16. It's Cookie's Birthday!

Go wish her a happy one, and tell her what a beautiful shawl she knitted for my sister, then come back.   I'll wait. 

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AND NOW, A STENO STORY, to help answer the question, "Why do those stupid TV captioners make so many mistakes?!"

Yesterday's Scientific Integrity class featured guest speaker Madeleine Kunin, whom I've known for many years.  Xianglian, my graduate student, is hung up back home in China because of visa issues, so I went to cover the class for her without her presence. There were several people there I've gotten to know from some of her other classes -- three M.D./Ph.D. candidates included. So since Xianglian wasn't there, they clustered themselves around me and had great fun reading along during the speech.   Having seen the process in action for a full semester previously, they think it's a wicked cool thing, and spent a good bit of time telling people next to them what it was I was doing there, and "Wait 'til you see how cool it is when it comes up!" before the talk.

The talk was given at a very comfortable pace, and the topics were general stuff all of which I had covered before, between my work in the news and the general science she talked about.  Not much daunting about it at all.  Much to my pleasure, although I had no preparation for the talk, "Arnold Schwarzenegger," "E. coli," and "Dulles Airport" even translated correctly.  Lay people probably don't understand what's the big deal when I say that, but in the steno world, it's a big deal. 

Except for the fact that I did not know the name of the former South African president (Embeki), which was mentioned by Madeleine in a discussion about HIV/AIDS and the way in which Embeki handled the issues surrounding same, I am going to go ahead and brag that I only had two mistranslates in the hour-and-fifteen-minute presentation.  One was a doozy, which is good in a way.  If there HAS to be a mistran, we always hope for it to be a doozy, right?  What else would I write in the blog, if not?

One illustrates what we call word boundary problems and shows that no matter how experienced one is when making dictionary entries, some will inevitably get past the radar.  "Chris Mahoney" translated as "charisma honey."  Crap.  Who would have thought I could not enter "kris/ma" as charisma?  I obviously did enter it that way at some time in the past, and did not envision a problem.  Busted!

This one was the best one, though:  You may remember that I covered an event a while back on the female orgasm.  The word "orgasm" on the steno keyboard would usually entail writing two or three strokes, depending on one's method.  For that event, I made up a one-stroke brief form to make the evening go more easily.  GAUM is the stroke I made up for "orgasm." 

Well, near the end of Madeleine's talk, she said, "It's not a no-win game." 

"Game" is written on the steno keyboard, "GAEUM."  The letter "I" is composed of the E and U, which are on the keyboard next to each other, written together using the right thumb, and read by my superior brain *cough,* or rather, by the computer, as an I.  The actual I is not on the keyboard.  The vowels are powered by the two thumbs, and the two thumbs can only really handle a total of four keys, stroked in different combinations (alone or together) to form all the short and long vowel sounds.

I made a teeny little error in my thumb placement, stroking GAUM instead of GAEUM, and the resulting sentence came out, "It's not a no-win orgasm."  My M.D./Ph.D. buddies burst out laughing.  Madeleine, I think, thought she had said something inadvertently witty, and the rest of the people in the room wondered why they hadn't caught the joke. Madeleine asked me to send her a copy of the text of her talk.  I'm still deciding if I'm going to edit that or leave it in.  What do you think?

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Sandy is calling for a redo of Haiku Week, which we've done a couple times before.  I'm playing, then. Here's mine for today.

Pay close attention
You might not see it coming
No-win orgasm

Comments

[Wanda]

Hahahahaha! That's pretty funny Norma. I think I would edit the text before sending it on though.

[Kristen]

Oh gad!! That is hilarious! Good thing that one wasn't being projected, eh?

[Mel]

Actually, Thabo Mbeki is still the President of SA. There's an entire section on his AIDS policies in his Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thabo_Mbeki

[Elisabeth]

Leave it in!

We had to take an ethics class. The NIH requires every student who is ever funded off of any NIH grant ever to take some kind of ethics class (this rule was put in place after several high profile instances of scientific misconduct). Since they figure we will all be funded off an NIH grant at some point, the University required all of us to take it in our first year. Possibly the class you are talking about fulfills that role at your school.

