h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just kidnapped a page from a 1958 scifi/science magazine. You'll have to wait for the 15 May issue of to see it. Basically, though, it contained a rather rosy prediction about the future of machine translation. I suggest to the reading public that they look up http://www.spiegel.de/ and then let Google perform its translation magic. Just for a laugh. I used to work in a translation office, and we'd do this during breaks for comic relief. That was more than a decade ago, and it's still funny.

Here are some of today's titbits from Spiegel Online:

'The red-red-green frigid ghost lives' ['Schreckgespenst'? Seriously? They're talking about politics, by the way.]

'Chinese flock with HSH Nordbank' [The original title suggested the Chinese were making goo-goo eyes at the bank (liebäugeln), which is way funnier and should probably have been translated as 'flirt'.]

'Netflix series on teenage suicide - "This could be really dangerous"' [That's what it said. Just an unfortunate headline in any language. What they meant was that some people thought the tv series was dangerous in the way that it dealt with teen suicide.]

'Thriller "Sechzehneichen" - Lies, sex and globules' [Your guess is as good as mine. I haven't seen the series and do not know these brain-washing 'Globuli' of which they speak.]

'Transport Minister Dobrindt is planning a retrofit campaign for diesel cars. In this way, he wants to prevent driving bans from being imposed in indoor areas - and vehicles with self-igniters [Selbstzünder] become junk goods. ' [What Dobrindt was trying to prevent was bans in city centres. We're relieved to know they still aren't driving indoors - except maybe in the BMW museum. I always wanted to drive in there...]

You'd think it was a simple enough task, but no...they still can't do it. Take that, 1958.

Globuli are homeopatic 'medicaments' in the shape of tiny balls.

Thank you, kind person, for this information!

I'm actually having an uncontrollable fit of the giggles at the phrase "lies, sex and globules"!

"Lies, sex and tiny balls"?

Yeah, makes a lot of sense

It's a pity I can't watch the video in my country

Then again, I'm off to this year's first picnic which promises to be so much more fun

"lies sex and tiny balls"!!!!! ---- damnit! they've stolen the title of my autobiography!

There's probably an act of Parliament banning your biography.

I should imagine it's banned under several different ones.

I'm sure I don't know what your meaning!

Is a biography somewhere between a homography or a heterography?

Yes

And in this instance probably *very* homo/heterographic

Those words actually exist. Homography means (among other things) 'conventional spelling', where heterography is non-standard spelling.

For this reason, 2legs definitely leans towards the heterographic.

You live & learn

so I am* hetro.... in one respect at least My spelling is not as bad as it used to be.... It was even more attritious when I was a child It just developed in the few years since I was a child - I'm just perfecting being bilingual in a single language really.... I think...

I wonder how many of Trump's core voters know the difference between bilingual and bisexual

I would offer to demonstrate to them... for the greater good... but... I'm ... only so much a masochist.... with some vestigates of self-preservatiom left

It's okay. They seem to be happy not knowing very much

They do say ignorance is bliss. But, if you were ignorant, you might not know ignorance was bliss, and thereby not be blissful. However, if by virtue of not knowing, one was, indeed, in a state of blissful unawareness, would one be blissful in such a state. Initially the onlooked viewer of this, may assume 'yes'. however, if on examination one applies closer a gaze, it could be argued, that due to their state of being blissfully unaware, they are, indeed, unaware of the blissfulness within which they sit, and therefore are unaware that their state is already of bliss. Simularly, one may assume that their state is symultainiously unaware of their blissful nature of its existance, and, simularly, at the same time, unaware that there is a satate of blissfulness that they could attain to achieve; irrelivent of wheather or not they are, at any given time, already to be found existing in such a unaware state of blissness. However, without knowing there is a stat eof blissful, they may be unaware likeiwse that the opposite state can exist, so in net effects can exist in the seemingly contry state of both blissful and non-blissful, at the same time; in effect, they are in bliss limbo, both unaware yet potentially also non-blissful, and yet, tehreby unable to obtain the blissful state, due to their unawarness of both the state of bliss, and the state of non-bliss. - furhter quantitive examination and mettaanalysis would be deemd necessary to quantify the relaitive contrabution of each to the other, and detache confounding factors in either state, each state singularly, and the limbo state; and furhter adress wheather both sstates can successsfully coexist, creating a bi-blissfulness of being both blissful and non-blissful, in the coexistance of unawareness. I think...

2legs, that is beautiful.

I am stealing it for at some future but undisclosed date...