Two translations of a Setswana train poem

“Rhinoceros of the highlands / Beast coming from the South, it comes along steaming, / It comes from Pompi and from Kgobola-diatla.” With excerpts from oral poetry about cattle and other domestic and wild animals, marijuana, bicycles and the 2nd Boer War; with Kipling and other European South African railway poetry; and with Hugh Masekela as uitsmyter.

Steam locomotive graveyard at De Aar Junction (or Touws River?), South Africa.

Funding the hole in Spain’s pension pot left by Rajoy’s economic miracle

Maybe it’s me, but my impression is that the quality of official EU translation has deteriorated quite sharply in the past few years. But I think we all know, in article 60 of the IORPs Directive, which the Commission is trying to smuggle past national parliaments without discussion or publicity on this busy summer weekend,…

Thomas More endorses the siesta

Of the twenty-four equal hours into which they divide the day and the night, the Utopians devote only six to work. They work three hours before noon, when they go to lunch. After lunch, they rest for two hours, then go to work for another three hours. Then they have supper, and about eight o’clock…