Lost in Translation No 92 in a Series.

 I may have mentioned Talking Politics before. Link 

The latest edition, 279 One-Term Presidents, contains a number of interesting ideas and discussion points together with a rare moment of levity in the post match analysis of 'Two nearly bald men fighting over a comb' contest. Apparently the Japanese Broadcaster had real difficulty with the translation of the proceedings as at many points 3 people were talking at once. So a fairly difficult time was had by all, especially with the rendition of the word 'Shitshow', used by commentators on mainstream US TV, into polite Japanese. 

(I hope we would never use language like that on this Blogg. Are you sure it should not be in quotes and italics behind  parenthetical disinfections with suitably placed asterisks...Ed?)

Absolutely!

HT to Memex 1.1 for this little gem, a real autumnal joy. 

As the man said Mother Nature spilled her box of crayons.

 

Collectivisation

A Whats app explosion of collective nouns.
- A parliament of owls - surely its rooks?
- I think it is used for both.
- A dazzle of zebras is the best...
- I like that
- Well, I think owls and rooks might be more efficient than our current parliament.
- Hear, hear. It's just a set of thieving magpies
- Not heard the dazzle before. Good one.
- What about a Confederacy of Dunces
- so good John Kennedy Toole made it into a novel?

- What about a blaze of dragons?
- Dangerous in the current phase of the six nations of Rugby?

Transhumance

Yourman Macfarlane has transhumance as his word of the day.
The tweetings that follow it are really interesting/charming. I suppose it is acceptable in a week which has a Monday/Tuesday before it is Good Friday (good anyday I'd say...Ed) enough of that and in which we stuff ourselves with the output from Chocolate Hens which have hot cross bums! Amen.

Word Botching

A Kite is pure delight
But a 'fisher is much swisher!

Where are they now:- Rummy, No 93 in a series

I have been attacked, viciously attacked...
(There,  there, sit down on this chair, have some tea, strong tea, maybe a little sugar...Ed)
in an email or two.
(those electrons can be the divi'ls own to shake off, now don't upset yourself...Ed)

I thank you deeply for your concern!
In one of the emails the word 'UNBEKNOWNST' was flung at me  like acid in my face!
I ask you what manner of man goes around using words like that and this a family blog?
I was about to take umbrage, real umbrage, stamp my foot, look fierce and shouty.
Then I remembered Rummy, good old Rummy. I can tell you the thought of that ejit lightened my mood a good deal.
In fact, I thought why not return the serve over the net with..
" would that be an unbeknown, unbeknownst or a beknown unbeknownst?)
But of course in the interest of harmony, peace love and justice I did not.
Life moves on, doesn't it always.

Gained in translation

Reading The Dark Valley by Valerio Varesi I came across a nice expression on p 118

They can't even find a wall to bang their heads against.

Clueless in Italian?

So  Maria Miller
Gee it's good to see yer
Doing the Vatican Rag.

That's another fine mess you got me in Posh Boy.
Anybody seen a wall?

Visions of Poesy

I've been reading Wendy Cope's dream in 
COPE, W. (1986). Making cocoa for Kingsley Amis. London, Faber and Faber.
p 59.

It reminded me of a nightmare which occurred ten years or more before  this was published as I staggered around the festival in Edinburgh.

Down the Festival with Germaine.

It wasn't a grope I had just then
I needed some help to keep level
I wanted to set the record straight.
You think I'm a devil!

(God almighty are you at the  Poesy again, morning, noon and night. Who is it this time? Oh I see now. Old Percy Bish and his Petery Loo. You have had that far away look in the eye ever since you saw Mervyn Peak pronounce on the The Masque of Anarchy. Anarchy indeed I should get paid more for the editing of 'Poetry', highly skilled and exacting work it is too!  ...Ed)

Do you want payment by the yard or will a clip round the ear suffice?

Reflections on a Republican Future

Time to move on as the Julibumpics draw to a close.
To paraphrase:-

If I were the President of this Land
I would declare total war on the Snollygoster Man

What is a Snollygoster I hear you ask?
Mark Forsyth supplies the answer in a TedX talk at the House of Commons.
Some wry thoughts on the origins of the use of the title President. (POTUS to West Wing fans).
I suspect everyone will be wanting a 'fleet of drones' now. Such a seductive little phrase, such horror now and misery to come!

Homer's Willy

No doubt being the recondite bunch that you are you will all (6 on average...Ed?) be familiar with Chapman's Homer or even, for the followers of the Little Horses, Chapman's homer.
Well it gets worse. Mr Forsyth, The Inky Fool, has a discussion of the origin of the name of Troy based on an article in the London Review of Books. He then spoils the whole tone of the matter by claiming

... it gives me such puerile pleasure that I thought I should reproduce it here so that you, dear reader, can snigger.

You will not get that kind of cheapskate faux intellectual bollix here, scholarship and integrity, accept no substitute!
It's no use perorating about polyphloisboia  or even in a polyphloisboian manner. The damage is done.
(There, there, don't upset yourself. You know the cardiologist warned against that. Away and have your rashers and tea, lashings of tea... Ed!)

