Another
abused gerund - El coaching. This appears to mean 'training' but it
gets worse:- La persona
que realiza el proceso de coaching recibe el nombre de coach
(entrenador),
mientras que la persona que lo recibe se denomina coachee.
Talking
about funny words . . . The menu of the restaurant I dined at with
friends tonight took a novel approach to the item Rape. This
is normally given as 'Monkfish' in English. But not here, where it
was translated as 'Toadfish'. This, it seems, is a Spanish
alternative for Rape - Pez Sapo('Toadfish') - and it reflects,
insisted the waitress, the ugliness of the fish. Spanish bluntness? Or poor marketing?
On
the same menu there was an item called Cocochas de Merluza.
Now, cocochas means 'cheeks' but it's not a word which would
be known even to those with a reasonable command of Spanish. So it
was a bit puzzling to see the English version given as 'Cocochas of
Hake'.
But
perhaps the best thing about this menu was the translation of the
Spanish heading Revueltos. This is one of the rare examples
where the Spanish is shorter than the English, for it means
'Scrambled Egg Dishes'. Admirably, perhaps, the menu kept it short
and had it as just 'Scrambles'. Which is a word I think we should
keep.
There
was an article in today's Voz de Galicia on the number of
Galician drivers who are on the verge of losing their licences
because of the points they've lost after committing offences. It
contained a useful list of said offences and the points lost in their
respect. Interestingly, you can lose 3 points for using a mobile
phone, having earphones in or using your satnav. I wonder if the last
2 are offences in other countries.
Der
Spiegel reports that a combination of La Crisis and
Brussels pressure have forced the Spanish to give up the hallowed
tradition of the siesta, meaning the (crazy) split day. Allegedly, this has
become 'a thing of the past' in the pursuit of increased consumer
spending and, thus, higher profits and related tax revenue. Well, you
could have fooled me. We still have 'the dead hour' (actually 2 or 3
hours) in Pontevedra. Maybe not in Madrid and Barcelona.
Finally . . . The critic A A Gill was clearly unimpressed with the performance of Al Pacino in his latest film, which is (not) about Phil Spector:- The writing started off tentatively, a bit too theatrical for the small screen, but then Pacino got hold of it and made it too theatrical for a theatre, too theatrical for a circus, too messianically over the big top for a biblical revival. He makes Brian Blessed look like Sooty. Al has ceased to be an actor in the sense that he exists in a given scenario with other actors and interacts. He has transcended into a monomaniac emoticon, with a character that is entirely self-generated from his memories and previous performances.
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