April 17, 2009

Dutch Project Gutenberg reader for April 2009

Filed under: Animals,Literature,Music,Nature by Branko Collin @ 1:37 pm

What is it with adventurers and gadgets? Do they need the distraction when all there is between them and a 2000-metre drop is an almost negligible amount of tent cloth? Or do they feel they have to be at the frontier of everything, including that of technological advances?

This photo shows an early iPod, 1909, used by Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the South Pole. As you can see, there’s only one earbud—which is rather large, the idea being that the music might be shared with penguins this way. Shackleton failed his bid but did set a record for going farthest South. When he came back later that year, he wrote an article about his adventures which got translated into Dutch and published in De Aarde en Haar Volken.

My Nederlandse Project Gutenberg Reader for April (Dutch) dips into a number of translations, among which translations of the chapter Birds of Brehms Tierleben, of Durch das Land der Skipetaren (Karl May), and of Erasmus’ Morias Enkomion (The Praise of Folly).

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February 6, 2009

Sexist advert denigrates Dutch women and men

Filed under: General,Literature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:15 pm

FD

This just in! It features a woman doing an invisible pole dance and reads “Manipulate your manager” and then, roughly “Serious about moving up in your career? Register for the FD career challenge ’09!”

Women are complete idiots and have to use their bodies to climb up the ladder of success and all managers are of course all men (and straight!) and have no brains. Ouch. Looking forward to finding out who came up with this one.

The FD is the Netherlands’ top financial paper, which basically is stooping pretty low with this one. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the press is going to say. I’d also like to say that I am surprised social networking site LinkedIn agrees with this.

You’ll hear more from us on this.

I clicked the online version away somewhere today when I was working (the girl dances!), but after seeing this photo from a shocked Dutch girlfriend on Twitter, I put lunch on hold and had to write this up.

(Tip and photo: Jacqueline)

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January 16, 2009

Proud of what exactly?

Filed under: General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 1:59 pm
Proud

Let’s start on the positive side: Job Cohen, the laidback mayor of Amsterdam on the cover, is popular in a good way, here and abroad. But I’m shaking my head at this new magazine’s cover. I collected some opinions to make sure I wasn’t reading too much into it.

Robin Pascoe over at Dutchnews wonders if anyone at city council realises that ‘proud’ means ‘gay’, and that this magazine with Cohen looking like a dirty old man in a rain coat is not exactly the way to sell Amsterdam as a hot business location. I totally agree, and to make sure we weren’t both reading too much into it, I asked gay Amsterdam politician Laurent Chambon what he thought. He said that it means gay to him straight off, while his partner peeking over his shoulder simply said “really scary”. I also asked Dutch journalist Jeroen Mirck, and he didn’t see the problem at all, except for the dirty old man disposition, of course. Let’s remember that this is an English-language magazine aimed at foreigners, but made by Dutch people.

Besides the gay thing (the Mayor is hetero by the way) and the flasher styling, there’s another questionable layer of meaning to using the word ‘proud’ as of late. It denotes the serious rise in populism plaguing the country. Nowadays, when the Dutch media talks about being proud of being Dutch for example, it automatically excludes any kind of foreigner. There’s even a new populist if not racist political party that has the word “trots” (proud) in their name.

I just don’t get the whole idea of the name. When you’re proud, you shouldn’t have to push it, just like when you’re cool.

(Tip: Dutchnews.nl)

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January 6, 2009

Jules Verne for free in e-book form

Filed under: Literature by Branko Collin @ 9:46 am

A couple of years ago a Project Gutenberg volunteer called Jeroen Hellingman managed to buy 25 public domain versions of Dutch translations of Jules Verne’s 54 “Voyages extraordinaires.” These books are working their way slowly through the Distributed Proofreaders digitization process and have started to appear at the other end, at gutenberg.org. The most recent Dutch Verne adventures posted there are:

  • Wonderlijke avonturen van een Chinees, followed by Muiterij aan boord der ‘Bounty’
  • De wonderstraal, followed by Tien uren op jacht
  • De Reis naar de Maan in 28 dagen en 12 uren

The last two titles have excerpts in my latest (third) Nederlandse Project Gutenberg Reader, which also contains snippets from the Dutch translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Couperus’ Reis-impressies en Jan en Florence, Cyriël Buysse’s De vrolijke tocht, Guido Gezelle’s Laatste Verzen and Johanna van Woude’s Een verlaten post.

