

I’d been avoiding posting on this for some time now. I’m not even sure when we started reading it. But we’re on an even keel now, and the kids look forward to it every night, so I think we’ll actually finish it.

For those not familiar with our family situation, we have a 6 year old boy and a 5 year old girl as our primary listeners. Our six month old daughter also listens in, but I don’t think she understands much. Our 2 year old son was too disruptive early on, so now he’s with Mom playing video games while I read to the others.

This is much harder than The Hobbit. I strongly recommend starting with The Hobbit – it is far more kid-friendly and uses an adjusted vocabulary. Also, the prose gets right to the point (relatively speaking, this is still JRRT’s writing and one of the joys of his prose is a luxurious slow pace).

We don’t go very fast – four to six pages a night right now, though I expect we’ll do more when things get interesting. I don’t explain words (very often), but use voices and hand motions to get across the mood of any particular piece. And — horror of horrors — I actually sing the songs.

The evening routine goes as follows. We first read picture books with all four kids; Dr. Seuss, Sandra Boynton, Pat the Bunny. They finish their milks, brush their teeth and we set up for the evening reading. Camilla (5 year old daughter) takes care of the baby. Daniel (6 year old son) can lounge or play quietly, which he did early on but now spends his time listening to the text. I was ready to quit early on as it neither of them appeared to be listening to me. For a few days, I felt I was reading only to myself.

But after a little time, they get used to cadence of the text and listen to it with understanding. It takes time. A few days or even a week. We’re up to page 130 or so (Tom Bombadil’s house) and it’s only now that I’m sure they’re with me.

We’re completely avoiding the movies. They’re too fast paced, and too violent for us to be comfortable with kids this young. They can watch the movies after we finish the book. The second or third time, that is.

Thanks to Nic for the red leather edition for Christmas. It clearly communicates to the kids that this is a special book.