This stuff should be subsidised, not banned, although I can’t work out whether the machines used to produce it are translators or generators. Here’s something I received this morning (URL omitted): Our soft pensil makes sound. Our noisy round eraser is thinking and our children beautiful spoon arrives. A golden glasses smells at the place…
As a second-class Anglo-Saxon, I would have immediately and incorrectly assumed that the use of the word shatnes in connection with wool and linen referred to the increase in hygiene and decrease in mortality that resulted from making undergarments from the latter rather than the former (PDF). Via LanguageHat.
The following pricelist was received from a spammer who thinks that a Taiwanese email address is worth 70 times as much to me as an American one. America 175 Million Email Address $220 US Europe 156 Million Email Address $250 US Asia 168 Million Email Address $150 US China(PRC) 80 Million Email Address $200 US…
I’m slightly confused that Asian Media Watch is condemning Lost in Translation but supporting The Last Samurai in AA campaigning. Although the latter film is more explicit in its rejection of the present and embrace of the past, the positive use of Japan clichés (chanting monks, temples, flower twiddling) by the former makes it clear…
Over a couple of lunchtime drinks today a culturecrat intimated that it might be possible to fast-track ghit into the official dictionary of a widely spoken Romance language. Being first with this kind of thing is important – just think of the PR.
The difficulty of interpreting intent in materials published in a different language and cultural context was one of the interesting facets of the case of the Fuengirola imam, convicted of publishing with malicious intent a manual on how to beat women without leaving scars. It’s not going to get any easier here once radio and…
The sports stars interviewed here by Pennsylvania’s Patriot-News confirm what every Dutch child knows already: watch television in your target tongue and you can skip those expensive and boring language classes. Different alphabets are another kettle of fish, however: “I was reading a book that Artukhin had on the bus,” Richardson said. “It was Russian.…
From The Independent, re the death of 19 Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay: The intensification of the industry has been driven by Conservas Dani, based in Vilassar de Mar… Dani’s products are a household name in Spain by virtue of the fact that Espanyol, the club chaired by the company’s wealthy owner, Daniel Sanchez…
The URL is http://winksite.com/hikdekedekek/kaleboel. If you hit this link you’ll get an emulator. I did a couple of terrible WAP sites a few years back, but this makes some kind of sense. Via The Shifted Librarian and Reiter.
Says a Western Yugur proverb. I don’t know if it works in reverse, but I note that the cat (who one of these days will require a name) is already asleep.