What's brother Dick on about this month? Some people were genuinely moved that he took the time to explain the history of the Iraq situation last month - now be amazed as he tackles the role of translation in literature, in Dick's Toolbox!..

Mike's Pith & Wind - Larry
I parked a couple of streets away from the Junction as I usually do and wandered down to the Post Office to see if there were any cheques in the mail – I was expecting one from Tanunda where we’d gone over the guarantee by a couple of hundred dollars or so. As I crossed the carpark I could hear somebody singing, and I eventually traced the sound to this longhaired fellow with an acoustic guitar rocking back on his heels and bellowing to the sky near the pedestrian crossing. Given that I’ve been scrabbling around for something to write about for this column, I made myself the proposition that if he was there when I came back I’d take his photo and maybe have a bit of a chat before picking up my provisions at the supermarket and heading home.
I duly found the envelope from Tanunda at the Post Office and trotted over to the bank to deposit it in the Spectrum account, but when I opened it I discovered it was an order for a CD and not the gig money I was expecting, so I retired immediately to Gusto to have my pot of tea and read the Age.
I did manage to read the Green Guide, which was the only part of the Age that wasn’t being devoured by one of my regular Age rivals, and I‘d made up my mind to leave when I spotted that the rest of the paper had been jammed back untidily in the rack, so I patiently smoothed out the pages, put it in order and read it thoroughly, although I did skip the obituaries.
By now it was lunchtime, so I stopped off at read more

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Dick's Toolbox - Meandering in Translation
Est maintenant l'hiver de notre mécontentement fait été glorieux par ce soleil d'York
Those who think that a homophone is an instrument played by a gay contortionist may not have immediately noticed the disappearing pun in the French translation of the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III. But for something far less comprehensible, put the quote through a Japanese Babel fish translation. Most of us will take the output at face value, even though it might well be an invitation to take your Aunt’s overweight daughter roller-skating in the mountains of Honshu. There is a pervasive idea that English is the natural language of the world. It comes as quite shock to realise that foreigners actually go home and continue to speak a foreign language rather than putting on their slippers, sighing and thanking whatever deity they worship that they don’t have to speak such a difficult language as.. read more