LJ Round-Up 02/20/09: More Airline Stupidity And The Most Curious Thing About Benjamin Button
The Russian blogosphere conveniently, if bafflingly, revolves around LJ. Each week, RUSSIA! scans the chatter and brings you the top five topics.
• Blogger homme de loi argues that Benjamin Button is just another ham-fisted “BAM” (Big American Movie), or what we would simply call a Hollywood epic. There are a lot of extraneous things in the film, he says, including the protagonist’s trip to “some mythical Murmansk” where all Soviet sailors speak perfect English. Well, that is pretty incredible, reverse-aging device aside. [Нелюбопытная история Бенджамина Баттона]
• Blogger tanyant (a.k.a. famous novelist Tatyana Tolstaya) is absolutely livid about how poorly the most recent episode of House, M.D. was translated into Russian. The most egregious mistakes: translating the line “Any second thoughts about Cuddy?” to mean “You think about Cuddy every second?”, assuming a reference to “Hillary climbing the Everest” referred to Hillary Clinton, and somehow repeatedly mistranslating the word why. A reader agrees: “It does feel like robots are translating that show!” [House, 5, 15]
• Graphic-and-web design legend Artemy Lebedev - the original art director of this very magazine - calls on his fellow bloggers to help him answer three burning questions (only experts need apply, he cautions). 1. What is the Rotary Club all about? 2. Why is it that hotels never have a sign showing you where the elevator is? 3. What are the secret signs that a pilot gives his crew during a crisis so as not to upset the passengers? Answers: They’re like the Masons; it’s usually clear where the elevator is; and “Would all personnel please come to the cabin.” [Февральский фуршет]
• A blogger publishes a letter she received from an organization called Invisible Ones asking for help finding temporary residence for a blind girl with cerebral palsy named Kristina. She and a few other children had managed to make it all the way to Moscow for treatment after being locked up in a criminally negligent orphanage in the Astrakhan region. The post generates enormous interest, and an update indicates that a temporary place for the girl has been found. [Это не история. Это прямо сейчас происходит. Ей нужна семья, хотя бы временно]
• A one-sided debate over a recent news item: Siberian airline S7 refused to allow a blind passenger onto a flight because he didn’t have a personal attendant. The airline has refused the handicapped before (and even the elderly, one commenter recalls), claiming that it’s for the safety of the other passengers. The woman who posted it was too infuriated to comment, but others were more than happy to weigh in: “The only way to stop these goats [fuckers] is to boycott them.” [И СНОВА s7: идиотизм или позиция]
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