I’m working on a very large and very urgent translation project this month. While being so busy has its drawbacks for updates, the job I’m doing does provide a lot of inspiration for posts.

For example, I could swear that the only time I’ve ever heard the expression “eyes wide shut” was in reference to the Kubrick film. Yet I had a hunch that it would be the perfect translation for a German expression I came across in my work today.

But how could I find a definition when the Google results are crammed so full of Cruise-Kidman speculation and middling movie reviews? I ended up searching for

“eyes wide shut” definition -kubrick -film

This still didn’t generate any of the obvious, easy reference sites that I can usually count on finding in the search results.

It turned out, however, that the context was enough. Look at the titles on these results, and you can probably guess the meaning of the phrase already:

• With Eyes Wide Shut: Climate Change Threatens the Future of Humanity, But We Refuse to Respond Rationally
• Eyes Wide Shut: Surveying Erosion in the Professionalism of the Tax Bar
• Eyes Wide Shut: Why doesn’t Egypt keep better track of migrating bird species?

  and finally:

• Enron’s Lawyers: Eyes Wide Shut?

Internet, you are a translator’s best friend.

Even when that translator has to work a little harder to make you useful.