My thought is that George Galloway supported the ayatollahs but balanced that in this splendid rant, while I guess in Brian Souter’s vision the good/bad labelling is reversed on the scales. For the record, Philip of Bourbon spoke French, Charles of Habsburg spoke German, both had multilingual armies, and – though hispanophile – neither patronised…
The London Magazine, 1734: Verses occasioned by Mr. Budgel’s modest Proposal, in the Daily Post-Boy of Aug. 31. to give the Publick a new and accurate Translation of a late celebrated French Treatise, on the Causes of the Grandeur and Declension of the Romans, and which has been already translated. Dulness, good goddess, chanc’d to…
The Vocabulaire européen des philosophies has now been versioned in English as Dictionary of untranslatables and Spanish as Diccionario de intraducibles. Here Mark Liberman cites Adam Gopnik, who seems to think the book is self-refuting Sapir-Whorfism, and here Jacques Lezra, coordinator of the English-language version, seems to be indulging the following incoherence: linguistic relativism is…
“Hundreds of police officers, backed by armored vehicles, stormed a lawless southern village on Monday after people suspected of growing marijuana fired rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns at officers during a drug raid. The police said no one was hurt in the clash in and around Lazarat.” Everyone except the police seems to have…
Between thieves, who profit from mistranslation, and fools, who know no better (and no profit), there lurks an intriguing class: lunatics, whose often considerable mind is whisked off to unexpected places by absurd fancies as to the nature of their task. The bigot Barnaby Rich writes in The Irish Hubbub (1617): And as the irish…
“The Governor of Bank of England, says interest rates would go up sooner if economy continued to accelerate in Mansion House speech.” “It’s pure commanismo!” roared the glowering inferno.
“Being the account of 10,000 miles in the saddle through the Americas from Argentina to Washington”: read with great excitement and no little puzzlement as a small boy in a dusty 30s edition, then completely forgotten, now reissued (free reg). I guess that that sensation of great cathedrals being built in one’s mind is now…