It was the most deadly dull class ever and full of lectures on stuff that it seemed like should not need to be said. Don't falsify your data. Don't sleep with your students. Don't torture your research animals or take them home as pets or keep a goldfish tank in the lab because you will have to submit an animal protocol for it. And on and on and on. The only vaguely entertaining thing about it was this one guy who was taking the class and it seemed as though the class was designed for him because he made many valuable contributions such as, "Well, in my country, it is okay to have sex with your students," and, "Clearly the answer to the human cloning dilemma is to make human embryos without brains." Unfortunately, he was perfectly serious about both of those statements. I can only hope that the stress of not screwing his students forced him to go back to where-ever-it-was that he came from.

[Sarah]

I am more amused by this stuff than I should be.

[joan]

I'm trying to define what a "no-win orgasm" could be.

Besides an oxymoron.

[Sandy]

BWAHH hahahah! Isn't an orgasm a WIN-WIN? Or am I wrong in my thinking?
HAIKU, baby!

[Carol]

I believe you do have the coolest job. IS there such a thing as a no-win orgasm?

[Cathy-Cate]

What a hilarious and weird way to start my day!
Haiku must be in the collective unconsciousness; I started haiku-ing the day before Sandy's post! A winter antidote, perhaps. I missed posting a haiku yesterday but had two Green Bay Packer haiku the day before (admit it -- not a phrase you ever imagined, "Packer haiku", though not nearly as out there as 'no-win orgasm'. Uh-oh -- I'm fired up now and feel an outbreak of haiku coming on....

[jodi]

I think I can say with some confidence that there is, in fact, no such thing as a no-win orgasm.

[marianne]

Heh....send it...as is. Heh. and no, there could be no such thing as a 'no-win' orgasm... well..... nah...don't want to go there.

[Dave]

It never ends, does it. Poor charisma. Maybe it needs an H or a Z in there. And just when you think you have it under control, you go and orgasm in the middle of a job. Probably threw you off more than a lingering sneeze, which is the worst (best?) I've ever had. I'd edit it, and if you know Ms Kunin well enough, you could attach a note explaining why the laugh, as she might still be wondering what she said. Or just send her the link to your blog entry. :-)

[naomi]

That would make for an excellent ethics seminar. Unfortunately, I doubt there will be any such transcription at all at whatever talk I attend this year...

[Anne]

Have you seen the Orgasm calculator you can use on your desktop? Might be just the thing to send with the transcript.

[Kiersten B]

HA! Leave it in! Everyone needs a laugh (and maybe more appreciation for steno issues!) ;)

[Jean]

Too funny. I vote leave it in. It's sure to make a few people's day. Think of the smiles!

[Carrie]

Edit it, but attach a note with your original translation and tell her what you were all laughing about. She'll love it.

[Tish]

Since you say you've known her for many years, I'd send it as is and maybe pencil in an OOPS and correction in the margin. Spread the joy! My #2 daughter hopes to be an MD/PhD candidate in the next year or two (neuroscience/psych grad last spring, currently working as a cancer researcher in a U lab) and I hope she'll be able to enjoy her lectures as much as the students clustered around you obviously did.

[Beth]

Oh, the hilarity! I can so see me doing something like that...

[Heather]

I say leave it in....but you should send her a note with it explaining....I am sure she will get a good laugh!

[Cookie]

A four stroke orgasm... There's a joke in there somewhere, but I don't think I'm the one to tell it. I vote you leave it in and send her to this post.

And thank you. ♥

[lorig]

Leave it! That is fantastic.

[Beth S.]

You have the BEST work stories, hands down. ;-)

[kmkat]

Since you don't know exactly how or where Ms. Kunin will use the transcript, you should edit it. But absolutely enclose a note of explanation about the mis-stroke and the no-win orgasm and the outbreak of laughter -- she is sure to love it.

But edit the official transcript -- you don't want Ms. Kunin red-faced and attempting to explain why there is a reference to a no-win orgasm in a transcript of a [purportedly] serious lecture.

[claudia]

Thanks for the laugh.

[jessie]

I'm still stuck on the three-stroke orgasm.

[--Deb]

Well, you made me laugh out loud! I'd say leave it in, but put the explanation--or just a copy of this post--along with it. Because it's knowing HOW that word got in there that makes it so funny!

[Michelene]

Isn't the one-stroke orgasm tne entire reason for the existence of Cosmopolitan magazine?

[Angie]

Excellent haiku, Norma!