Free-Floating Hostility

Monday, September 04, 2006


My New German Pen Pal

Remember a few weeks ago when I posted a Babelfish translation of a German blog called A Goy's World? Well, the author of that blog, one Christoph, actually found my post. Not only did he leave a supportive comment on FFH, which was cool enough, but he used Babelfish to re-translate my translation and accompanying commentary, then posted it on his own blog. This is clearly awesome, but I feel I'm out of my league. While Christoph and his readership seem to be fluent in English, and therefore capable of enjoying this iterative process on two levels, the only German words I know are zoologishcer garten, wurst, and bumsen--the last courtesy of Bob Fosse. So I am forced to translate the re-translation, and even then I run aground when I get, "Now, from non-German perspective that sounds certainly bekloppt." I want to be in on the joke! Besides which, I'd like to know just to what degree they're laughing with me.

I tried to recruit some classmates, one of whom was born on Ramstein, to teach me how to say "you rock" in German, but no one knew. I must say, this small world the internet has created is really neat sometimes.

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