Sigmund and the Burka Babes meet Mary Beard
(Today they settled all classical business…)
Sometimes, people who know that I’m a fully paid up member of the tulip smoking tribe ask me why I don’t carry more Dutch stories here, on this blog.
Well, that’s because, most of the time, we have such boring news. We just don’t have too many of the following types of stories – this one a very neat twist on that old schoolboys’ innocent plea, “A big boy did it and ran away…”
“A jury on Friday convicted a man of murdering his former son-in-law, rejecting the man’s defence that he was too fat to have run up and down a flight of stairs to commit the crime and make a quick getaway. Ates had argued he did not have the energy to accurately shoot Duncsak from a perch on the staircase at Duncsak’s home in August 2006. He was 62 years old and 285 pounds at the time of the murder.”
Still, today I can make a proud exception to this (almost) never-go-Dutch rule, since I read something in one of our papers that did bring a rather proud smile to my face.
One of our newspaper cartoons has gone international.
It’s a cartoon about an incredibly vain & vile hyper-sexist psychotherapist, called ‘Sigmund’ (well, what else?) - although sometimes the shrink has to give centre stage to the mostly sarcastic musings of two other regulars: The ‘Burka Babes’.
Here are the latter in action, in the original, Dutch version:
(Translated: “Are you also so relieved that ours is the only true faith?”)
Anyway, so this cartoon is now spreading its linguistic wings, meaning that the newspaper now also carries an English online version.
Here’s an example of that:
(No, I’m NOT going to do a Dutch translation of it: Grow up already…!)
Still, why leave it at that?
There are many more markets – many more foreign tongues. Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic: All proud world languages that must be in need of ever more newspapers and ever more ground-breaking & daring cartoons…
Okay, maybe not in China or the Arabic world but a Spanish version would still be a good idea.
No?
No – apparently not.
Leave it to the people who run this newspaper to pick a third language that’s used by even less people than Dutch is.
Indeed, Latin…:
(You want a translation…?! Go ask the Don - but very respectfully, mind you…)
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