From Dr. Weevil:
Someone once told me that the University of Pennsylvania was reshaping its language departments a few years back and briefly considered putting Hebrew in with Russian, Polish, and German. It wouldn't be easy to come up with a brief and accurate description for such a disparate collection of languages, and someone facetiously suggested that it could be called the Department of Semitic and Anti-Semitic Languages.And from Alas, a Blog:
Headline from the English edition of Pravda:Posted by languagehat at December 4, 2002 05:04 PM
"Black to Swallow Planet Earth"
The story (which turns out to be about a black hole about 6,000 light years away, rather than a very hungry person of color) also contains a new definition of "good news": "This is good news, is it not? It’s like learning that there is a blood-thirsty killer living next door to you."
Is the sarcasm lost in the translation?
Posted by: Songdog at December 4, 2002 06:32 PMYes. The original is here:
http://www.astronet.ru:8100/db/msg/1181135
The original words "horosha novost'" are sarcastic; this is conveyed here by the use of the short form "horosha" instead of the usual form "horoshaya". A comparable way to phrase the same thing in English would be "this is some good news!" or something like that.
Huh. Not only that, it's not "a blood-thirsty killer living next door to you" but "maniacs on every stairwell." Thanks for the link, Avva!
Posted by: language hat at December 5, 2002 08:31 PMIf you want to have linguistic fun, read the Russian edition of Renmin Ribao (the official Chinese newspaper). I had a link with excerpts some time in the summer in my LJ (I am a LJ-friend of Avva's).
Posted by: Ilya Vinarsky at January 5, 2003 12:32 PM