Thursday, January 02, 2014

Worst. Tur-Duck-En. Ever.



Charlie Pierce hips us to the fact that the 2014 "Best Headline" Contest is already over:
Another one for my endless list of Headlines I Wish I'd Written.
Chinese donkey meat recalled at Wal-Mart after it is found to contain fox.
(By the way, I saw Chinese Donkey Meat at the Paradise in Boston back in '79. They were opening for Gang Of Four, I think.)
I never trusted Babelfish's English-to-Chinese algorithm.

And I never will.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

About the only positive thing I can say about that is, when middle-management screws up in China and a dangerous (not worthless or shoddy, but at least dangerous) product is released, management gets arrested.

Mike.K.

Anonymous said...

A friend sends me the following passage from Reading Lolita in Tehran, a memoir by an Iranian professor, which sames apropos for this cartoon

"I have to tell you that the Ayatollah himself was no novice in sexual matters," Nassrin went on. "I've been translating his magnum opus, The Political, Philosophical, Social and Religious Principles of Ayatollah Khomeini, and he has some interesting points to make."

"But it's already been translated," said Manna. "What's the point?"

"Yes," said Nassrin, "parts of it have been translated, but after it became the butt of party jokes, ever since the embassies abroad found out that people were reading the book not for their edification but for fun, the translations have been very hard to find. And anyway, my translation is thorough -- it has references and cross-references to works by other worthies. Did you know that one way to cure a man's sexual appetites is by having sex with animals? And then there's the problem of sex with chickens. You have to ask yourself if a man who has had sex with a chicken can then eat the chicken afterwards. Our leader has provided us with an answer: No, neither he nor his immediate family or next-door neighbors can eat of that chicken's meat, but it's okay for a neighbor who lives two doors away."

madamswe said...

Lovely paraphrasing of Star Trek VI at the end.