A few texts I recently translated available online
22/12/09
Europe’s ‘unword’ of 2009
"Unfriend", is the word of the year according to the New Oxford American University Press. In urban contexts, it’s not unusual for new acquaintances to ask for your surname as soon as you meet so that they can ‘add’ you on social networking site Facebook immediately, and vice versa. Now, you can equally unfriend them for various reasons. Pitiful state of social affairs!
Cafebabel.com / Analysis
25/11/09
Baby language
Scientists and parents were shaken by a recent discovery: newborns cry in tune with the melody line that they have most often heard while still in their mothers’ placenta. To that, we say ga ga - baby phrases of the week
Cafebabel.com / Analysis
02/10/09
Europe's breakfasts: I'll have what Obama's having
Russia: Putin feeds Obama whilst a leather boot fans the flames. Italy: whilst Obama becomes president, Berlusconi serves his escort a hot drink. Germany: Merkel cooks brekkie for hubby: a round-up of European politicians' breakfast stories in the news, plus a pancake recipe for the bimonthly gastronomy column.
Cafebabel.com / Yum Niam
25/09/09
‘Oysters’ vs. Coke: popular European hangover cures
Have a read of these European hangover cures - it might make you not want to drink again. From a Polish ‘bull shot’ to a James Bond-style ‘prairie oyster’ via a good old hair o’ the dog, the advice is to get concocting.
Cafebabel.com / Analysis
06/09/07
Orban, Solana, Kroes stir it up
Four of the central political decision makers who will generate the most work for the press over the course of the coming months. Politicians also have classes to attend, and they have to spill a lot ink before turning in their homework. With new commissioners, European treaties and agricultural policy reforms, here are the faces that will be bringing us the controversies.
Cafebabel.com / Panorama
29/06/07
Major EU events under the Portuguese presidency
From 1 July, Portugal assume the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union, taking over a job well done from Germany
Cafebabel.com / Politics
19/06/07
'The most interesting part of my Plan A+ is the +'
The vice-president of the European Parliament, 46, suggests reducing the four parts of the constitutional treaty and putting it to a transnational referendum
Cafebabel.com / Interview
23/05/07
Galileo satellite: the Airbus of space
After Europe created the Space Policy, its principal satellite navigation project ‘Galileo’ is still paralysed by disputes between private companies in the international consortium
Cafebabel.com / Analysis
23/05/07
Hello?
"Gaston y’a le téléphone qui sonne. Et y’a jamais personne qui y répond" warbled blonde-haired, neckerchiefed French-Italian singer Nino Ferrer during the sixties. Having a telephone in the house at the time was a mere dream in many central-eastern European countries. Twenty years later, people were able to start calling not only from the comfort of their homes, but from the street, the bus, even the cinema…
Cafebabel.com / Tower of Babel
10/05/07
Over 50, 000 forest fires in Europe per year
An ailing Europe suffering from the effects of climate change and global warming prepares itself for another sweltering summer - with further blazes set to burn. According to meteorological research, the last few years have been the hottest on record. As a result, every year around 50, 565 forest fires burn in European territory causing not only the loss of human lives, but immeasurable devastation to the environment. Europe, however, has yet to present a united front on how to tackle this burning issue.
Cafebabel.com / Focus
03/05/07
Egypt’s bloggers do it better
In some UN member countries, censorship-free media is still a wishful fantasy. There, the internet becomes the only means to circulate uncensored information. ‘In Europe, bloggers comment on contemporary issues, but don’t really produce any information. In Egypt, bloggers are not only commentators, but they also engage in investigative journalism,’ says Julien Pain, 38, from Reporters Without Borders.
Cafebabel.com / Focus
11/04/07
Second-hand clothes fly off Polish shelves
The word ‘vintage’ is originally derived from wine terminology, referring to the year in which a wine was bottled and thus its quality in age. Vintage fashion itself came from America. ‘Great finds and great prices in eighties New York meant that second-hand clothes were really in demand from Europe. You could buy a pair of linen pants for 20 dollars, and a lamp from the fifties for ten dollars,’ reported Polish author and artist Hanna Bakula in a 1999 issue of Playboy.
