¿Cómo distinguir a los súbditos de Felipe II en general de los naturales de las islas? Quiero explicarle a alguien que saldrá hablando como un filipino de la primera categoría.
PIIGS > stable > stability pacts. (If voters consistently elect free-spending hucksters who promise they’ve found a cure for boom & bust etc etc, then isn’t moaning about a democratic deficit as the bailiffs move in ever so slightly pathetic? They had their democracy, but they traded it in for pizza and the X Factor.)
I suppose that the use of “their” followed by “you” at the beginning of these parking fine instructions can be explained either as fucked translation or as an attempt to encourage a neighbourliness unusual in these parts, but I think the glorious use of “him” at word sixteen crowned by the subsequent “he/she” degenderisation clearly…
Although this fact may not have occurred to American journalists, living in monolingual paradise, it’s hard choosing names in a global market where everything means something bad to someone, somewhere.
Over at Barcepundit, who recently found another amusing object. If Zapatero doesn’t achieve his paragraph in history for being present at the end of ETA, couldn’t we at least light a candle for his linguistic skills?
“Homes that make sense” might have been closer to what the Guadalajara construction company Hercesa intended to convey, as well as being better English (Well thought-of/well thought-out?), but that begs the question as to whom they make sense: to purchasers deluded into contracting mortgages in excess of their ability to pay, for flats in developments…