The japanish writer Haruki Murakami awarded with the 23th Premi Internacional Catalunya

We’re talking the front page of the website of a Catalan government whose words consist of endless recycling of the cliché about taking its rightful place among the family of nations (its deeds are something different), which spends millions employing friends and relatives in “embassies” around the world, and which has just given a celebrated (anti-nationalist) writer and translator €80K and a little trophy to demonstrate that it, too, counts in international terms. And the best headline their translation service can come up with is “The japanish writer Haruki Murakami awarded with the 23th Premi Internacional Catalunya.” Jesus wept.

In other news, the Goethe-Institut (which is to say the German government) recently requested Spain’s autonomies to start teaching German in schools, presumably because they believe that Spain’s comparative underdevelopment is here to stay. (The OECD says that unemployment in Germany is less than a third of that in Spain, and increasing numbers of Spaniards are retracing the route taken by impoverished ancestors to the land of plenty big sausages.) Given that the post-1986 boom saw only a modest expansion of quality English teaching in schools, and that this was overshadowed by a shift away from Spanish in favour of regional languages of little commercial relevance, Berlin’s request does sound rather like that line in Neil Young’s Ambulance Blues (hint: 06:37):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqEwhrQZAmI

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