Cafebabel.com / Focus
10/04/07
Electronic paper
What if, tomorrow, we hold in our hands the equivalent of the Daily Prophet from the Harry Potter adventures or USA Today as envisaged by Spielberg in his film ‘Minority Report’? With text displayed on plastic-coated paper, we would turn the pages virtually with a click, and illustrations would come to life. OK - tomorrow, it probably won’t happen, but why not the day after? For Bruno Rives, founder of Tebaldo, an agency involved in new technological trends and usages, there is no doubt that ‘we are now in year zero of electronic paper.’
Cafebabel.com / Analysis
21/03/07
Europa 2057: what remains to be seen
Fifty years ago, who would have thought the European utopia would be a reality? We imagine the next half a century. Imagine a soldier from the German Democratic Republic (Communist East Germany or GDR, 1949-1990) looking into a crystal ball; would he have believe his eyes to see his grandchildren talking with their Sicilian friends over MSN messenger, a reunited Germany or a woman from the GDR - a scientist! - heading today’s modern nation-state?
Cafebabel.com / Debate
19/03/07
Fukuyama: ‘Europe’s ‘soft force’ disappears outside its borders’
The war in Iraq which saw Europe once again divided in 2003 ‘is no reason to alter the traditional relationship between the US and Europe,’ according to Francis Fukuyama, 54-year-old Chicago-born thinker. He is best-known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992). Unlike former colleagues such as former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Fukuyama opposes the policy of favourite alliances between the US and Europe, to the exclusion of others. He does, however, think that Europe has a fundamental problem of collective action and doubts that a true political union will happen.
Cafebabel.com / Interview
16/03/07
No-río: ‘There must be space to criticise religious leaders’
This is an unorthodox brunch. We’re 50 km from the Sea of Japan and 10 km from a volcano. It’s a dark wintry evening, and I am waiting on a storm-battered street of a provincial town. It’s here, in Hirosaki that I meet Japan’s leading political cartoonist, Norio Yamanoi. We walk to the sanctuary of a Viennese style café, our umbrellas rising up against the gale.
Cafebabel.com / Brunch
09/03/07
Working abroad - necessity or Easyjet pleasure?
Europeans have always moved ‘abroad’ to work. But on January 1, 1993, the four main ‘freedoms’ were established in Europe’s single market. Establishing a free movement of goods, services, people and money facilitated more and more economic-motivated movement. We look at two portraits of two very different women who have travelled across - and beyond - Europe in its 50 years of existence.
Cafebabel.com / Portrait
02/03/07
Sandra Camps: Barcelona’s journalist as Africa’s social worker
Her reports on dwarfism and the mass tide of immigrants to the Canaries are gracing German screens - the Catalan journalist gives a voice to those without
Cafebabel.com / Portrait
21/02/07
Sun, sangria, siesta
You’ve just eaten. The blood is heading for the stomach. Depending on the country you’re in, you’ll have had a quick sandwich or will have returned home for a good square lunch.
Clearly, a siesta is the panacea to our digestive difficulties, with doctors recommending a sleep of no more than 20 minutes, the time that the body needs to get itself in order to face the rest of the day.
Cafebabel.com / Tower of Babel
20/02/07
Within our REACH?
‘Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of CHemicals’ (REACH) will be monitored from one central point, the newly created European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in Helsinki. It’s described as the ‘public face’ of the new REACH system
Cafebabel.com / Panorama
08/02/07
Poland: ‘socialise bellies’
Stop debate on the protection of life ‘from the beginning,’ say the staunch Catholic right-wing, as they announce an amendment of article 38 in the Polish constitution
Cafebabel.com / Focus
08/02/07
Interview with Wanda Nowicka
President of the Polish Federation for Woman and Family Planning and co-founder of the women’s ASTRA network, talks abortion.
