Spaced out

Peter Harvey has discovered two spacious rooms, lightly high in the Alhambra. “Room of the beds” is the literal translation of “Sala de las camas,” which must lead not a few visitors to giggle and wonder what the difference is between a “room of the beds” and a bedroom. Traditional use in English for such…

English proficiency of the Spanish relative to other nations

La Información’s reporter says that this publication by Education First, a teaching multinational with an interest in making target clients nervous, shows that of the European countries examined, only the Russians and Turks had worse English skills than the Spanish. He then left to finish his primary school geography class, and so didn’t have time…

The Alhambra as the opening titles from Mission Impossible

1966, and here’s series 1, episode 1 of the Strine Bond: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Lh6i9096Q Let’s rewrite that: Good morning, Mr. Irving, Your mission, Washington, should you decide to accept it, is to compile a series of cultural and historical sketches laying the foundations for tourism policy in Granada and to a considerable extent in Spain in general.…

Is Spain a massive nihilist literary experiment?

Lenox comments on Almería’s latest tourism whizz: the incomprehensible in pursuit of the inexistent, perhaps. For some reason this recalled Milorad Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars, a wearisome metaphor for the failure of Serbia, which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend – I can’t even remember whether I was given the male or the female edition. Some…

Vitoria, golfing Mecca, or Golgotha of the ecologists/indignados?

Carlos links to an interesting story about the sodomy committed on Vitoria’s new slogan by some no doubt well-paid functionary, “donde el verde es capital” becoming, word for word, “where the green is capital.” I think we can all agree that, in a miserable start to their meaningless year as European Green Capital, they have…

Festina’s Lotus range: watches for people too stupid to need them

We are too smart to buy this crap off Festina, because we happen to know that according to Maya prophecy on December 21 2012 we will be so smoothly and swimmingly plugged into the Earth’s electromagnetic battery that all our timepieces will explode and we’ll need to buy new ones. Neither the copywriter, nor the…

EFE: Obesity tripled in twelve months

Malaprensa explains how the publicly-funded news agency converted Eurostat highest and lowest obesity percentages for EU member states for the year 2008/9 into year-on-year growth figures for the EU as a whole, and how the fatherland’s press repeated this unquestioningly. Pay a translator and avoid being stamped as incompetent and ending up on the street…

Vote for the Jerez pronoun party

I suppose that the use of “their” followed by “you” at the beginning of these parking fine instructions can be explained either as fucked translation or as an attempt to encourage a neighbourliness unusual in these parts, but I think the glorious use of “him” at word sixteen crowned by the subsequent “he/she” degenderisation clearly…