Found poetry on the autoroute

Sep 04, 2016 20:39

I've just come back from France ( Read more... )

bad-translations, whimsy

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mistdog September 5 2016, 20:47:11 UTC
Une ceinture (de sauvetage) is a seatbelt - that one's reminding you that they must be worn in front and in the back.

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drdoug September 6 2016, 11:37:21 UTC
Aha! That makes total sense, thank you.

(For my own future reference: having looked it up, I think seatbelt is une ceinture de sécurité, and une ceinture de sauvetage is a lifebelt.)

After I'd got over the idea of the sign being about literally sticking to something, I'd thought it meant belt in the sense of a zone or region, and it was a region in front of one car and behind the next.

Another bit of evidence to weigh in the balance towards "most of this effect is a result of my terrible French".

Although not all. 'Clunk click every trip' is at least as whimsical and poetic.

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drdoug September 6 2016, 11:38:31 UTC
Argh. Jimmy Savile did that on the telly, didn't he? Suddenly not so pleasant a thought.

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mistdog September 6 2016, 19:37:41 UTC
I knew that, I had sécurité in my head, then when I typed my reply my fingers typed sauvetage and I never noticed.

I'm making mistakes like that a *lot* in recent months. I'm starting to worry there is actually something wrong with my brain.

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drdoug September 6 2016, 19:57:33 UTC
It does seem like a really obvious and easy slip to make, but I can understand worrying if it seems to be happening more ( ... )

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mistdog September 7 2016, 07:56:46 UTC
I do think that seeing the bigger picture comes with greater experience. Maybe it's our only hope.

I used to be a software developer - I haven't really written anything for a couple of years, but in addition to my skills getting out of date, making little errors like these make me wonder if I could still do that. A stray ! which you didn't mean to type can make a world of difference and be very time consuming to track down.

I'm making bigger mistakes than that though. Like being taken in by one of those "pay for EHIC" scams because it had NHS in the URL and I didn't think any further about it. And last week's was booking the wrong dates for my own wedding anniversary trip, and not only not noticing, but still not noticing when they sent a confirmation email. (They sent another "your holiday is in 1 week" email which made me go "what?!") I'm making mistakes of that magnitude about once a month. It makes me worry what I could fuck up if I got a responsible job.

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