Statistics show that doctors in Poland play a very important role in limiting legal abortion access. Doctors who do not want to perform abortions rely on the ‘conscience clause’ in the Physicians’ Code of Ethics. They can refuse procedures that conflict with their morals. It’s a flawed system though; it may be the case in public hospitals, but on the darker side they still perform backstreet abortions illegally.
Cafebabel.com / Interview
08/02/07
The good, the bad … and the slowcoaches
In the seventies, spaghetti westerns - those classic caricatures of the cowboy movie genre - were filmed in the Spanish desert. Italian directors such as Sergio Leone made the movies cheaply and quickly, just like the Italian staple pasta.
Cafebabel.com / Tower of Babel
06/02/07
European cinema, screeched to a halt
It’s that time of year again. Well-known faces are returning to the Berlinale; critically acclaimed directors who have been in the business for years and who make up the patchwork of the European cinema scene at the moment. The impressive scroll of directors includes Jirí Menzel (Czech), François Ozon, Jacques Rivette, Olivier Dahan and André Techiné (French), David Mackenzie and Richard Eyre (British), Christian Petzold and Sam Garbarski (German), Stefan Ruzowitzky (Austrian), and Bille August (Danish). Not forgetting the Italian Saverio Costanzo, the only new face at the festival, and son of famous Italian journalist Maurizio Costanzo, who monopolises the main Italian channel of ex-Premier Berlusconi, Canale 5.
Cafebabel.com / Opinion
02/02/07
‘Close, but no cigar!’
A stereotypical rich man’s accessory, a cigar epitomises all that is classy, cool – and lucky. If you tell someone in French ‘tu as fait un tabac’, you’re congratulating them on being hugely successful.
Across Europe’s tongues however, the ‘cigar’ phrase gradually loses its ‘luck’ sheen. In English it is diminished with: ‘close, but no cigar!’ It describes a situation where you don’t quite reach a goal, narrowly missing out on success and inversely, getting nothing for one’s efforts.
Cafebabel.com / Tower of Babel
24/01/07
Olga Karatch: ‘Lukashenko takes EU leaders for great lumps’
Olga Karatch is a primary school teacher and one of the most active Belarusian dissidents. As leader of the association ‘Our House’ (‘Nasz dom’] and editor of a clandestine opposition magazine, she fights non-stop to get her country to respect human rights. Passing through Warsaw, back and forth between Prague and Brussels, Karatch tries to heighten the EU authorities’ awareness regarding the matter of freedom of the press in Belarus. Today, she lives near the Russian and Latvian border in Vitebsk, where she works as a town councillor.
Cafebabel.com / Portrait
24/01/07
UGLY!
It would appear that the world as we know it has gone insane. Young Brazilian girls start getting cosmetic surgery as presents for their fifteenth birthday. Models are starving themselves to death in the pursuit of beauty. Election experts conclude that the way politicians look is more important than their policies. This obsession with beauty gives rise to countless expressions for ugliness.
Cafebabel.com / Tower of Babel
22/01/07
Poland: ‘opportunities to go abroad are few and far between’
Since European enlargement kicked into swing in May 2004, there has been a 6% boost in the number of exchanges between universities in Europe.
Cafebabel.com / Interview
22/01/07
Erasmus turns 20 – time to grow up?
‘Erasmus is the symbol of what Europe does best. A Europe of facts, of results.’ These are the laudatory terms in which José Manuel Barroso defined the European exchange program that will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2007. In 1987, only 3, 000 pioneers had tried the experience of studying abroad for one or two semesters. Nowadays, about 150 000 students per year choose to travel to a different university. This adds up to a total of one and a half million students who, in twenty years, will have travelled among European universities.
Cafebabel.com / Analysis
16/01/07
European Ombudsman: ‘Without ensuring political alliances, one cannot be elected’
Nikiforos Diamandouros has been Ombudsman since 2003. As Pöttering becomes president of the European parliament on January 16, the Greek mediator explains how it all works behind the scenes
Cafebabel.com / Interview
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