Those words again.

I came across the word theodicy in a review in the LRB (31/3/11, Lord Have Mercy , James Shapiro) of Plague Writing in Early Modern England, by Earnest Gilman. (Smart boy wanted! ...Ed.) In my defence I had never knowingly seen it before and so blundled on for a few paragraphs happy in the belief that the word indicated the idiocy of those who believe in god. Whether by divine intervention or a passing acquaintance with my own limitations the niggle started that I had not quite got that right.
As always, in a spirit of humble scholarship I consulted with my good friends Mr Collins

the branch of theology concerned with defending the attributes of God against objections resulting from physical and moral evil

and Mr Chambers

a vindication of the justice of God in establishing a world in which evil exists.

Ooops. I've done it again.

Even the canting folk of Oxford and Messers Stewart, Coleridge and White quoted in the OED offered me no mercy

...vindication of the divine attributes, esp. justice and holiness, in respect to the existence of evil; a writing, doctrine, or theory intended to ‘justify the ways of God to men’.

So nailed with the wrong word for the right reason!

I blogged previously about teaching with Terry Burke many years ago in a Salford secondary modern school. He asked a small child, weren't they all, what he thought a theodolite was. Despite it being a science lesson and dealing with measurement, surveying instruments etc. and being shown a picture of the bloody thing, the child demonstrated the benefits of a good catholic education.

An instrument for measuring God

He intoned.
Amen!!

The Discrete Charm of the Embussed

I can't spell for toffee but I had a chuckle at the Beeb's report on The Cunning
Plan of Her Britannic Majesty's Metropolitan Police Force (or violence as we called it back in the day)
It is reported that The Met police briefing document advises

Avoid hasty actions or taking the bait - this will require nerve, discretion and discipline.

and when waiting around in police vans:

If drinking coffee or reading the paper when embussed (sic), please be discrete (sic).

Oh lordy, lordy Friday already an we hent paid the rent.

Still good to know the lads were paid a decent wage for their discrete embussment, coffee and papers provided!

Metonymy

Metonymy flashed up on the old peepers recently and, as a word that I was not familiar with, was cause for investigation and reflection. There is a very good example by Elif Batuman in a recent blog. I don’t think I will forget the link between Ajda – Pekhan or tea glass and the meaning of metonymy.

Mr Collins has a much less vibrant description in his excellent book of words

the substitution of a word referring to an attribute for the thing that is meant, as for example the use of the crown to refer to a monarch

However, I was instructed at the end of this definition to - compare synecdoche!

You can not go around giving orders like that to a young lad without there being consequences. I confess I have wrestled with synecdoche almost as long as I have wrestled with the demon drink and sins of the flesh. I have used mortification of the body and spiritual exercises to cope with this word but it is no use. It has me defeated.

Mr Collins may briefly define it thus

a figure of speech in which a part is substituted for a whole or a whole for a part, as in 50 head of cattle for 50 cows, or the army for a soldier

and be back at the rashers and eggs in no time, washing it down with lashings of tea I’m sure, but I am destroyed. The little worm is there; the tautological quantum elusiveness of the smile on Schrödinger’s Cat:- a part is substituted for a whole or a whole for a part

I’m extirpated!

(Ed. There, there. Come and sit down and have a cup of tea. Do you want me to call your Mammy?)

AWOL in BABELFISH Translation

At some point over the last few days a Sainsbury's promo appeared to have dropped out of one of the papers. Always on the scrounge for new recipes I opened it and began to browse. Imagine my surprise when Juan Mari Arzak and his daughter smiled at me from a picture under the title of a dish which promised:

PRETTY IN BONFIRE OF GRUDGES

So, after Lady Buddhistpizza and I had picked ourselves off the floor, soothed our aching sides and dried our eyes, we added the recipe to the lost in translation pile! We giggled assuming the pretty fish was bonito, claro! We assumed the bonfire was of taste not a barbie, a salsa fuerte perhaps, but those grudges they mouldered on for some time. Could they be goujons? No, definitely a false friend. Could they be resentments buried deep in the psyche of the Basque cook? I think they dealt with old Boney, at least, with an armoury of pots and pans. A likely candidate is the noun grujidor which Collins Dictionary defines as a glass cutter. Could it be that the shavings of glass (produced by the grujidor?) find a resonance in the scales of the pretty fish!? Well, I leave that to the fevered imaginations of our regular readers.

However, hats off to Emily Drinking Tea, who got there in this blog:-
Sainsbury's you need a recipe editor
Ain't that the truth.

The Evils of Capitalism

Nice little blog in the grauniad. The case against uppercase.
I've always been lowercase myself, I'm sure it shows.
Good to note that there are occasions when uppercase makes all the difference:-

Capitals do have their uses, of course. As the Urban Dictionary puts it: "Capitalisation is the difference between 'I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse' and 'I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.'"

