Search

Marlee Matlin and Jack Jason

Posted by Anne on July 19th, 2011

An article by Nataly Kelly landed in my intray, and it was interesting to follow up: Jack Jason is actress Marlee Matlin’s interpreter. Watch them interact here: Do you notice the places where she “says” nothing, but gives us this look, this fabulous body language, this space where we infer and bond and relate, and [...]

Marlene in English and German and then again in English, great German accent; followed by Caroline Nin singing franco-anglo-tinged German.

ICH BIN VON KOPF BIS FUSS AUF LIEBE EINGESTELLT
(Friedrich Holländer)
Marlene Dietrich
Ein rätselhafter Schimmer,
Ein “je ne sais-pas-quoi”
Liegt in den Augen immer
Bei einer schönen Frau.
Doch wenn sich meine Augen
Bei einem vis-à-vis
Ganz tief in seine saugen
Was sprechen dann sie?:
Ich [...]

Samuel L. Jackson reads “Go the F*ck to Sleep”

Posted by Anne on July 3rd, 2011

Samuel L. Jackson reads the book “Go the F*ck to Sleep” by Adam Mansbach.

Not in my parents’ generation, and not among some of my brothers’ families, but I do think “what the f*ck” and other similar phrases using “the fuck” as an intensifier are very prevalent indeed even in everyday family talk. I had an [...]

Kleiner, uralter Gott – Ancient little god

Posted by Anne on May 29th, 2010

In a week we’ll be burying my mother’s ashes on Drummond. We’ve decided to read some of her poems, with a translation into English. She published a volume of them in the Wilhelm Andermann Verlag in Vienna in 1944 when she was 21; a miracle, since paper was so rare towards the end of the [...]

Second graders

Posted by Anne on March 4th, 2010

Joan sent me a presentation with quotes from German second graders. Most of them are mondegreens that won’t work in English, but I’ve translated some of the others into English for fun:

Garden gnomes have red hats so they don’t get mowed down.
Men can’t get married to men because then who would wear the wedding dress?
Life [...]

The bare necessities

Posted by Anne on April 14th, 2009

The students at the biotech company I teach at work veeeery hard, and I’m just translating a study on biotechnology and pharmaceuticals in Munich that is super interesting, so you’d think that’s what we’ll be discussing next lesson, right? Wrong. There was a request, you see, to compare the German and the English text of [...]

Spring is here. Tauben and pigeons beware

Posted by Anne on March 21st, 2009

OK, so it’s still cold out, but spring is here. Along with blackest humor. “Taubenvergiften im Park” was written by Georg Kreisler, “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” was penned by Tom Lehrer. So: Did Lehrer steal the song from Kreisler, or was it the other way around? Lehrer had more chutzpah, and thanked Kreissler for [...]