Saturday, November 28, 2009

Bad Me: Again

I posted the following on Craigslist under "writing jobs" . . .

Bad, bad me.
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English translation job desperately needed
Needed, ASAP: translation of the following sentence spoken by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, into English, preferably, but other Indo-European languages also acceptable:

"I look forward to seeing a comprehensive agreement in Copenhagen, where we will actually get on with actually reducing emissions as opposed to just setting absolute targets."

All this company's translation teams are at a loss so it is with reluctance that we go to Craiglist for possible interpretation. Russian transliteration okay upon approval of CV.

* Compensation: $500/wd
* Telecommuting is ok.
* Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

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The replies (preliminary) that I've gotten:

"What, exactly, are you looking for? The sentence is already in English. Are you looking for what he meant?"
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"I look forward to seeing a comprehensive agreement in Copenhagen, where we will actually get on with actually reducing emissions as opposed to just setting absolute targets."

I look forward to reaching,in Copenhagen, a comprehensive agreement  which does not just set absolute targets, but which will in fact allow us to work on the actual reduction of emissions.

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(And this, the best so far -- ed.):

"It means 'fuck you; me and the oil companies are going pump out as much CO2 as we can'"

-- Keep 'em coming, folks!

2 comments:

  1. "I didn't get screwed by my wife last night, so I sure as hell am not going to screw my oil company buddies by reducing carbon emissions!!"

    ReplyDelete