Italy – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

Christmas carousels

Impossible automata for my street organ this holiday season. Featuring Georg Büchner, Ignaz Bruder, German Christmas pyramids, dancing Hasidim, Lieutenant Kijé as you’ve probably never seen it, Le Tigre, and a crustacean.

Accordion bonanza

With some Norwegian, a bunny, and a bell-ringing act.

Some migration songs

With an introduction by St. Spike in the Moon.

Humanity, viewed from the spike of St. Lawrence's, Gnosall.

So where does Silvio Berlusconi stand on organ-grinders?

Unfortunately Alan Friedman’s excellent authorised bio, My Way, leaves us none the wiser.

My top 10 boxing songs

All-star bill featuring Dan Mendoza aka the fighting Jew, manly Victorians, Joe Louis and the Dixieaires at the Battle of Jericho, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Rocky Graziano aka the Maharishi Yoghurt, Bob Dylan and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Muhammad Ali and over-reliance on computer technology, Rich Hall and the George Foreman Grill, Wesley Willis and Batman, and Ivor Cutler.

Richard Humphries' second blocks a crucial blow from Daniel Mendoza in the 1788 bout.

Professor Asshole

This is Stronzo Bestiale, the fictitious Italian physicist, author of numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers. However, stronzo bestiale surely isn’t total asshole – that’s stronzo totale, which I think entered the Italian language via translations of American airport lit – but rather bestial arsehole, or monstrous arsehole, concepts much less sanitised and more evocative of our…

There’s so much brilliant German shit on YouTube

Was: How pleased I am to find both the Zarah Leander and the Nina Hagen versions of “Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein Wunder gescheh’n” on the line.

The worst translator in the world? “Quoth she, so much I hate this nation, / I’ll damn this author in translation”

The London Magazine, 1734: Verses occasioned by Mr. Budgel’s modest Proposal, in the Daily Post-Boy of Aug. 31. to give the Publick a new and accurate Translation of a late celebrated French Treatise, on the Causes of the Grandeur and Declension of the Romans, and which has been already translated. Dulness, good goddess, chanc’d to…

Is mistranslation sometimes merely an attempt to inject life into English, a dull, stumbling language?

Michael Gilleland < Christoph Irmscher < Longfellow: The difficulty of translation lies chiefly in the color of words. Is the Italian “Ruscelletto gorgoglioso” fully rendered by “Gurgling brooklet”? Or the Spanish “Pájaros vocingleros” by “Garrulous birds”? Something seems wanting. Perhaps it is only the fascination of foreign and unfamiliar sounds; and to the Italian or…

Cuentos, Canta, borrachos, y demás noticias

Los cuentos de Eva funcionan muy bien, tanto en español como en inglés. Su vestido fue buena idea, él mío no tanto: mi disfraz estándar será traje/frac con peluqaza Javier Bardem en No es país para viejos. Ahora tengo que vender el concepto a escuelas – he tenido contacto con cuatro, y me gustaría hacer…