If you want Verne in another language than Dutch, fret not. After all, the man is the third most translated author in the world (after Walt Disney and Agatha Christie), and Zvi Har’El’s Jules Verne Collection has a great number of public domain translations of his works.

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December 27, 2008

ISBN register made publically accessible

Filed under: Literature by Branko Collin @ 3:29 pm

On December 22 Centraal Boekhuis, the distributor for most books in the Netherlands opened up its ISBN register, “after consultation with several stakeholders in the book business.” Let me paraphrase that for them: “people started suing us.”

Centraal Boekhuis has a curious monopoly. It distributes books for the publishers to the stores. But since shelf space is expensive, it regularly pretends the backlist doesn’t exists, says Eamelje. A Stichting Auteursdomein sued them for abusing their monopoly position. The foundation lost on the curious grounds that since it’s pioneering a business model in the Netherlands, its situation is so unique that damages are hard to determine. Stichting Auteursdomein is an on-demand publisher for books from established authors where those books have disappeared from the shelves. The goal of the lawsuit was to have Centraal Boekhuis open up their ISBN database, and that’s what happened in the end.

Via Eamelje (Dutch).

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December 6, 2008

Delayed construction killing unique bookstore’s business

Filed under: General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

There’s a lot of ways to kill walk-by business and one of them is having heavy duty construction right in front of your shop for as long as The Bookstore Exchange has had—13 months and counting. This second hand, English-language bookstore (photo), apparently the largest on the European continent with over 80,000 books, located near the Faculty of Sociology of the Universiteit van Amsterdam has been around since 1978 and is going bankrupt due to this construction.

Run by Jeff, a perfectly integrated American—a real ‘Amsterdammer’—who has been living in the capital for 30 years, said in November already to different media that he was as good as bankrupt. The construction blocks the view of his shop window and so passers-by don’t just pop in anymore, never mind the sand from the construction outside that gets into books, the noise and what have you. In a city with 1.5 million tourists a year, being invisible is deadly. The City of Amsterdam has no intention of compensating the mess they are still making for something that was scheduled to be finished by end of 2007.

Sources tell us that Jeff has neither the time nor money nor energy to fight against the bureaucrats and we get that. The closing of his shop is not just his loss, but a loss for anyone who enjoys hard to find English-language books. Apparently, the source of pride from being able to say that the continent’s biggest second-hand English-language bookshop is in Amsterdam and the labour of love built by Jeff himself means nothing to bureaucrats who can’t even finished projects on time or within budgets anymore. We won’t get into the hugely delayed North-South metro line, which literally put people out of their sinking homes and ruining other businesses.

Christmas is around the corner and so I invite you to check out The Book Exchange in Amsterdam (click on the link for directions). It’s short walk from Central Station. We plan to do so as well.

More info: bookexchange.nl. Thanks to my friend Nathalie for pointing this out!

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December 3, 2008

Speak English with Poles, don’t bother with Polish

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 11:32 am
Polish sausage

Yesterday on telly (Nova) I saw a report about how Poles were getting on in Rotterdam. Once they showed the Polish food store (ethnic groups are often automatically associated with their food), I watched the rest. What I heard was well educated, normal looking Europeans who just happen to have crappy jobs that apparently pay less than minimum wage in 40% of cases and homes that are overpriced and crowded. As well, some 50% want to stay in the Netherlands because their chances are simply better. Some politicians says this will prepare them for the next wave of Eastern Europeans (Bulgarians and Romanians) who are due to arrive soon. These people are more often than not highly educated, speak several languages and do jobs the Dutch apparently have the luxury to refuse to do. They are not illiterate housewives or too old to integrate.

