According to another article in the paper, it was an old Malay manuscript once owned by Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, in a London library that led an independent researcher Raimy Che-Ross to the existence of the lost city in Johor.
Doesn't it thrill to know that such discoveries are still there waiting to be made? That history books may yet get rewritten? And isn't it perhaps true that there is a desire to be a treasure-hunter in all of us ...
(Aerial view of showing what is possibly the base of a temple complex or stupa, at the possible site of the lost city of Kota Gelanggi.)
And a story on the Mind Our English page that made me laugh out loud. A reader wrote in to complain about a mistranslation on ASTRO. She was watching Oprah Winfrey Prime Time featuring Jim Carrey as one of Oprah’s guests:
Jim Carrey rattled on about his latest movie and at one point, to punctuate his sentences, he used the word “period” to mean full stop.
Guess what Malay word our wise guy/gal used to translate that word?
“MENSTRUASI”!
Jim Carrey used the word “period” twice and twice the translated word “menstruasi” was flashed on the screen.
Mind you, I remember being perfectly mystified the first time I heard an American friend using the word "period" in this way, wondering why she had to inform the world so publicly and frequently about her time of month!
3 comments:
just one of the countless mistakes subtitle writers make. it makes me wonder if one should laugh at it, or seriously consider the competence of such translators.
All part of the rich tapestry of living here, I suppose! There's another classic story of a character giving a firing squad the order "Fire!" and the translation flashed up was "Api!".
One of my other favourite mistranslations was "Wilmutt Scrubbe" for the British prison "Wormwood Scrubs".
Post a Comment