I have only one wish in life: I would like a simple, efficient bedside lamp. Actually I have two wishes, but the second one is for a sitcom about former Arab dictators sharing a flat in Brixton (Hosni! Have you been eating my humus again!?), which would be much more difficult to organise. Or at [...]
The 13th translation competition absolutely coincidentally comes out on the 13th day of month. Given the waning attention Polandian’s readers pay to translation competitions, I am of the opinion it is high time we came up with something that would freshen up the content of the page. Before it happens, the last portion of translation [...]
The Ice Road is a remarkable book both because it tells a little-known but important story of human suffering and because it does so in a way that doesn’t leave you wanting to slit your wrists. It is the autobiographical tale of 14-year-old Polish boy Stefan Waydenfeld and his family who were exiled to Siberia [...]
If some of you, dear readers, wonder if the translation competitions will ever disappear from Polandian, I can assure you we have had more down than we have to go. We are actually winding down, hence short phrases to guess in this round. 1. niedoróbka – glitch (-) 2. zaścianek – a backwater (Decoy) 3. [...]
I’m not dead, I’ve merely moved to Krowodrza. It’s similar to being dead, but the rents are higher and Internet access is less reliable. Although I am now just a few tens of metres beyond Aleje, this is enough to make me a suburban person. Us suburban people do not have access to 24-hours shops [...]
Traffic in Warsaw is snarled-up, hence it occured to me it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make speed a common denominator for this translation competition. Here we go! 1. iść pełną parą – to be in overdrive (-) 2. paliwożerca – a gas guzzler (Grze$ko) 3. ile wlezie – flat out (adthelad) 4. kumulacja [...]
Some of readers might be despondent these days. The school year begins today, the weather hasn’t been clement recently in Poland, the days are drawing in, and autumn is imminent. For no apparent reason all those unfavourable circumstances prompted me to make criminality a leitmotiv of the tenth translation competition. Actually not all the phrases [...]
Because we are now media giants who have been mentioned on the evening news at least twice, all kinds of global corporations regularly get in touch with us asking how they too can become movers and shakers on Poland’s internets. As long as they can satisfy Scatts’ insatiably lust for Hummers, we try to help [...]
The heat(ing) is on, the new President has been sworn in, holiday period is drawing to a close. Life provides us with plenty of situations when we can we hear some drivel. To help deal with this and overcome the absurdities let’s tackle another dose of linguistic puzzles. 1. świrować – to go bananas (EM) [...]
Ladies and Gentlemen… The expression above is surely not the most appropriate way of addressing you, as today’s competition revolves around impolite and foul language. The last competition, over the course of which some of the contestants were subtly insulted, blended with the recent dress code post have conjured up a really explosive mixture. Don’t [...]