Guest 657- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,037
I had to smile when I spotted this in a Vietnamese publication. I think something got lost in translation as apparently I live in a cemetery. It did give me a laugh over breakfast!
Anyone else seen/had anything lost in translation?
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
"One of the most influential discourses on the concept of 'religion' in Vietnam is linked directly with the state. Religion has played a part in legitimizing and reinforcing the state and in rebellions against it. The relationship between 'religion' and 'state' is thus best characterized in terms of 'persistent ambiguities' or 'balanced tension'. It follows that what counts as 'good religion' or legitimate beliefs and 'beautiful customs' is continuously negotiated by the state, Vietnamese scholars, the media and local ritual actors.
This applies particularly to traditions such as the worship of ancestors, legendary heroes and local guardian deities. Even the practices of the mother goddess religion, also called 'Religion of the Four Palaces', which had been illegal as superstition due to central rituals of spirit possession, were revitalized and have become an extremely popular ritual practice."
From...
http://www.dorisea.de/en/node/206
I can imagine your visiting Heron, Jeanne, balanced upon one of the tents pitched in your back garden, as your followers descend upon you. Something to ponder.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 657- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,037
Indeed Vic.
Well Tom if the heron arrived back here I might be giving him something to ponder! Seriously though we haven't seen him for a while but the fish pond is still surrounded by net just in case he decides to sneak back. We also have about 12 baby fish at present and would like them to grow up and not become a snack!
Guest 693- Registered: 12 Nov 2009
- Posts: 1,266
I've had the privilege of visiting Japan a few times and have many Japanese friends, one of whom speaks excellent English (she is, in fact, an English teacher there) and the rest, like most Japanese I have met, just get by - as do I in Japanese.
Just as advertising over here uses French to make a product seem more chic (and therefore expensive), advertising in Japan uses English to sell up-market products, and the fact that English is such a difficult language to learn well leads to some curious tag lines being used. Often this is quite funny to the native English speaker, and equally often it's just bizarre. As an example, we stayed for a couple of nights in the Comfort Inn in Kyoto, similar to our Premier Inn chain in price and quality; for newbies to town, it had in the rooms a bi-lingual fact sheet about what to do and where to go in Kyoto, which had obviously been translated into English by someone who wasn't fluent as the terms and jargon used were not good.
What struck us as odd is that the author had decided to tell a joke in English which went as follows:
"Two peanuts went in to a bar; one was assaulted."
OK, fair enough, it's not going to be taken up by Michael McIntyre for his next gig, but the joke was killed in no uncertain terms by the use of the next (quite lengthy) paragraph as a means of explaining the joke, telling the unfortunate reader the difference between "a salted (nut)" and "assaulted", the effect of which was just to remove what little humour had been there to start with.
I presume that the same translator was used for the Breakfast menu too. The Comfort Inn chain uses a bird in flight as its logo, printed at the top of the menu with a tag line in Japanese which had been translated into "Birds fling delightly." Some years on, I'm none the wiser as to the meaning of this and if anyone can offer insight into it, I'd love to hear it.
True friends stab you in the front.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Gerard Hoffnung - Letters from Tyrolean Landlords ...
[URL][/URL]
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 657- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,037
That's very interesting Andy, I have never been to Japan but Les has and he also mentioned their love of all things English for advertising etc - that and the fact they extremely polite, queue properly and wait at the traffic lights until the lights change before crossing the road.
I laughed at the fact that the joke required such a lengthy explanation.
Hmmm....I wonder what Birds fling delightly means, Maybe it was actually meant to be fly (in flight) ?
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Birds, frying tonight?
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
