Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Lost in Translation

One of my teachers this term is an animated, slightly crazy man prone to unexpected tangents. Through his many wandering stories I had learned such unusual Arabic as pornography (al muwaaqa ila baahia) and homosexual (mithli, an adjective stemming from the comparative particle "like"). But today he reached into English for a colloquial expression and ended up creating something else entirely. Speaking about multiplying problems, I offer you the new saying:

"Out of the oven and into the frying sauce."

I love non-native speakers of my mother tongue...

3 comments:

xoussef said...

sadly people will use "shadh" (abnormal, in a pejorative way) instead of "mithli"

kep said...

That is sad, since mithli is about as technical as its English counterpart and was introduced rather casually in class as part of an anecdote about one of the old faylasufs. Still, I could hardly say I'm surprised by what you say - even at home many people use pejoratives to describe gays.

xoussef said...

let's hope that will change ^^