Bob Gregory

Thanks for the comment on Three percent. The group approach is really a good way to get written works translated, and also to give people experience of translation.

In 1985, on my very first visit to Japan, while I was still a research student in Australia, I was taken to a room at Kyoto University where a group of students were slowly, page by page, week by week, translating the major work of my own PhD teacher in Australia. Each student in turn would take a section home, try to translate it, and then discuss the translation and the text the following week in their seminar class.

Having read the book myself (The Sweet Potato in Oceania by D. E. Yen), I knew how densely written the English was, and felt great sympathy for the effort being made by those students!

Dear Bob,

When all the floods have subsided, and people are feeling secure again, I would love to see the regreening of so much of Australia, even if it is just a temporary show.

I hope people are also putting markers up to record the events, so that planning mistakes can be avoided in the future. Building New Brisbane on the floodplains seems to have been ill advised.... but this is easy to say in retrospect. If everyone can learn from the experience, then the present loss of life will not be entirely in vain.