Swet Columns
January 16, 2012
The Wordsmith’s Craft
by Lynne E. Riggs
Some may have seen the New Year’s TV program showing the tsuikidoki craftsman who takes a flat sheet of copper and over three days to a week beats it into a gracefully shaped teapot, complete with spout, using only a hammer, a high-piled rack of toriguchi forming tools, and the accumulated experience of two or three decades... more
January 5, 2012
From the Steerage • The Future of the SWET Newsletter
by Lynne E. Riggs
The SWET Newsletter is going to change. As announced in No. 128, the present Newsletter will continue through No. 130, to come probably in February or March. After that, the new incarnation of the Newsletter will appear sometime in 2012, as part of our redesigned website (details on which see below).
Preparations for these changes... more
December 15, 2011
Tidbits among the Triumphalism
Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language, by Robert McCrum. (New York: Penguin Books, 2010). ISBN 978-0-141-02710-4.
Reviewed by Charles De Wolf
Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s LanguageBack in the early 1980s, when the weekly magazines here in Japan were publishing stories on the often acrimonious debate concerning the origins of the Japanese language,... more
May 31, 2011
Thinking Forward: SWET Starts Its Fourth Decade
by Lynne E. Riggs
Only a few blocks away from the apartment building in Aoyama where, in November 1980, 100 writers, editors, translators, and others of their kind had gathered and founded SWET, 33 SWETers—young, not-so-young, and 30 years older—gathered at the Wesley Center on November 3, 2010 to celebrate the beginning of SWET’s fourth decade. Remarks by James Baxter, Janine... more
May 31, 2011
A Writer’s Look at the iPad (2011)
by Lem Fugitt
Lem Fugitt is a Tokyo-based geek-about-town, using his experience in technology and business to write regularly on items of technical interest. He writes here about his recent conversion to a new way of putting thoughts into written words.
If anyone had asked me back in March 2010 if there was anything I really wanted or... more
April 17, 2011
Stonewalling Clients and Timely Usage
by Torkil Christensen
SWET-L, the open mailing list for SWET and people interested in matters of concern to professional writers, editors, and translators, is an ever-reliable source of helpful and timely advice, keeping listers abreast of new crinkles in English.
This installment of the events on SWET-L brings us up to the end of 2010. Here you will learn... more