The Entertainer Online reports on the Association of Merchants and Entrepreneurs Mojácar’s interest in exploiting to the full the arrival of technology that sounds like it will have even the bullet-trained Japanese writhing with envy. In deference to their example, and bearing in mind local cultural interests I suppose you could rechristen the AVE “Bullevator”.
… which caught me the other day after an extremely heavy lunch but manages to make me sound pretty coherent. A couple of people have suggested over the past couple of years that this blog is Hispanophobe, part of a venerable Anglo-Saxon plot against the Catholic Monarchs, or something. My original nom de plume makes…
Someone kindly sent in an example of bad translation into Spanish which is thus officially off-topic but so interesting and amusing that it deserves inclusion. It’s from La copa de Verlaine, a collection of Madrilenian sketches by fellow-decadent Emilio Carrere, discovered and described at “Bremaneur”‘s excellent Biblioteca fantasma. In “Elegía de un hombre inverosímil” we…
Cash-starved governments all over Europe are busy rediscovering VAT, and it seems that their inspiration may have come from that hitherto little recognised hive of intellect and invention, Malaga Airport: Attention V.A.T REFOUND Please remember that you must show the items in the V.A.T. refound office before checking them.
There’s no translation angle on this one, but you won’t find many Spanish eggcorns better than this contributed example from 2008: For the machines amongst you: Se ofrece señora para atención a personas mayores y discapacitadas Con titilación y experiencia y labores domesticas… Who says you can’t find staff these days?
What does the English translation of the official presentation website for Vinoble 2010 tell us? That the Mayoress of Jerez cares more about how her hair looks than about how her words are interpreted? That her administration is as thick as pigshit and happy to wallow in it? Well, not necessarily. Our etymology department has…
An amusing and presumably unintended glimpse of the Spanish economic pushmi-pullyu–are structural reforms for real or merely for foreigners?–is to be found on slide 22 of the “Kingdom of Spain Economic Policy and 2010 Funding Strategy” used by Secretary Campa yesterday in London (via): Can we implement this? We have done it in the past,…
Yep, but it‘s free, courtesy of Google Translate, and still substantially better than the work of many professional translators. It’s also fun (FT’s Alphaville blog is fast-moving cabaret) and not inappropriate to the crackpot tone adopted by José Blanco in the Spanish original. The last few days’ translation classic was also delivered by the Spanish…