This is Stronzo Bestiale, the fictitious Italian physicist, author of numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers. However, stronzo bestiale surely isn’t total asshole – that’s stronzo totale, which I think entered the Italian language via translations of American airport lit – but rather bestial arsehole, or monstrous arsehole, concepts much less sanitised and more evocative of our great shared European shittiness.
I was puzzled for a while by the gratitude uttered by Americans on sites like Trip Advisor and Booking.com when they have clearly been ripped off by restaurants and hotels belonging to Ali Baba and the 40 Neapolitans, but I think that visitors are just pathetically grateful to arrive in Europe and not find us gassing our neighbours, plugging donkeys, or scratching at our plague sores.
My Italian is progressing in leaps and bounds now I have discovered the spaghetti westernisms of Tex Willer, of which a place in Marina del Cantone has considerable supplies. Previously I had been on a diet of fascist/socialist improving literature for women and children, Lo Hobbit, Italo Svevo, and the Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana, none of which was really very much fun. However, Giuseppe Peano’s De Latino sine Flexione should clearly be implemented asap across southern Europe.
Similar posts
- Not fucked translation
The Daily Mail and Tesco and various translation pundits just booked themselves into the nether stretches of the intestines of linguistic - A revolutionary Balkan gypsy begging flyer
The gypsy beggars and backing-track musos who work the Barcelona local train service systematically and efficiently are an example to Spanish - The use of phoney billing cooperatives by Spanish freelancers to avoid paying exorbitant autónomo social security contributions
This is not turning into a fucked translators blog, but it is said that freelance translation (or journalism, or such) in - Some Itanglish in a Dryden comedy
One José María Trilladas has apparently been combing the accounts of the black card looters of Caja Madrid and has discovered - The worst translation ever published, hotel foyer penalty shoot-outs, lovers of pigs: paving on the road to hell
Between thieves, who profit from mistranslation, and fools, who know no better (and no profit), there lurks an intriguing class: lunatics,
Comments