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February 19, 2007

LOST IN TRANSLATION

I lived in France for a year as part of my degree. It was Brest, in Brittany (the North West tip of France for the less geographically-minded [the top left hand corner for the mentally inept]) and it was a hell of a year. Most of it was spent in the English pub, a sixty second walk from my flat and located on the bus route to and from the business school I was attending. Consequently, a lot of time was spent in there, chatting to the fellow English students from the business school and getting to know the majority of the oil rig workers who were in the area.

Anyway, that was seven years ago (bloody hell!) and I am now working in the music industry. Today, as part of my job, I was deleting inappropriate and spam comments from the Westlife profile, when I stumbled across this little gem from a fan from South America. I am still trying to work out what the author is getting at:

hello good I mean to them that I hope that there are super past good in the day of san Valentin and queria to say to them that the love album I arrive at Chile I am going to join silver to buy it although already I have all the songs felicitacones in the meteor awards and hope that they vangan to Latin America

Now, to me this sounds like utter gobbledegook. But it got me thinking. All that time that I spent in The World's End in Brest, Brittany, top-left corner of France and all those times that I had random conversations in French with the coffee-guzzling locals, did I make any more sense? Was I ever understood when I spoke the native language or were they just humouring me?

I suppose I wasn't the only one, there was the time Shunta came to visit me and, with his limited French, drunkenly tried to toast 'le chat' (the only French word he could remember at the time), but actually loudly toasted "LA CHATTE" which in French slang means 'woman's pussy'! And there was also the time that fellow business school attendee Matt, during his end of year presentation to the entire school, mistakenly managed to say that he wanted to give the teacher a blowjob. At which point three of the senior lecturers had to leave the auditorium to quieten their hysterics.

Posted by jonola14 at February 19, 2007 9:51 PM

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