Capital, capital!

Living with an English teacher.

One of the pleasures of (semi) retirement is that breakfast is seldom fraught and time can be spent in reading, sharing crosswords, and generally entering the day on an even keel. At breakfast recently I was dragged from contemplation of my Futoshiki by a question.

What is the opposite of decorous?

Scruffy.

I replied hoping to slip back unnoticed into the logical simplicity of more than or less than of my puzzle. Fat chance, a gentle clearing of the throat produced a hesitant

Indecorus?
on my part.

Further interrogation and consultation of the written authorities produced a consensus that the word being sought for the solution of a crossword clue was the noun indecorum.

I've certainly never used it and given the vagaries of memory at my age have little recollection of it being used in my presence. I would have horse whipped any bounder who had done so sir!

Have you ever felt exigous?

Another little cracker from the Nature of the Beast

I have to say it struck a chord.
I also have to say that I needed the help of Messers Collins and Chambers with that word exigous.

I am exigous. Indeed I have much to be exigous about.

For our many readers this does not mark the beginning of product placement in this blog, although I have been a grateful user of the two volumes above for many years. They come with the highest recommendation. Accept no substitutes or inferior wares, use only the best!

Up to a point Lady Copper!

I offer the following not as some sexist stereotypical aside but as evidence of the endless capacity and imagination of people offering advice and services in difficult situations.

This week the woo woo sewing machine (WWSM), which carries the GoodLadyWife (GLW) along the A14 to work and home, refused to start. If I had been thrashed up and down the A14 I might refuse to start, or even get out of bed.

The local garage collectively scratched its head and said - looks like a new starter motor- and indeed it did. GLW enquired if this was the same as the alternator (as, not unreasonably, that had been replaced last year and it was still under warranty) I have made similar blunders – describing various kinds of bulls as Limousines and Chevrolets.

However, this presented the local garage collective with a problem.
Clearly the collective wanted to keep faith with GLW and her attachment to WWSM, a key element in their projected income for the next decade. The spokes person for the collective, obviously an aficionado of Evelyn Waugh, said tentatively that it was similar up to a point, similar in the sense that a cooker and a fridge were the same sort of thing. GLW, who can spot the mutual face saving linguistic device at 200 paces, was gracefully appeased and I nearly crashed my car laughing giving her a lift home from the garage as she described the exchange.

Annuances

Working away on Sunday morning it was suggested, but not if I’m honest by me, that there were such things as annuances.

We agreed the derivation was quite clear; they were things which gave rise to annoyance but subtly.

Just a thought.

Another is my new year’s resolution. Late, but it is better late than never.

I must spend more time with trees.

So won’t be going to Iceland in the near future.

Enjoyed Tainted Blood by Arnaldur Indridason though.

Maybe not the right word - enjoyed - Icelandic homicide tends to be a bit grim. Is there any other kind of murder?

“Conquer English to Make China Stronger!”....

My oh my!

What you Engrish teachers get up to. I can never resist the temptation to pull the professional leg of the goodladywife, if you understand my meaning.

The following from the New Yorker via Arts and Letters Daily

Accompanied by his photographer and his personal assistant, Li Yang stepped into a Beijing classroom and shouted, “Hello, everyone!” The students applauded. Li, the founder, head teacher, and editor-in-chief of Li Yang Crazy English, wore a dove-gray turtleneck and a black car coat. His hair was set off by a faint silver streak. It was January, and Day Five of China’s first official English-language intensive-training camp for volunteers to the 2008 Summer Olympics, and Li was making the rounds...

To his fans, Li is less a language teacher than a testament to the promise of self-transformation. In the two decades since he began teaching, at age nineteen, he has appeared before millions of Chinese adults and children. He routinely teaches in arenas, to classes of ten thousand people or more. Some fans travel for days to see him. The most ardent spring for a “diamond degree” ticket, which includes bonus small-group sessions with Li. The list price for those seats is two hundred and fifty dollars a day—more than a full month’s wages for the average Chinese worker. His students throng him for autographs. On occasion, they send love letters.

There is another widespread view of Li’s work that is not so flattering. “The jury is still out on whether he actually helps people learn English,” Bob Adamson, an English-language specialist at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, said. The linguist Kingsley Bolton, an authority on English study in China, calls Li’s approach “huckster nationalism.” The most serious charge—one that in recent months has threatened to undo everything Li has built—holds that the frenzied crowds, and his exhortations, tap a malignant strain of populism that China has not permitted since the Cultural Revolution.

“I have seen this kind of agitation,” Wang Shuo, one of China’s most influential novelists, wrote in an essay on Li. “It’s a kind of old witchcraft: Summon a big crowd of people, get them excited with words, and create a sense of power strong enough to topple mountains and overturn the seas.”

Wang went on, “I believe that Li Yang loves the country. But act this way and your patriotism, I fear, will become the same shit as racism.”

Chefs' Comma

The National Trust are giving away a free hectare with every bowl.
Only joking!