People, fucked translation is our opium, let’s smoke it while we can

Various posts here have been devoted to encouraging fucked translation from Spanish as a brand differentiator, where linguistic sloth and incompetence transmit a sensation of cultural authenticity and other stuff I’m afraid I can’t remember, and don’t particularly care to.

For I suspect that most of you care very little for all that crap, and send in tiny masterpieces of imbecility because they offer a glowing wormpipe to a different dimension, which still holds out against the compliance, HR, and arsebandits of all creeds and nations, who seek to inflict on us cultural greyout in the form of yet more freaking autobahns, James Blake albums, and conventional linguistic usage.

Contributions from Catalan suburbia have been in rather short supply, so I’m delighted with the following trip into Alice’s rabbit hole just erected (we’re talking three metres, lads) in quadruplicate by Mataró Parc, a mall a few miles up the Maresme coast from Barcelona.

“Wellcome” is clearly a tribute to Henry Wellcome, pharmaceuticals entrepreneur and benefactor of the über-splendid Wellcome Trust, and an instruction to you to inhale from that Sherlock Holmesian hookah (sometimes spelling does count):

What happens inside is up to you, but on exit your farewell is what I take to be an echo of between-wars manly jargon, of the type found in boys magazines, still widely used in Gateshead men’s clubs, and developed significantly by Bobby Charles (See you later, alligator/In a while, crocodile), whence the repartee of Middlesbrough men’s clubs (See you later, masturbator/In a while, paedophile):

But interpretation is in the bloodshot eye of the beholder, so loosen up, and I’ll help you find a defence lawyer.

[
Dear reader, I am so sorry for these outbursts. If challenged, I will recount that one of my mother-in-laws almost nailed me the other day with a plate of oysters, which survived a sea of cheap cava and ferocious curry to set up home in my intestines. I will then enter a plea of insanitary.
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