Indian spammers masquerading as incompetent Spanish translators?

Lenox points me to an article called “Hotels In Benalmadena, Mojacar And Vera – Spend The Amazing Night Life!“, which returns ca. 1800 ghits for me this morning. That level of distribution kind of surprises me, because fucked Spanish translation tends to be the work of artisans apparently innocent of the benefits the age of…

The economic case for fucked translation

Via LS an anonymous cartoon of the gulf between what we (would like to) think we have said and what we (are understood to) have actually said: Why don’t we say what we think? Why do the inventors of magnificent flying machines gibber like madmen? Why, in our case, do excellent Spanish bars produce hilarious…

Cokkoutlet

Once again we stray from the straight and narrow of our mission onto the great scrubby heath of linguistic hilarity. The double airco and window/door configuration here clearly forms an elephant’s eyes and trunk, suggesting a menagerie shared with the one-eyed trouser-snake, but this is an MOR clothing retailer in Manresa, not a boutique dedicated…

When did you born? Birth, agency and Whorfian politicology

Wine-buff Víctor de la Serna (via Carlos Ferrero) has nailed Domecq Bodegas for an amusing slip on the otherwise impeccable site, “When did you born?” I haven’t really looked for literary or scientific evidence, and I’m pretty ignorant of non-me dialectal forms, but I’d hazard that this form is actually quite common among some groups…

Facebook: if you form a civil partnership you must be gay

Chez Lexicool, via MM, Katia, who, using Facebook in English, described herself as being in a civil union with Juan, only to have a lucky escape from her mother-in-law, who, using Facebook in Spanish, had understood that this was in some sense a homosexual union, and was just about to order some educational literature from…

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…