We’re all fucked in the end -the reward for life is death- but meanwhile the profession would be greatly improved if rendered client-free. MM:
My career as a translator of guides to buildings in Central Europe started ignominiously when I gave in to the resident of Schloß Leitheim, who insisted it was Leitheim Castle.
Others calls it Leitheim Palace, but are they right? Would Chateau Leitheim work? Schloss works, but I think of the American who asked the way to the Schlob in Heidelberg…
I have neither Ms Marks’ talent nor experience, but I think that in a case like this I would look the client in the eye, take them by the hand, and lead them into the grounds. “Regard that marvellous building [CC Manfi. B],” I would say, “possessed of both the strength of the castle and the sweetness of the palace”:
“In fact, dear client,” I would say, “all it lacks is a Transformative Translator® to give adequate expression to it in the motherfucker of all languages. Now, get out your wallet and start counting, because we’re going to call it Leitheim Turgid Torpid Rhinoceros Pigfucker. For cast your eye again, from right to left, and you will see a hornèd head, followed by a weak back and monstrous fat arse, the latter two qualities indicative respectively of addictions to CSI and cranberry juice, the whole terminated by a piggy tail and some pink shading whose genetic origins we are, under consumer protection legislation, obliged to recall and disclose.”
Borges wrote that “German is a very beautiful language; perhaps more beautiful than the literature it has produced,” and perhaps you could say that its speakers require imaginative assistance. On the other hand, Borges’ Autobiografía (1970, aged 71) is only a third of the length of Nigel Farage’s Fighting bull/Flying free (2010, aged 46), so maybe the reluctant Argentine’s opinions weren’t that interesting or important after all.
And then: POET DOESN’T WANT AUDIENCE OF ILLERATES (Raleigh Times)
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