Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Ahora puedo hablar espanol

It's fun to stumble across your work on the web somewhere. On this blog I have a thing called "statcounter" which tells me more or less how many people visit every day. I can even find out how they navigated to my blog. Turns out 95% of people end up on my blog from Wikipedia. People do a search for "Higgs" or "Higgs boson" or "Peter Higgs." At the bottom of the page is a tiny little link that says "An interview with Peter Higgs." It goes to my page. Not sure how it got there, but several people every day click on that link and end up in my blog. I imagine most of them click away almost immediately.

But another link caught my eye. A single, solitary person found my blog from another blog called "Astronomia." I clicked on the link, and lo and behold, found a very long blog entry dedicated to the film, complete with pictures, a write-up, some thoughts, and a collection of links. They even explain the origin of our company name, 137 Films, with a picture of our logo, and a brief bio on Monica and me.

All in Spanish.

You've read about Marcela Carena in my blog in previous posts: the Argentinian theoretical physicist (and tango dancer). I think perhaps she passed on some information to them. There is a brief interview with her.

How do I know this? Do I speak Spanish? Alas, no. However, Google is an amazing thing. Click a "translate this page" button, and presto!

My favorite translation is that Leon Lederman's (infamous) nick-name for the Higgs boson, the god particle, comes out as "The Particle of God." So much more dramatic. Overall, though, the translation seems to be excellent, aside from a consistent confusion of gender of the third person pronoun (both Marcela and the film itself are referred to as "him"). I'm very impressed with Google. Maybe I'm just happy to see someone writing about our film in another language.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I found your page on Google

Gerardo Blanco said...

Hi Clayton:
Well, yes, thats the power of G. (I only said G, but you already know that im taking about the G web searcher).
That blog were you "landed" use to copy&paste the entries of MY blog.
Yes, they put there the original source, but a lot of people miss that.
The original source is
http://www.noticiasdelcosmos.com/2008/09/los-colisionadores-de-atomosel.html
When i notice about your film and the appearance of Marcela Carena, i search the web, saw an email of her and sent her a message. She answer telling me that it is a great documentary, etc,etc.
Im an argetinian blogger, so i was hoping to see the film somewhere, but didnt know how...
I must tell you that i've already seen you film (by the power of G, again: search 'atom smashers torrent')....
I'll buy it as soon as i can. $19 is not too much, but in Argentina the exchange is about 3.8, so i will have to pay 72 ($ Arg) plus the shipping, so...But i will. (The DVD has a subtitle in spanish? if not, i'm doing it.)
I want to tell you that i like it a lot. Everything is well done. There is a couple that work there (John and Robin): its a nice "romantic-physic" story (ended with a baby!). Also the Kate Simko music is really great. If you were trying to show the human experience in science (in fundamental physics), you done it.
If you were looking to show the politics and science (the cuts of the budget), you done it.
Also, its nice to see the "scientific competition" against CERN to detect the Higgs.
I hope to see someday the film in Argentinan theaters. Also the other film of 137, Galileo's Grave (which i dont see, yet).
Good luck to you!
(Sorry if my english is not good enough!)