Friday, July 17, 2009

¡!¡ lost and found in the translation ~


... this handsome image wa
s newly captured by my friend and foreign correspondent Aaron Sing Fox, who covers Brooklyn, Italia, and The Mysterious East, during his recent visit to Tibet
.


no further explanation necessary ~

...but it starts me musing about other instances in my own experience where the language shows itself off in fine form:

once upon a time in a retail wine shop, I was stacking boxes of Cava, that Spanish sparkling stuff which provides good and inexpensive bubbles to the Thirsty.

on the box was printed in Spanish something like ‘Vidrio Con Cuidado’
in English, directly translated as ‘Glass, With Care’
in French, ‘Manutentioner Avec Soin ’ which means “handle with care—”
but then, in German, ‘Bitte Nicht Werfen’ = “please don't throw...” (!)

but das allerbeste example of an observation gaining in the translation had to be printed in the introduction of a Zen-on edition from Japan of Georg Phillip Telemann’s sonatas for the recorder, or Blockflöte, which I encountered in a music-shop in Boston back in the 1970s...

and I quote:

“...a recorder is like unto a flute, except that it has no tampons.”