Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight I will perform a feat of lunatic daring.

If my profile and details about my life were actually a cunning ruse to conceal the fact that this blog was produced by an infinite number of monkeys tapping away at keyboards in some wrinkle in the fabric of time, the collective might view this cover with a sense of quiet satisfaction. monkeysayahhhhhheheheh


But of course, this is a ridiculous idea. Ridiculous? Who are you calling ridiculous, macadamia-breath? For one thing, it’s highly unlikely that monkeys would have the in-depth knowledge of Czech required to produce a summary of the novel. They would if they were a stunningly-marked colobus who’d spent four years in Prague zoo until they were able to effect a daring escape disguised as a miniature train driver.

Of course, my command of Czech isn’t quite up to the required level either, Command? It’s a bit rich to describe your pretty desultory ability that way, methinks. Saying “I have big flat. I have a clean windows” isn’t my definition of a command of the language so I’ve asked a brave and noble staggeringly big-headed colobus colleague to help out with words of more than one syllable some of the trickier words.

Since a synopsis of the Czech version might be helpful for students of translation theory, without much more ado, Show-off. Just because you’ve been sitting around on your tufty arse writing those stupid plays for decades while some of us were suffering… Oh for crying out loud, three square meals a day and all the totty you can boff is not suffering. You only left because they said you were getting fat and cut your banana ration. Besides, you try writing in iambic bloody pentameter day in day out. It's a wonder I'm not stark staring mad. Who said you weren’t? And I’m solidly built, not fat. I bring you, the classic of regency romantic fiction, Whitney… whisperwhisperwhisper Subtitle? What do you mean subtitle? It doesn’t have a subtitle. Oh, just forget it…

The greedy father of the beautiful Moravian princess, Whitney, has sold her to a secret outer-space technology program run by a mysterious and wealthy benefactor. He tells Whitney she has a new job as an astronaut and she takes off in a strange rocketship. Hang on... Who is expert translator? You or me? The ship travels at high speed into a time-sucking star thing. Whizz whizz whizz. There is strange moog music, whoo-oo-ooo-ooo, and streaks of coloured light. It gets very cold. Whitney freezes. It's very hard frost.

Big bang. No, not that big bang, the other one. Pervert. No, not that one either. Okay, maybe not a big bang. Big thud and sound of tearing metal. Beautiful young Moravian Whitney in her rocket lands in jungle-forest. No, I have not watched too many episodes of “Lost” on DVD. Her two big beautiful eyes blink. They open. I tell you, this is nothing like “Lost”. Here are two blinking eyes, not one eye. I have learned all about the adjectival agreement of “two”.

There are noises of crashing. Horses come through the woulds stupid English spelling woods. An arm reaches for beautiful young Moravian Whitney. It is a hairy arm! It is the arm of hairy gorilla! It is the arm of a handsome hairy gorilla warrior! All right, that’s it. Stop right now. What is it with you old world apes and your obsession with over-developed pectoral muscles? This is nothing like the book. And what’s with the stupid style? Don’t give me that “lexical problems in translation”, “all will be smoothed out in the editing” crap. Are you trying to make us look dumb? Damn right I could do better. When? Tomorrow. I’ve had enough for today. I’m going to the pub.

Edited a lot to mess around with fonts to make this more legible. Sorry for any hassle caused.

3 comments:

The Richard said...

Isn't Whitney's Dad... LIAM NEESON?

EvilAuntiePeril said...

yikes! but I don't think that's her Dad on the cover...

The Richard said...

duuuh, apologies.

he's too old for her.

there, I pulled it back from the brink.

kinda.