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2003-10-10 14:57 (UTC+1)
There were Bornean bearded pigs, and while I was looking at them, one
of them started looking back at me with this funny look, but I wasn't
looking for trouble so I looked at the other one and that one started
looking back at me funny, too. So I narrowed my eyes silently, with
just a hint of a scowl as if to say, "Bornean Shmornean, Porky, I'm
above you on the food chain, kappisch?"
And Porky and his mate promptly scampered, as well they might for my
wrath is also of course terrible to behold.
The interesting thing about this, in the light of the monsterpost, is that not only do persons
anthropomorphise animals, but that pigs can - presumably by some kind
of porcomorphism - interpret human (for I am in fact human!)
expressions also.
Also, and perhaps the most exciting of the many exciting things that
there were at the zoo, there was a teensy-weensy ickle wild desert
lizard skulking in the flower bed around one of the exhibits doing its
teensy-weensy ickle wild desert lizard thing, because we were after
all in a desert.
[Permalink]
2003-10-10 12:00 (UTC+1)
Scott Pedantry has an interesting article on translation,
translators and tools and so on from an Industry Insider's point of
view, and it certainly has much to commend it. But translators are
not the only translators!
I started translating excerpts of stuff here when I was asked to by
persons who do not read some of the languages I use here, and I make
no pretence to be any good at it, and I'm not apologetic or defensive
about that - my "translations" are a window onto what I read and how I
read it, warts and very much all, and that's just as it should be.
In the same spirit, I have used Babelfish (or similar tools) and
online dictionaries and (with Romance languages) fragments of school
Latin to figure out what on earth something is saying, and that's all
good, too.
Translator-centred ("translator-centered") accounts of translation
processes often (but far from always, and we should bless them for it)
neglect the extent to which sloppy and half-arsed ("half-assed") job
is good enough, because it doesn't really matter. Part of the
information liquidity that the Internet (all hail!) has produced is
the possibility of exposing oneself to the frivolous, irrelevant and
just plain pointless in languages you know poorly, if at all, and
barely competent translation helps it slosh around. In its own small
way, this 'bladet's crappy Danish is motivated by a vision of a Utopia
of cheerfully inconsequential cross-(linguistic-)border chatter, and
it is a great honour ("honor") for us to accept the Nobel Prize for
Peace on behalf of all those who have worked so tirelessly in the
belief that recycling our manifestoes into gossip rags plays a
significant part in promoting international understanding.
And did you see Madde's frock? Blimey!
[Permalink]
2003-10-10 10:15 (UTC+1)
I know that some of our readers have not been entirely delighted with
the Knudella fever that has swept through the 'bladet this week, and
we're sorry about that. Here, then, is a nice story about Vickan
in a silly hat:
Alla bes�kare i LKAB:s gruva m�ste ha hj�lm, �ven kronprinsessor.
[All visitors to LKAB's mine must wear helmets, even kronprinsessor.]
Rules is rules!
[Link via Anna Louise, tack]
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2003-10-09 14:47 (UTC+1)
The Kumeyaay often were allied with river tribes, usually Quechan, in
disputes over matters such as territory, sorcery and murder.
[from an exhibit label at the San Diego Museum of Man]
They wove also, you will be relieved to hear, a mean basket. (I can't
recommend making a special trans-Atlantic trip for the museum's
display of Kumeyaay artefacts, but it is quite near San Diego's
world-famous zoo.)
A map of Native ("Native American/Amerindian/Indian") languages of
California.
The chaps in the San Diego/Tijuana region were the Kumeyaay, who don't
make it into the map, but they should be in about 15c.
The specific Kumeyaay territory is shown in
this map.
[Permalink]
2003-10-09 10:32 (UTC+1)
The 'bladet will, in the fullness of time, find space for
non-Knudella-br�llop stories, but not just yet. So how is
Knudella's Danish? She's won over
the greens:
�Jeg �nskede dem held og lykke. Og som jeg h�rte det, l�d hendes dansk
udm�rket,� siger milj�minister Hans Christian Schmidt.
["I wished them luck and happiness. And from what I heard her Danish
sounded pretty good," said enviroment minister Hans Christian Schmidt.]
And Berlingke Tidende (not to be confused with BT, except by me) has
the
details:
Mary Donaldson har boet i Danmark i halvandet �r, men f�rst fra
slutningen af august har hun f�et intensiv danskundervisning af to af
Studieskolens l�rere. Interessen for hvordan hun vil h�ndtere det
danske sprog er enorm, og hun vil uundg�eligt blive sammenlignet med
svigerinden, prinsesse Alexandra, som havde de samme sprogl�rere som
Mary.
