Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: translation

  • born by scissory section

    A German’s interpretation of my Australian pronunciation of flasher just yielded the phantom of the flesher: a guy who walks round with his coat open, flashing people with his flesh. Having cherished sundry other examples like “this cost fifty bugs” and “you have a great bump” I was reluctant to point out the error – but I’ve been made to promise so I broke it to him, gingerly; then had to turn away to hide my overweening affection when he confessed he now felt totally discombubbled.

    Yesterday my osteopath described his daughter’s birth by making a scissors motion: she had to be cut out, his wife had “a scissoring.” Thus we render unto scissors that which is scissors’, yield unto flesh what’s in flashes. It’s all gold.

  • don’t shoot

    Jeez, America, stop shooting each other. At least in Australia we only drown refugee babies, jail children, beat young Indigenous men to death in jail cells with phone books.

    I am thinking today of the Albanian security guard who came out of her way to welcome us to the Cloisters, a museum in Tryon Park which seems to have salvaged all the bits of bombed-out churches and cathedrals in Europe that had survived, as splinters, the War to Unending War. We saw the daunting entry price and had retreated to the entrance hall to confer. “We have our tours available in German,” she told my companion, twinklingly. Then, turning to me, the Australian, “I’m not sure we have anything available in your language.”

  • this land is our land

    Was quite excited to work out last night by decoding the allergies notice in a Korean BBQ restaurant (‘alergia’) which began ‘en caso de…’ – ‘in case of…’ – that ‘casa’, house, must mean your case. It’s your shell. And mi casa es su casa. My case is your case, we all breathe the same air, death and the roiling adventure of this life will inflict us all.

    On the way home we passed again the man whose giant telescope, set up in the square outside the Teatro Real, has shown me on previous visits Jupiter, and her moons, and – unbelievably – Saturn, looking like a chalk sketch much stouter and smaller than I had always pictured Saturn. He busks with it. Drags it down there, I can only suppose, on the back of a small truck and sets it up pointed at whichever body in the heavens is tonight most significant, then he stands artlessly waiting, perhaps not polishing the lens but minutely adjusting the sights after each visit, inviting all and sundry to take a look through his machinery at the distant miracles now shedding some light on us – too little light, and too late. We didn’t stop to look through the lens again but my companion pointed out the joy on the man’s face, the way when someone steps up onto his wooden footstool to apply their eye to the eyepiece stooping to reach it he himself bends in, unconsciously it seems, and eagerly, as though he is sharing their experience and imagining their wonder. The first time I saw Jupiter in a long line of moons I was almost crying. Now every time the man and I wave to one another, satisfaction on our faces, a strange friendship. Mi luna es su luna, inevitably.

  • lost in the cake station

    A literal translation of the conversation that took place between me and the gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy working in the Turkish deli just now:

    Me: Hi! Can we have two pieces of that, please, to take-with?

    Gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy: Sure! Rightfully to take-with or simply for underway?

    Me: Oh, just for underway please. We can take it on the hand.

    Gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy: So not packed-in. Does it reach, like this?

    Shows me two paper napkins and stands the slices of cake on them.

    Me: Yes, that reaches well, thank you beautifully.

    Gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy: Two Euros please!

    Me: Beautiful thank you, little bye-bye!

    Gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy: Little bye-bye! A beautiful day still!

    Elaborate German courtesy plus cultured Turkish hospitality. It’s like a match made in Heaven, if Heaven were an 80s cruise ship with lairy pure wool carpets and a big band.