In which the Catalan authorities ask me to do something in Spanish rather than English

Actually, I’d better not go into the details, but it’s all most curious.

Until you recall that the vast majority of “English teachers” employed by the Generalitat are beginners (and not just in English), and that the considerable local population of infra-employed English mother-tonguers (I hope that’s not rude) are in practice ineligible to join their ranks because of the native-level Catalan requirement and other bureaucratic devices designed to ensure that none but sons of the soil ever become funcionarios.

So does the state really give a fack about children improving their English skills? Am I being paranoid when I suggest that Big Brother doesn’t actually want them (pace the Treaty of Rome, free movement of labour, etc) to acquire the means to escape wage slavery here?

Whatever, there’s no reason why this blog shouldn’t continue into all eternity, if I can be arsed and the deity leaves me alone.

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Published
Last updated 06/02/2014

Barcelona (1399):

English language (462):

Föcked Translation (414): I posted to a light-hearted blog called Fucked Translation over on Blogger from 2007 to 2016, when I was often in Barcelona. Its original subtitle was "What happens when Spanish institutions and businesses give translation contracts to relatives or to some guy in a bar who once went to London and only charges 0.05€/word." I never actually did much Spanish-English translation (most of my work is from Dutch, French and German) but I was intrigued and amused by the hubristic Spanish belief, then common, that nepotism and quality went hand in hand, and by the nemeses that inevitably followed.

Spain (1881):

Spanish language (504):

Translation (788):


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