[Knudella ("Mary") Donaldon has lived in Denmark for 18 months, but
starting from the end of August she has had intensive Danishlessons
from two of the Studieskol's teachers. The interest in how she will
handle the Danish language is enormous, and she will unavoidably be
compared with her sister in law, prinsesse Alexandra, who had the same
teachers as Knudella ("Mary").
Alexandra's Danish is of course widely agreed to be a triumph.
Det samme g�lder ikke prins Henrik, vil mange tilf�je.
�Men det er forkert at sige, at prins Henrik taler d�rligt dansk. Selv
om hans udtale er meget udansk, er han jo i stand til at sige hvad som
helst p� dansk uden problemer. Hans ordforr�d er enormt, og det skal
man ogs� bed�mmes p�,� siger Lars Skov.
[The same doesn't apply to the Prinshenrik, many would add.
"But it is wrong to say that the Prinshenrik speaks wretched Danish.
Even if his pronunciation is far from Danish, he is of course able to
say anything he wants in Danish without problems. His vocabulary is
enormous, and one should also be judged on that," says Lars Skov.]
[Linkage via Anna Louise, tack.]
[Permalink]
2003-10-08 15:30
LA is a city turned inside out -
the roads aren't so much for getting to places,
as the places are there so the roads have somewhere to go.
[From Snapshots from LA, Des von Bladet
(which I've fixed up a little since)]
Behold,
the Baudrillardisation of Disneyland:
Baudrillard writes that, "Disneyland is presented as imaginary in
order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas Los Angeles
[is] no longer real, but belongs to the hyperreal order and to the
order of simulation." Los Angeles has become, according to
Baudrillard, "a city whose mystery is precisely that of no longer
being anything but a network of incessant, unreal circulation -- a
city of incredible proportions but without space, without
dimension. As much as electrical and atomic power stations, as much as
cinema studios, this city, which is no longer anything but an immense
scenario and a perpetual pan shot, needs this old imaginary like a
sympathetic nervous system made up of childhood signals and faked
phantasms."
B. quote from Simulacra & Simulation, 1994
(Unhand my signifier, you beast!)
Or:
Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the 'real' country,
all of 'real' America, which is Disneyland. -Baudrillard
[For Birgitte, Anna K and Ahnuld.]
[Permalink]
2003-10-08 13:03
Top quality trashbladeting:
Der er nok f� danske kvinder mellem 20 og 35 �r, som ikke p� et eller
andet tidspunkt har dr�mt om at blive Frederiks prinsesse. Forrige
onsdag fik dr�mmene en brat ende, da Mary slog alle ud og l�b med
prinsen.
[There are probably few Danish wimmins between 20 and 35 who have
never dreamed at one time or another of becoming Kronprinsfred's
prinsess. Last Wednesday the dream came to an abrupt end as Knudella
("Mary") beat everyone in the race to the prins.]
Scandiwegian republicennes, please have your alibis and excuses ready
for inspection...
[via Anna Louise, tack.]
[Permalink]
2003-10-08 11:57
- Parliament is up for it
- The 14th of May 2004 is the official Big Day. More
here, of interest mostly to those wishing to know how big the
church (Shoppingharbour cathedral) is. (83m long and 33m wide, in
fact. Hoorah for DR!)
- Still no sparkly pics
- Realvideo! (via Birgitte, hurrah!) Is that a hint of a sparkly or a codec artefact..?
- The sparkly has been televised, and is also here.
Our work here is done, hurrah!
- One of BT's many Bodil Caths
has the low down on the sparkly: a ~100,000 DKr diamond, surrounded by a pair of rubies.
[Permalink]
2003-10-08 10:46
Queens and parliaments blah blah blah - it's Really Officially
Official when the sparkly twinkles. 11 o'clock (UTC-plus-one time)
and we can't wait...
[Permalink]
2003-10-07 15:38
(except when it isn't) but my multimeeja facilities are sadly
limited. Therefore, I cannot offer a useful opinion on the IBM text-to-speech-iciser, but I can tell you where it is.
Different voices, too!
(Is there a secret project afoot to implement four-part choral
harmonies in glorious synthaudition? Even if there is, you didn't
hear it from me, right?)
[Permalink]
2003-10-07 11:50
�Som en tidligere engelsk ambassad�r engang har sagt, er danskerne
ikke et folk, men en stamme. Og kan du ikke stammens sprog, bliver du
aldrig en del af stammen�
["As a former British [dammit!] ambassador once said, the Danish
aren't a people but a tribe. And if you can't speek the tribe's
language, you will never be part of the tribe."]