Then I found this recent article that reads “Poles speak English too well”, which is some weird complaint. On telly, they said that many Poles came to the Netherlands from England and Ireland, so it is logical that they speak some English. The article, however, basically points out that setting up Polish lessons for employers (known as reverse integration and highly criticised) is a waste of time if the Poles speak English. The people setting up these courses could have known this if they 1) bothered to get information from the Polish community like the telly did and 2) looked further in Europe than their own miniscule backyard.

And remember, when the Poles do stay they are obliged to learn Dutch anyways, so communication will be even easier! It seems the municipalities and the people setting up courses could use some serious cultural communication lessons themselves. Poles often speak Polish, some Russian and/or German, English and even other languages like French. Ah but learning Polish was a way to make money which backfired big time hence the complaint.

(Link: leeuwardercourant.nl)

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November 16, 2008

Free University in Berlin honours Cees Nooteboom

Filed under: Dutch first,Literature by Orangemaster @ 3:19 pm
Cees Nooteboom

Cees Nooteboom is the very first Dutch writer to receive an honorary degree from a German university, the Free University in Berlin. He is one of the Netherlands’ greatest authors, having won a string of literary awards and one day expected to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

Oddly enough, he is more popular in Germany where he is very much in demand. In the Netherlands, Nooteboom is a successful writer, but it is said that he will never become as popular in the Netherlands as he is in Germany where almost all his books are bestsellers. Nooteboom’s German publisher Suhrkamp has just published his complete works in nine volumes, while the Bezige Bij publishing house in Amsterdam has no plans to do the same.

According to Radio Netherlands, the Dutch are more likely to name Harry Mulisch as being up for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I can’t help but say “No man is a prophet in his own country”.

(Link: radionetherlands.nl)

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October 19, 2008

Second Dutch Project Gutenberg sampler

Filed under: Art,Literature by Branko Collin @ 8:36 am

I decided to make another Nederlandse Project Gutenberg Reader, containing the Dutch books that were released in the past month at the internet library. Once again you can find it at Brewster Kahle’s excellent Internet Archive.

Since the past month was a bit quiet with regards to new releases, I decided to add a couple golden oldies. The new releases were Jacob Cats’ Spaens Heydinnie and Shakespeare’s Twee edellieden van Verona. Cats was a moralistic writer from the Dutch Golden Age. Spaens Heydinnie (Spaans heidinnetje, Spanish gypsy) is a reworking of Cervantes’ La Gitanilla, in which an infant girl of noble birth is kidnapped and raised by gypsies. The third release last month was a lecture held in 1840 for the Frisian Association, which I find wholly uninteresting, but I am not going to be all judgmental about your kinks.

I added two extracts from older works. The first is a travel account of the Netherlands, Door Holland met pen en camera, by the French journalist and photographer Lud. Georges Hamön. Let me translate a bit for you:

One has to keep in mind though that Holland is a desperately flat and monotonous region, that it does not spark any fierce emotion, nor does it lead to excited enthusiasm or even quiet inner delight. Holland is the land of serenity, where one submerges in the calmest comfort.

The opposite of calm comfort is Herman Heijermans’ Diamantstad (Diamond City), a novel about and an indictment of the poor living conditions of the inhabitants of the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam around the turn of the century. Earlier I sort of translated the fragment I quote in the reader over here.

Photo of Father Kick in quiet contemplation by Lud. Georges Hamön. See also the first Dutch Project Gutenberg Reader.

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October 18, 2008

Lesbian couples marry for free in the train

Filed under: Literature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 6:00 am
Lesbian wedding

Three lesbian couples will be married next week on Tuesday, 21 October in the train. The idea of having lesbian couples marry in the train is part of a reading campaign of the NS (Dutch railways) called ‘Nederland Leest’ (‘The Netherlands reads’).

The campaign features Harry Mulisch’s book ‘Twee vrouwen’ (‘Two women’), a book with a homosexual theme, which explains the preference for lesbian couples. The witnesses (best man and best woman) will be known Dutch journalists Annejet van Zijl and Philip Freriks.

The marriages will be held in a special train that will run between the stations of Naarden-Bussum and Utrecht.

(Link: destentor.nl)

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