Sunday, March 19, 2006
Pesto resistance
Alexander Chancellor in the Guardian laments the quality of 'English translations on Italian menus, signs and packages'. A pesto sauce purchased in Tuscany serves as the example:
Methinks I detect a mild strain of that strange paranoia displayed by certain English-speakers abroad, who convince themselves that any fellow-monoglots they encounter among the locals are perfectly capable of communicating in English but simply refuse to do so out of 'rudeness', 'arrogance' or some such other unappealing quality.
It's an dexcellent handmade with no conservant and very tasty mode of use: to spread it on the toast, bread, roast and every where it is wanted to become tastySame old story, then. But the explanation he offers is rather novel:
It could be a subtle form of resistance to Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism - rebellion masquerading as deferenceAh, but did it occur to him that similar problems may also arise with translations into other languages, ones not associated with cultural imperialism?
Methinks I detect a mild strain of that strange paranoia displayed by certain English-speakers abroad, who convince themselves that any fellow-monoglots they encounter among the locals are perfectly capable of communicating in English but simply refuse to do so out of 'rudeness', 'arrogance' or some such other unappealing quality.
