Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Pardon My….Turkish?

If you’ve been to Google’s home page in the last few days, you know it’s their 10th anniversary. As part of this observation, they’ve placed a temporary field on the home page that enables you to see what results would have come up if you had used Google in January of 2001.

I was curious what would happen if I Googled myself using the time-machine box, so I did. It found 113 results, about 20 of which were non-duplicates.

Some hits don’t actually have to do with me; they’re news and statistics about Nicole Clausing the Midwestern soccer star. Some are from my ancient history—mostly tables of content for books I edited 12 or 13 years ago. But the very last one amused me. I’ve seen it before, but I haven’t been able to find it on the Internet for years. It’s a link to an article with my byline—but that’s the only part of the article I can read. The text itself is written in a language I don’t even recognize. Turkish, maybe? If anyone knows, I’d love it if you’d let me know.

I think I know what the article is. I’m sure it’s this article that I remember writing (in English, naturally) many years ago with my Travelocity co-worker, Lisa Zeng. What I can’t explain is why someone would bother to translate it. This is the only thing I’ve ever written that I’m aware of having been translated. I guess it’s an honor, but mostly it’s just a fun mystery.

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