Obscure, endless arguments

[Sean Hewitt]

Most of the contributors to this forum play more games of graded/rated chess in a year than all the UK chess magazine editors / proprietors combined

[Ola Winfridsson]

Kaissiber is the best mag by far I have ever seen (and I don't even speak German). Anyone know any free software which can scan, convert to a digital document and then translate German to English?

Quite a spec list that!

But on a serious note, freeware of this kind is probably not that easy to find. I think you'll have to invest in a commercial solution. Adobe Acrobat has a conversion feature, but is rather expensive, and I don't think it has a translation engine. Nuance (previously ScanSoft) offers scanner software with conversion and automatic translation features (and should be quite a lot cheaper than Adobe), but I strongly doubt that the translation feature is particularly good. (Google translate is good because it's based on existing translations performed by humans; once the machine translation feature kicks in, it's very hit and miss.) However, it should be able to give you the gist of what the article says, provided it leaves the chess notation as is.

[Roger de Coverly]

I

Nick Thomas wrote:
Kaissiber is the best mag by far I have ever seen (and I don't even speak German). Anyone know any free software which can scan, convert to a digital document and then translate German to English?


Quite a spec list that!

Actually I think there's a straightforward solution.

If you can assume a scanner which allows documents to be saved in html, then you just point your browser at the html local file on your disk and run Google translate.

I've just downloaded the most recent file on chessbase.de (nachrichten.asp.htm) and translated it. Here's a sample

Noch interessanter würde die Deutsche Ländermeisterschaft sicher werden, wenn wieder mehr Länder teilnehmen würden.

Even more interesting If the German Cup countries are safe, if more countries would participate.

[Michael Jones]

It seems that the magazines don't have a very high opinion of this forum.

According to the new BCM editor, the forum is

tiny and totally unrepresentative

From what I've seen of Steve Giddins's writing, he doesn't have a very high opinion of a lot of people. I'd be more inclined to take his criticism seriously if he could point to a larger and more representative forum on the subject of English chess; as it is he's just picking a couple of uncomplimentary adjectives out of this thesaurus and thinks it makes him look clever (no-one would use "soi-disant" or "nefarious" in an article aimed at a non-specialist audience for any purpose other than to show off the extent of his vocabulary). For a start, he appears to have absolutely no sense of irony: he calls the forum "unrepresentative", yet his criticisms of it are based primarily on one post. He then fails to observe the difference between a magazine article or blog entry and an internet discussion: namely, that the first is written by one person, who has the opportunity to (and hopefully will) research its content before publication to ensure that it is correct; the second is exactly that, a discussion. Someone asks a question, others make attempts at answering which they may or may not be entirely sure of, then someone with a better knowledge of the subject comes along and gives a better answer, and eventually a conclusion is arrived at which is generally agreed to be correct. It would be a pretty boring 'discussion' if the first response gave an entirely correct answer and all subsequent posts just said "Yes, I agree".

'Needful' to say - evidently so, since Giddins fails to observe it - is that the memory lapse involved is clearly not serious: James had remembered the story about the fugitives' census entries, but thought that what the enumerator had written in such cases was "no name" rather than "not remembering". If Steve Giddins has never had such a 'serious' memory lapse in his life, I'd be very impressed. On an incidental note, there's an entry on one of the 19th century British censuses which I can only presume was the result of a landlord failing to remember when the enumerator asked for his lodger's name: the lodger is recorded as Watt F**k.

As to the nature of Giddins's criticisms, the list of members for this forum indicates that we have more than 50 people who have made 200+ posts; quite a few regular contributors, then. Some are juniors, some students, some older players. Some are club players, some FMs or IMs and one or two GMs. We're spread over pretty much all of England, and a few outside it. How many contributors does the BCM have, I wonder, and how representative are they of the chess-playing population of England?

[IM Jack Rudd]

...as it is {Giddins} is just picking a couple of uncomplimentary adjectives out of this thesaurus and thinks it makes him look clever (no-one would use "soi-disant" or "nefarious" in an article aimed at a non-specialist audience for any purpose other than to show off the extent of his vocabulary).

Hmmm; I'd probably agree with you about soi-disant, but I wouldn't think twice about using nefarious in a context that warranted it.

[Carl Hibbard]

Is there a BCM blog documenting the thoughts of Mr. Giddins?

[IM Jack Rudd]

Is there a BCM blog documenting the thoughts of Mr. Giddins?

There is indeed.

[Carl Hibbard]

Got it now thanks, with 13 followers perhaps it does need watching...

[Carl Hibbard]

Is there a BCM blog documenting the thoughts of Mr. Giddins?

There is indeed.

I could pass comment on this blog but Jack would need to moderate me

[LozCooper]

Can someone post the URL of the reviewers site / blog / whatever and we can review it here?

I think it was print-publication only. Not sure. It appeared in the November 2010 issue of CHESS. Pages 48-50. You can buy single issues of CHESS for £3.95 it says on the front cover.

I'm still waiting for my free copy for writing an article on the Olympiad

Whilst I am still waiting for a free copy, it's not of CHESS

[John Wright]

I

Nick Thomas wrote:
Kaissiber is the best mag by far I have ever seen (and I don't even speak German). Anyone know any free software which can scan, convert to a digital document and then translate German to English?


Quite a spec list that!

Actually I think there's a straightforward solution.

If you can assume a scanner which allows documents to be saved in html, then you just point your browser at the html local file on your disk and run Google translate.

I've just downloaded the most recent file on chessbase.de (nachrichten.asp.htm) and translated it. Here's a sample

Noch interessanter würde die Deutsche Ländermeisterschaft sicher werden, wenn wieder mehr Länder teilnehmen würden.

Even more interesting If the German Cup countries are safe, if more countries would participate.

That is a shockingly bad translation.

[Richard Bates]

Shocked that anyone could argue against the observation of this forum being characterised by obscure, endless arguments!

[LozCooper]

Shocked that anyone could argue against the observation of this forum being characterised by obscure, endless arguments!

Whatever next? Accusing some of the forum threads of drifting off the topic?

[Warren Kingston]

If my memory serves me correctly, its Christopher who says topics drift off

[John Moore]

What's this about, then.