Japan is all about *the* way of doing things. Practice, ritual, perfectionism, as much fanatical attention to the process as to the result. China is all about finding *a* way to do things. Improvisation, little interest in rules, putting up with whatever is necessary to attain the result.
— James Fallows
Filme sind mehr als bebilderte Hörbücher. Manchmal ist es weniger wichtig, was die Filmfiguren sagen, sondern wie sie es in welcher filmästhetischen Umgebung machen. Der schottische Slang in Trainspotting sorgt etwa mindestens genauso sehr für Atmosphäre wie die geschickte Nutzung von Pop-Klassikern. In der deutschen Fassung sprechen hingegen alle Hochdeutsch. So nähert sich der frenetisch inszenierte Mikrokosmos einer Jugend-Subkultur in Schottland in der Synchronversion einem relativ eindimensionierten Junkie-Portrait. In Robert Altmans Gosford Park, einer Satire über den britischen Adel, dienen verschiedene Dialekte des Englischen nicht nur der Atmosphäre, sondern illustrieren vielmehr soziale Konflikte: Während die Adeligen Oxford-Englisch sprechen, kommunizieren ihre Bediensteten in Cockney-Slang oder schottischem Dialekt. Eine der Überraschungen des Films ist die Enthüllung der wahren Identität einer der Figuren, die daraufhin ihren angelernten Dialekt fallen lässt. In der deutschen Fassung von Gosford Park sprechen hingegen alle Figuren… nun ja: Hochdeutsch. Daher wirkt die Synchronversion auch eher wie ein überlanger, dröger Krimi denn wie eine elaboriert inszenierte Satire über Klassenkonflikte.
— Bebilderte Hörbücher: Die Unsitte der Filmsynchronisation in Deutschland | unique-online.de
America Movil may swap its 28% KPN stake for 100% of E-Plus and Base
via Communications Breakdown
Between Changsha and Zhuhai stood the mountains of southern Hunan. They are not tremendously high by world standards, but they were higher than our airplane was at its initial assigned altitude. And unless the controller gave us instructions to climb — as we would routinely expect a few minutes into the flight — we would be headed for trouble soon. On the GPS-based moving map in the cockpit, we saw the ridge draw closer. We couldn’t legally turn around, since that would be deviating from our clearance. Nor — again without breaking rules — could we decide to climb on our own. If we kept on straight and level, within ten minutes we’d crash. Then within eight minutes. Then six.
— Flying Blind Through the Mountains of Hunan - James Fallows
This seems like the ultimate hipster foodie trump card: “My fish was caught by artisanal Brazilian fishermen with the help of a unique group of… intelligent dolphins.
— The Atlantic
Imagine if Twitter randomly unfollows you from my feed. I may unsuccessfully try to DM you or I may wonder why I haven’t seen your tweets lately or I may even see you getting retweeted into my feed or if we also talk by e-mail or face-to-face one of us may mention “did you see what I was saying on Twitter.” That is, if there was a strong tie it will pretty quickly re-establish itself after a shock. In contrast, let’s suppose Twitter unfollows you from my feed and I don’t notice, in this case it’s apparently just as well (and perhaps better as I no longer have to scroll past your tweets). The real beauty of it though is that if you notice I am no longer following you there’s ambiguity as to why. It might be I got sick of you retweeting Kim Kardashian or it could be that there was a glitch at the server, you really can’t know and so you can’t take offense. Polite evasion is an underrated principle of social interaction and it’s nice to see Twitter arrive at it by accident. So my advice to Twitter is to take the engineers who are working on this “problem” and reassign them to something that actually should be fixed, like dropped punctuation characters.
— The Beauty of Twitter’s Unfollow Bug - Megan McArdle - Technology - The Atlantic
