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-   -   Translating Obscenity (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=29045)

Aaron Poochigian 01-12-2018 11:22 AM

Translating Obscenity
 
As a translator of, often obscene, poetry, I find this article fascinating: https://www.yahoo.com/news/translati...?.tsrc=fauxdal

Michael Cantor 01-12-2018 12:09 PM

I believe you have also translated, at one time or another, the mad, the delusional, the self-involved, the dangerous, and the dumb. Keep yourself available. It's only a matter of time until Sarah Huckabee Sanders explodes in mid-lie, and they'll need somebody on an emergency basis (no time for vetting) with a gift for translation and fiction.

Aaron Poochigian 01-12-2018 12:56 PM

I have just appointed myself the official translator of Donald Trump's utterances into Ancient Greek. "Shithole" will be "scatochasm." I don't know, Donald--America has its scatochasms, too.

Allen Tice 01-12-2018 01:55 PM

Σκατοχασμ.

Κοπροχασμ.

Michael Cantor 01-12-2018 01:55 PM

You can do that, and still serve the administration. We've already had a Chooch. Now it's time for a Pooch! You can be a Special Assistant. Or an Assistant Specialist. Tim Murphy will vouch for your Republicanism, and I believe that's all the checking they do.

John Isbell 01-12-2018 02:10 PM

I'm not even sure what a shithole is. Which further complicates things.

John

Allen Tice 01-12-2018 02:51 PM

Now playing at a theatre in Bowdler, Cacarado.

Roger Slater 01-12-2018 03:09 PM

Those of you friends with Alicia Stallings on Facebook can read a thread she started on the subject, with several people from other countries chiming in about how they've seen it translated.

Julie Steiner 01-12-2018 03:11 PM

A verbal relic from the Trump family's slumlord days, no doubt. It's real estate slang for housing units of very poor quality. The term appears in that context in Maggie Smith's poem "Good Bones."

But there may be a specifically Long Island connection to Trump's familiarity with the term, as well. My father, who grew up in rural Iowa and Minnesota, used "shithole" to refer to a cesspit or cesshole beneath an outhouse/latrine. Astonishingly, though, most households in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, still use cesspools for waste drainage. Here's an article from November 13 on the subject.

Aaron Poochigian 01-12-2018 03:12 PM

John, yes, "shithole" is much vexed--is it the one we have or the external one we use? Perhaps the info at this link will be helpful: https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/...know-you-need/


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