I don't often get excited.

But right this minute I am. And it's something as simple as following moron-proof instructions that has my soul dancing. As I mentioned yesterday, Darren, up there in the frozen North at A Difference was discussing multi-lingual blogging through the use of one-click translation tools.

He, the kind man and wonderfully tech-savvy saint that he is, emailed me such fine instructions that it took me about six seconds each to make my blog and my dog's blog speak nine (count 'em. NINE) different languages at the click of a mouse.

Now, I stand by what I said yesterday: the translations are a little rough in places, but that's only because we haven't put enough pressure on the crafters of the tools. The more of us who do this, the more pressure there will be, and the more accurate the results will become.

Of course, arguing on the behalf of "foreign" or "modern" language teachers everywhere, I don't necessarily want all the roughness gone, as long as an intelligent reader can intuit the translation of metaphors. Besides, part of me says that it provides us enough insight into another culture - into the way they do or DON'T say things, to leave the rough spots alone.

Now I have to go back into my template and figure out how to make it say, right above the line of flags, "Darren taught me how to do this...