Hem hem Prinshenrik hem hem, as they say in Denmark. So the belovely
blivende prinsess Knudella has been having the taking of no chances
thrust upon her:
Mary Donaldson er kommet i l�re som kronprinsesse p� fuldtid.
[...]
Den 31-�rige australier taler ogs� dansk med kronprins Frederik. G�r
det som planlagt, vil pressem�det med hende og kronprinsen p�
Fredensborg Slot p� onsdag foreg� p� dansk.
[Mary Donalson has been studying for the kronprinsessship full-time. [...]
The 31-year-old Australienne speaks also Danish with Kronprinsfred.
If all goes to plan the Official Announcementing Press Conference
which is on Wednesday (which is tomorrow!) will be all in Danish and
that.]
Point de Vue had foremost Danish court-watcher Bodil Cath
getting very excited about this prospect, and quite right too!
[Linkage via Birgitte, Knudella spotter extraordinaire, tack.]
[Permalink]
of winning the Nobel prize for literature is that it creates a window
in which you will be attended to with respect, even if you happen to
be (say) plugging a bilingual anthology of your own translations of
modern Dutch poetry:
The poets I have translated belong, with one exception, to a
generation born around 1930 and now passed or passing away. They are
figures of some eminence in a literature that, on the European stage,
does not often pretend to eminence, that indeed habitually deprecates
itself to a degree puzzling to an outsider like myself, brought up on
another Netherlandic literature - Afrikaans - that has not been shy to
flaunt its modest achievements.
So hurrah for Nobel (boom boom hoorah!) and hurrah for JM Coetzee but
especially hurrah for Dutch Moderniste poetry; let's face it, we had
all been wondering.
[Permalink]
2003-10-06 15:41
24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one,
and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the
other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what
ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment?
26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they
reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth
them. Are ye not much better than they?
27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his
stature?
28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of
the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was
not arrayed like one of these.
30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to
day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more
clothe you, O ye of little faith?
31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What
shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you.
34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall
take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof.
Matthew 6:24-33
It is well established, of course, that Persons Of Religiosity will
always prefer to believe things which are clearly impossible than to do
things which are merely inconvenient, but that doesn't mean the rest
of us should neglect to mock them for it.
Here's the eminent anthropologist Marshall Sahlins implicitly calling
their bluff with an article on the
economics of
stone-age life and the neolithic prejudice:
A good case can be made that hunters and gatherers work less than we
do; and, rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is
intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep
in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of
society.
Daytime sleep! Could there possibly be a better metric for quality of
life?
[...]
Interesting that the Hazda, tutored by life and not by anthropology,
reject the neolithic revolution in order to keep their
leisure. Although surrounded by cultivators, they have until recently
refused to take up agriculture themselves, "mainly on the grounds that
this would involve too much hard work". In this they are like the
Bushmen, who respond to the neolithic question with another: "Why
should we plant, when there are so many mongomongo nuts in the world?"
Hands up those who think it would be immensely spiritually rewarding
for John Ashcroft and a bunch of other fundamentalistes to be
relocated to the Australian outback equipped with some pointy sticks
and a short course in basket weaving.
[Permalink]
2003-10-06 11:50 (UTC+1)
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance:
but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
bible(KJV)
And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth.
[Matthew 25:29-30]
Weep and gnash, Danish persons,
weep and gnash:
Det er en smuk tradition, at det danske folk lyk�nsker medlemmerne af
kongehuset med folkegaver i anledning af royale bryllupper.
[There is a fine tradition that the Danish people congratulate members
of the royal family with publicpresents on the occasion of royal weddings.]
Knudella needs your cash!
[More linkage from the now undoubtedly patriotically destitute Birgitte, hoorah!]
[Permalink]
2003-10-06 11:31
The art critic from the Grauniad criticises
dronning Margrethe's art, which is after all his job:
Hun kunne i det mindste pr�ve at bruge en anden farve gr�n. Er det
virkelig s�dan, det danske landskab ser ud? Alle de brystformede
bakker, de vaginale fjorde, den endel�se, svampede, gr�nne farve. Og
hvorfor er der ingen mennesker i landskabet, ikke engang nede ved
vandet?
[She could at least try to use another shade of green. Is this
really the way the Danish landscape looks? All the breast-shaped
hills, the vaginal fjords, the endless mushrooming green colour. And
why are there no people in the landscape, not even down by the water?]
I don't think he's taking this very seriously. The landscapes in
question are inspired more by the Faroes and the Norwegian coast than
Denmark itself, according to Mrs Queen, and they are idealised to the
edge of abstraction. And there isn't just green - some of them use a
fair amount of blue as well.
[Linkage via Birgitte, tack.]
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